CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Filling the Void

The east face of Masherbrum catches the morning’s first light. MARKO PREZELJ

Base Camp, Mandu Glacier, Masherbrum, Pakistan: July 1,2003

THE SATELLITE PHONE BEEPS and I quickly pick it off the battered metal table, push view and read the text message aloud, “Snow on and off.” Marko and Matic laugh.

“That’s it,” I repeat, scrolling down to see if I missed part of the message. “Snow on and off.”

“Shit!” exclaims Marko. “This is real shit. Every forecast is same. ‘Snow on and off.’ This is real bad joke now.”

Taking advantage of the newly affordable, portable satellite phones, I have arranged for a meteorologist in the United States to text weather forecasts to us every other day. For two weeks the forecasts have not varied. Unfortunately for us, they have been accurate.

I stand and unzip the mess tent door and look towards Masherbrum. Clouds hide its steep slopes. We’ve seen the peak only three times since we arrived in base camp five weeks ago and during our various acclimatization forays, we’ve triggered a total of seven snow avalanches.

Stepping into the mess tent the next morning, I hear Matic speaking to Marko in Slovene. “I’m done. Finished. If you two want to go up, it’s no problem for me. There is only one week left, but anyway, I think the snow conditions are too dangerous to try.”

I sit next to Matic. We’ve just started to get to know each other, Marko being the link between us. “You sure?” I ask.

“Ya, ya. I am sure. Go if you want, if the weather is good.”

The next morning Marko glances at his watch, 10 am. Time for the weather forecast. I try not to stare at the phone. I stand up, walk to the mess tent door, and step outside. I can see the bottom flanks of the mountain today: bright white with fresh snow except for spots of blue that have been scoured clean by recent ice avalanches.

I hear the phone beep and a moment later Marko reads, “Today: snow on and off. Tomorrow through Thursday: three days of clearing. Ending with moderate amounts of precipitation with little wind.”

A pause, then Marko looks up. “Okay. We go.”

“Yes,” I reply. “We go.”

That afternoon we lay out supplies: food, fuel, a small tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, one stove and pot, two lighters, two ropes, a rack, photos of the mountain from all sides should we need to descend another way, goggles, Polarguard parkas and mittens, and a dozen other small items like film and lip balm.

We each pack our share before retiring to our individual tents. I write in my journal, musing on the despondent state of my marriage of eight years. As I struggle to transition to climbing bigger mountains – ramping up my commitment to train harder and work harder to pay for the longer, more expensive expeditions – my relationship with Anne has grown difficult. I am a goal-oriented achiever, which has left little energy for my marriage.

Marko calls home, talking to his young wife, Katja and his two boys: Bor who is four years old and Tim who is nine. Katja is a trained chemical engineer, but the current job market in Slovenia is so dismal that it is best for family finances if she stays home to raise the boys. Marko is immune from homesickness. When I question him on this he answers, “When I am on expedition, I am on expedition. When I am home, I am home. End of story.”

The next morning we breakfast in the dark and strike across the glacier as the first hint of color enters the eastern sky.

“What do you think of this snow slope?” I ask four hours later. Five minutes earlier I had triggered our eighth avalanche of the expedition. It buried me up to my knees. We had thought that today would be cloudy, but the Karakoram sun bears down, heating the snow pack. The increasing temperature weakens the bonds holding the snow to the mountain. Before me is a long narrow snow slope angling sharply to the right. What we cannot see, but know is there, is an 800-foot high cliff of vertical ice below us. We could see it from base camp, and even a small slide, like the one I just triggered, could sweep us over that cliff to certain death.

“I think it’s too much. I have had enough,” says Marko.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I agree and add, “The slope ahead is even more dangerous.”

I had been waiting for Marko to call it, curious where he would draw the line. I had already decided that I would not cross the next slope in these conditions and am relieved that he has independently reached the same conclusion. I stare at the striking pillar of Masherbrum’s north face. It’s a fantastic line, one of the best in the big mountains. It’s as big as the south face of Nuptse, and a purer line than the Slovak Direct. Masherbrum’s summit has only been reached five times since its first ascent 40 years ago.

