DISPATCHES

Howkins

I give him an unappreciative glare. "No such luck, Amin," I growl, "We've got another 11 days before the camels arrive and we have to go back up for a summit bid. All of our equipment is stashed at Camp 2 and Camp 3."

It is snowing, no...raining...no...sleeting outside, and the low-lying clouds and general moodiness of the weather have produced a state of mass restlessness at ABC. There have been no climbers on the mountain since we descended en masse from Camps 2 and 3 on Tuesday, and our techniques for passing the time and preserving our sanity have necessarily become creative.

Maintaining the focus, the drive and the desire to go up for the final summit bid is difficult under the best of circumstances, and even more difficult than usual, in the case of this particular expedition.

The camels have been called, per our pre-expedition negotiations with the Chinese Mountaineering Association in Beijing, for the 21st of August. But only the Chinese liaison officer (L.O.), who is positioned two days away at the oasis below the Camel Dump, knows what the current conditions of the rivers are and whether the camel drivers have arrived yet. We have approximately 40 loads of gear at ABC and five Balti porters who are equipped to help us carry loads down the glacier, but no one seems to know exactly how many loads are still at the "mid-way" point waiting to be carried down to the Camel Dump.

There are also barrels and duffles of goods and gear stashed at the "Shark's Fin" above ABC, and at C1, C2 and C3. One of the proposals that was discussed today was to move the nine members of the team who are finished climbing down to the mid-way point, along with the cook tent and staff, and to simply leave a half barrel of Epigas and some freeze dried food here at ABC for those who want to go up on a summit bid.

The motivating factor for myself, at this point, is simply remembering the sheer joy of the climb up to our high point of 7500 meters, just above C3 on the ridge. The section of the climb from C2 to C3, in particular, is unforgettable: an airy, intricate dance through a surreal world of dark black fins of rock and glistening fields of ice. On your left, the ridge gives way abruptly to a steep wall of fluted snow that sucks little swirls of wind-driven snow 5,000 feet down to the glacier below. And on your right, there are the deceptively soft arcs and curves of the seracs and ramps of snow that lead over to the Savoia Saddle.

The last time we climbed this section of the route, I think it must have been last Saturday or Sunday, there was a cold, golden sun barely visible through a swirling, cotton-thick mist — the kind of mist that makes everything seem distant and sluggish, and slightly unreal. My body felt surprisingly strong and agile, but I remember thinking that nothing seemed to be moving around me. I balanced on a tenuous hold, crampons scratching across a smooth granite surface, thinking, 'Haven't I touched this rock before?' There was something eerily familiar about the sequence of movements, the smell of the crisp snow, the rock promontories in this harsh, distant corner of the world.

I was climbing with two members of the International team, Andres and Hector, and as they paused to film, I stopped, turned around and caught my breath. Several thousand feet below us, the jagged tops of peaks and spires in the Karakorum range had shredded windows in the bank of clouds. We had already seen the full panorama, but this veiled view was somehow more beautiful, airy, mysterious and tantalizing. It was a sight worth stopping for, and then it was gone. The cloud curtain closed and we continued climbing.

Four hours later, Hector and I found ourselves in the middle of a snow field at about 7350 meters, just above two Japanese tents and a recently pitched Chinese camp. It was about 100 meters below the spot where we stashed our tents a week or so ago. One of the Japanese climbers, Kita, had given us both hot tea as we passed his tent, and the same thought was clearly on both of our minds: there is strength in numbers, and although we had planned to put C3 slightly higher, it seemed to make sense to be within earshot of each other in order to coordinate efforts to fix the final stretch of ropes to C4.

Hector tossed down his pack and started shoveling. When Jay, Mike, Jeff Alzner, and Greg arrived, we all agreed to pitch our tents in the same vicinity, at least temporarily.

If the weather had held, the spot would have been fine....but this has been a statistics-defying season of gnarly weather, and we had no such luck. It started to snow that evening. By the following afternoon one of our tents had been destroyed by a series of wet, heavy, spindrift avalanches (I owe a beer to Jay and Greg for excavating me). Mike and Greg dug another platform in what seemed like a more sheltered section of the slope, and we put up another tent, determined to sleep at Camp 3 for a second night, hoping the weather would clear. Again, no such luck.

At 3am that night, another series of spindrift slides hit the camp. Mike and I had been sleeping with knives on strings around our necks, thinking we might need to cut our way out of the tents. We didn't need the knives, but it was obvious by about 4am that we needed to bail, and quick.

Greg rapped down to the tents below us to make sure that everyone had survived, and we scrambled for a couple of hours, trying to keep the tents unburied long enough to get our equipment out and anchor it to a rock wall above the camp. By about 8am, we were down at C2, helping Shawn and Wayne pack up the tents for safe storage there, and by noon we were slurping soup at ABC.

So here we are again, at ABC, waiting out the weather, with 11 days left. Most of the summits on the north side of K2 have been between August 4th and August 20th (there is still reason for optimism!). We had a record-breaking 23 days of snow in July, and a whopping total of only six climbable days so far this month — but what can you do about global imbalances in the weather? Nothing, obviously, other than "shut up and climb." Which is exactly what we've been doing and will continue to do, when the weather permits. Climbing, like survival, is a reflex.

— Heidi Howkins, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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