Resentment looms. I wish the conditions were better; my desire to climb burns hot. From what I know of Marko, I think he feels the same. Neither of us speaks, recognizing that voicing such desires in these fragile moments can invite a bad decision. I am here to climb, not to die. Hero or martyr: in death they are both the same.

“Okay. Let’s go.” I turn and we start back.

Islamabad International Airport, Pakistan: July 24, 2003

Two weeks later we ride together to the red brick Islamabad International Airport and I say goodbye to Marko and Matic as a dozen blue-shirted porters squabble to carry their expedition luggage to the terminal.

“Okay. See you next time,” Marko says. “I like the idea of going to Canada in the spring.” We speak in Slovene, enjoying the fact that no one around us can understand our conversation.

“That’d be easy. Just get yourself to Seattle or Calgary, and I’ll take care of the rest. There are some really good mountains in the Canadian Rockies. Very Himalayan for small mountains.” I give him a slap on the back as we disengage from a firm hug.

“Matic.”

“Štef.

“It was good, no?” I ask. “Of course, the weather was bad, but to be in the mountains together, it was good. Good luck building your house in the spring.” Matic smiles.

“Thanks. Lucky Trails.”

“Lucky Trails.” Matic intones the familiar Slovene climber’s farewell.

From the airport I direct the taxi to the Ministry of Tourism for a trekking permit. I am not anxious to go home to Anne. I wonder if our lack of intimacy is a symptom of the cumulative effects of time apart, or of my single-minded ambition. I struggle to make sense of my feelings. I do know that the mountains hold a much stronger draw than going home to face the dilemma of my relationship.

That afternoon I start back to the Charakusa Valley. The Karakoram Highway leaves Islamabad threading through plots of red-clay farmland. Refugee camps from the ongoing wars in Afghanistan dot the countryside. The edges of the road are crowded with dirty boys selling roasted ears of corn to hungry drivers. Small groups of women ferry hand-cut grass baled with a hank of rope looped across their foreheads. Some have loads so large their feet are barely visible.

I listen to the stuttering rhythm of the driver and his assistant and wonder what they are talking about. Then I wonder what I would talk about had I company. This makes me sad and homesick. The feeling sits there in my gut sloshing heavily back and forth as the mini-van accelerates out of the corners and swerves between the potholes.

Eventually my thoughts turn to the place I’m traveling to. It becomes difficult to feel sorry for myself. Without a partner to pursue what Mark, Scott and I experienced on the Slovak Direct, it seems logical that I might find the same sensation, the same wholeness within myself. Climbing is the only vehicle I have to achieve that odd sensation of both emptiness and fullness where I no longer feel alone. My thoughts turn to Anne and I wonder if I am running away, or doing what is necessary to achieve something great, to transcend. One question nags at me as we drive through the night: How will I know the difference?

Charakusa Valley, Pakistan: July 28, 2003

It rains as I walk up the glacier with 12 men from the village of Hushe. We pick our way across the ice, weaving in and out of the rocks. The snow is long melted, the surface gray from embedded rock dust, and violently blue where sheets of water stream into the nearest crevasse. The porters have hung sheets of plastic over their loads. The leading edge of the plastic ends at their foreheads, and rainwater drips into their faces.

At noon the rain relents as we hop across huge white boulders that sometimes shift with our weight. We cross through tall grass that soaks our pants and ends in a large sandy plain threaded through with a braid of one-hop streams and dotted with house-size boulders. At the far end of the plain we cross a torrent of milky glacier runoff and reach a small nook of grass. On the left, spring water flows from thick banks of moss into a stream that trickles down and out to fine gravel banks dashed with small purple and pallid-yellow wildflowers. There, between the stream and the glacier, we make base camp.

“Is good?” asks Rasool, understanding full well the beauty of the place.

“Why not?” I reply, turning his favorite reply to my frequent requests back on him.

Rasool’s beard is gray around the mouth, and his wiry dark hair has thinned since our first expedition together four years ago. He is quick with a joke and easy with his laughter. Last winter he finally saved $2,500 and was able to make the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, which Islam asks of all Muslims who have the means. His fellow Baltis, the people of Baltistan easily recognized by their gilgiti, a thick wool beret rolled tight around the edges, all call him Hajji Rasool. I detect a new respect and seriousness in their tone.

I pay the porters 1,350 rupees each – about $30 for two long days of work, which seems fair given Pakistan’s average annual income of only $300. They fold the money once and tuck it into the button up pockets of their shalwar qameez, the traditional Pakistan dress. As they depart, each one shakes my hand, thanks me, and wishes me luck.

At 2 am, three days later, I wake and lean forward to light the stove sitting in the snow next to me. Half the hemisphere is filled with stars; their pin-pricks of light washed out by an unseen full moon. Behind me, the sky is filled with the wall I have probed with binoculars these past two days. The base of the un-named, unclimbed mountain is wide and swept by an ice face that starts off moderately, but gets steep before it narrows and turns to dry rock. The rock is checked with crack systems and chimneys, some holding ice. The face concludes on the mountain’s northeast shoulder, which is capped by a tower of granite rising to an exacting needlepoint. I first saw this mountain a few weeks ago while hiking out with Marko and Matic from our Masherbrum expedition. If I climb it, I will name it Hajji Brakk in honor of Rasool’s pilgrimage.

At 3:01 am I start and within 15 minutes I am climbing the ice wall by the light of my headlamp. The ice is brittle and fractures into thin-angled slivers, like a broken mirror, they skid and whir down the face. My head plays games with me; I see my body sliding against the ice, making a zipping sound and then going airborne in an unwitnessed blur of color.

I try to stop these movies running in my mind, but then decide to let them play. Perhaps when they play out I can be finished with them forever. The climbing steepens and I focus: I swing my ice tool from the shoulder, tune into any possible looseness in my crampons, notice any fracturing in the ice supporting me. I climb; how I enjoy the movement of climbing.

When I reach the base of the rock wall I chop a step in the ice and place a screw. I check my watch: 6:30. As I reach for a second ice screw a powerful crack shatters the stillness. In that instant I feel naked, exposed to falling rock or ice. The remains of the cornice disintegrates violently 30 feet to my right and disappears down the face, strafing the slope I just climbed.

That falling cornice came down the icy chimney I intended to climb. I reverse the ice screw and climb further up and to the left. After 100 feet I stop and repeat the process with the step and the ice screw. I add a second screw and equalize them with a short sling before tying the end of the rope to the anchor and clipping myself in with another sling. There is another, safer, but more difficult looking chimney here.

I hang my pack on one screw and flake loops of rope back and forth across it. Giving myself about 20 feet of slack, I tie a clove-hitch knot and clip it into a locking carabiner attached to my harness. With this as a self-belay, I am ready to start climbing. As I go I will place gear, clipping the rope into that gear. When I have climbed 20 feet, I will pull up some slack, tie another clove hitch in a second locking ‘biner and untie the first one. This system is light and simple, but means that any fall would be at least 20 feet. I slip a spare ice hammer into its holster, check that my gear is organized, and start to climb.

The entrance to the chimney above is clogged by a snow mushroom. I climb to it, place a screw below it, and clip in my rope. The mushroom is larger than I am, and I know from experience that it is much, much heavier than me. Dislodging it would crush me, or possibly load my self-belay system to, or beyond, its breaking point.

I climb the wall to its left. It starts off well, but the holds quickly become small, unstable and barely useable. I can’t lean on or climb the mushroom without risking its collapse. I look down at my feet and unbidden, the movie starts again: a 10-foot, ankle-shattering fall; the ensuing retreat to the bivy, 20-odd rappels sliding on my bum; the glacier crossing to base camp crawling on my knees. I down climb to the ice screw.

After a short pause I start up the right side. It’s steeper here but an angling crack provides secure purchase for my ice tools. I press my left foot onto a bad rock edge, which crumbles under the pressure. I climb up a few moves, feel unstable, and come back down.

“Commit. Commit. You can do this.” I exhale sharply into a puff of frost and start the moves again. I get one move higher before the video of my potential fall and the consequences of a mistake replays. I climb down again.

At the anchor I look down the ice field, streaked with vivid blues and chalky whites. I reposition my feet and ice chips rattle away and are quickly silenced by gravity. I think about descending. In less than five minutes I could have those two screws out, make a V-thread and be rappelling. My stomach growls at the thought of a hot lunch on the safety of the glacier. Should I give up now without demonstrating to myself that the climbing is really too hard?

“What do I need?” I ask myself. Do I need to fall off? Do I need to push beyond what I can do in order to learn what I can’t do? It would be stupid to fall up here, belayed to a clove hitch on that 8-millimeter half rope. No matter how much you can live inside your own head right now, no matter how skilled you are at distracting yourself from exertion and discomfort with fantasies, you won’t be able to divorce yourself from the real pain of a serious injury. No day-dream will stop the blood flowing from your skull once it’s cracked open. Do you have an answer to that? Of course not. You knew all of that when you came up here; so what’s changed? Nothing. Nothing has changed. Just up or down. What’s it going to be? Up or down?

The view looking down one of four difficult pitches I soloed on Hajji Brakk, the unclimbed 20,000 foot peak in Pakistan that I made the first ascent of alone and in a single day. STEVE HOUSE

I look up at the snow mushroom. Bad luck, I think. But then that mushroom is probably always there and will be there long after I’m gone. I need to get some gear in to keep me from falling onto the ice slab if I pitch off. I reach for the crack again and climb a few moves. Cranked up on my tools I peer into the crack, it’s full of dust, but it just might take a piton. I pick the thinnest pin off my rack and slip it into the crack, using the tip to brush away some of the dirt. It slots in tightly after a quarter inch.

Breathing hard, I shift my feet and try to relax my arms. I shake out my left hand first, then my right. I make a short move and hold on tightly with my left arm while I take the hammer in my right hand and tap on the slim titanium piton. Tink, tink, tink. It works its way in and I make each blow a little stronger. The pitch of the sound rises, and finally, taunk, taunk, taunk, and it’s in solidly. I pull a sling from around my neck and shoulder and quickly clip the rope to the piton.

After 200 feet I find a good horizontal crack where I nest four pieces of gear for a solid, multidirectional anchor. I rappel down to clean the pitch then reclimb it with a self-belay from my toprope, carrying the pack to the anchor.

Back on lead, I scratch around the shallow cracks and corners above me like a dentist probing for flaws in enamel. The sounds are similar. There are no useable holds, so I down climb five feet to a place where I can stem: pressing my right and left feet against opposite walls. Extending, I can slot my tools into a second crack system.

Two hours later I surmount a chockstone and pull onto a foot-wide flow of ice. My pant leg is torn and my eyes encrusted in dirt. I have used all my rock gear. I feel tired and bruised as I mechanically clean the pitch, dropping my spare ice hammer in the process. The way to the peak’s shoulder is clear now. The climbing is not over, but the crux is behind me. My mind has played no more movies and I enjoy the drag of fatigue on my arms and shoulders. I feel the snow, ice and rock under my tools and crampons without having to search for the sensation. I swing my pick where I need to, kick my crampons where I want to, and know when I’m at the end of my rope without looking.

At 1:30 pm I anchor my rope to a horn of solid granite and rappel back down to clean the last pitch and retrieve my pack.

Back on the shoulder I sit and reward myself with two GU packets and an extra swig of water. Looking out, the Charakusa Glacier flows away to my left. I count eight unclimbed summits. One is a striking granite tower that looks exactly like a dog’s bottom canine. A cumulus cloud drifts from the south and casts me in shadow. “Tick, tock. Tick, tock,” I whisper to myself.

My crampons grate noisily on the coarse-grained rock as I hoist myself onto an edge and use my knees to gather my feet underneath me. I hold onto both sides of the tapering rock fin as I stand up. I reach, standing on my toes, and touch the pinnacled summit at 4:48 pm.

I take my first 360-degree view of the day mechanically: K6 and K7, both across the valley from me, and each with a single ascent. The massive trapezoid of Chogolisa, where the great Hermann Buhl died falling through a cornice in 1957. K2, the world’s second highest peak, looms massively: a huge, white Egyptian pyramid. Muztagh Tower, its near vertical black profile offers a striking contrast to neighboring K2. Masherbrum looks absolutely massive, it’s east face clearly overhanging; perhaps this is the steepest wall on any of the world’s highest summits. Nanga Parbat hangs like a cloud on the southern horizon, distinguished by its immensity. I sit in the sun, soaking up the possibilities, knowing that in 10 lifetimes I could not climb all these mountains.

I take four pictures, three of the mountains, and one of myself. My altimeter reads 19,980 feet. I set a single, small wired nut in a crack and clip in one carabiner, the first of many rappel anchors. Three single-point rock anchors later, I reach ice where I can rappel from simple V-threads. As I drill my third V-thread darkness falls, slowing my pace. After six more rappels I’m tired, my arms are going numb from the pressure of the pack straps. When I throw the ropes, they don’t slither effortlessly down, they hang up and I have to work, retossing the ropes several times for each rappel. I finally leave the rope hanging from my harness and down climb.

Twenty minutes later my headlamp dies. Moonlight doesn’t reach this north face, so I continue by a kind of icy mountain braille, pushing through the pain of cramping calves and the dull, hungry ache of my belly.

I cross the bergschrund, the finish line, and look at my watch. It’s 10:05 pm, 19 hours since I started climbing. I hold the camera in front of my face and force my eyes open for a self-portrait. The flash blinds me for a few moments. I let gravity lead me, staggering, to my bivouac.

K7 Base Camp, Charakusa Valley, Pakistan: August 4,2003

On the morning of my 33 birthday, Rasool makes pancakes and fries two eggs overeasy. All that’s missing is bacon and coffee. For lunch, I open one of my two bottles of Coke. I read until midnight. Rain drums on the tent as I drift to sleep.

After breakfast the next day the clouds begin to clear. “Rasool. You want to go onto the glacier? To look?” I ask.

“Why not?” He says with a wide grin displaying stubby teeth worn by decades of eating local stone ground flour. Twenty minutes later he emerges with gaiters covering his boots and holding an ice axe.

“This very good.” He says tapping an index finger on his old and slightly rusty axe.

“Yes. Very nice.” I realize he’s excited for a little adventure. After two hours all we’ve seen is clouds and some Ibex tracks in the snow. We turn around and the wind pushes us from behind. Wet, dark rock appears at the base of K7.

Winds silently rip clouds from the granite walls and needles, revealing more towers and summits. These prove to be tiny horns on massive walls as the next gust tears back yet another layer. The mountain grows bigger and bigger. Without noticing, I’ve stopped, gawking at the spectacle unfolding before me. The wind shreds the final cloud from K7’s summit and my eye is drawn to a line of steep waterfalls dead in front of me.

I snap two photos and take off my pack to get the binoculars. Yes, it would go. The ice doesn’t touch, but there is a climbable ramp from the right to get to the thicker ice. Here is a mountain I have to climb, I think. A mountain in which to lose myself.

The next day I leave base camp in the dark. In my isolated halo of light, I imagine my impending glory – this will be the climb of the century. I fantasize about my Piolet d’Or acceptance speech, ranting about how the award is politicized, bashing less deserving climbs and climbers, exalting my solipsistic conquest.

When I get within a few hundred feet of the base, I can hear the sound of gushing water. The ice is melting fast. My vain fantasies vaporize when a great sheet of ice peels off the rock thousands of feet above. It floats for a moment before striking the wall and shattering into a million pieces. Walking back to base camp, I wonder if I’m experiencing good luck, or bad.

As I retreat to base camp I see a line of weakness in the rock that might be easy enough to solo. After lunch I pack for another attempt: rock-climbing shoes, two slings, five nuts, nine pitons, and one ice screw plus a puffy parka, a couple pairs of gloves, a bivy sack, a stove and pot, and a bit of food this time. I think I can get to the summit in 30 hours, and back in about 20.

A few puffy cumulous clouds drift in from the south, otherwise the sky is clear. The pressure is down one millibar; nothing to be alarmed about. My plan is to leave at first light, have a brew stop and a nap in the afternoon, then climb the ridge by the light of the full moon. I’m counting on clear skies and no wind. If any component of this plan is missing, I’ll rappel down.

Seeing the ice line disintegrate has checked the imagined glory misguiding me to push myself ever further. It doesn’t take much figuring to predict how that would end. I will cut the rotten pit out of my motivation during today’s meditation. What I need now is no pressure. No other of any kind – no awards, no cares for sponsors, no responsibility for anyone.

I start climbing in the predawn gray. The ice disappears where the rock steepens and I change to rock-climbing shoes. The climbing gets steeper with each passage and suddenly I’m on terrain too hard to be soloing. I’ve read that a samurai endeavors to make every decision within the space of seven breaths. By the sixth breath I have an anchor placed and am rappelling down.

I walk out onto the glacier to gain perspective and toss my gear on a large flat rock. Following a hunch, I take the rope and a bit of climbing gear and walk to the right side of the cliff. Water-polished rock carries me into a chimney where I find the first human sign I’ve seen in two weeks: an old piton. Two hundred feet higher I find old ropes bleached by the sun. I continue and the climbing stays moderate. Three hours later I’ve climbed 1,500 feet above the glacier.

I’ve found it: the key to the mountain! The terrain above is ice and mixed ice and rock, climbing that plays to my strengths.

Someone has attempted the peak by this rock chimney before, but this is not the same route taken on the peak’s one and only ascent. In 1984 eight Japanese university students placed 450 pitons and bolts and fixed 8,000 feet of rope over 40 days to gain the summit.

In base camp Rasool cooks a delicious curry. “Eat,” he admonishes. “Climber must be very strong. Very good eat.”

I sleep until the sun’s heat forces me out of the tent the next morning. Packing is easy. I know exactly what I need, and more importantly, what I do not need. I replace a couple of nuts abandoned on yesterday’s retreat and increase my ice screw count to two. I stuff a bivy sack, an old pair of down pants and my lime-green DAS Parka into my backpack. It all weighs 11 pounds. This is usually the point where I dump it all back out and go through each item checking that each has multiple uses, that every item is essential. Nothing weighs more than a few ounces, but ounces make pounds. And pounds, as they say, make pain. This time I put the pack in my vestibule and retire for an afternoon nap.

By noon the next day I have regained my earlier highpoint, switched back to boots, and started up the icefields above the rock barrier. The climbing winds wonderfully back and forth through strips of ice under a serac and between exposed fins of yellow granite. It starts to snow lightly.

I climb into a section of vertical ice. Where it begins to overhang it gets chalky and soft. I traverse right, struggling to set a solid right foot to move onto. I swing too hard from nervousness and my tool gets stuck and I feel the first burn of a pump. I make large moves between sure, precise swings. The angle slackens, the exposure here is incredible, and I spot a jutting serac above and to the right of me.

The visibility is dropping and its snowing like it means it now. I climb towards the serac. As I get closer, I see a hollow beneath the cantilevered ice roof. I continue 100 feet past the natural cave, but decide to return to it and take my good luck where I can.

A slip of spindrift, a mini-avalanche of newly fallen snow, hisses past me as I step into the hollow. I move to the back and place a screw in the wall. I clip myself into it and scrape a flat spot with my boot. The light fades as I deploy the ultralight, five-ounce bivy sack that Todd Bibler made for me, promising that it would last only five bivies. I’ve counted over 20 bivies when a burst of spindrift launches off the lip and the wind kicks it into my face. I look up and notice that the light is fading. The thickening storm clouds hide the setting sun.

Four hours later I awake to my wristwatch alarm. With cold fingers I fumble the watch, dropping it in the snow. The beam of my headlamp is full of cloud and snow. The green bivy sack is hidden under a white blanket.

Too cold to sleep, I’m gone at first light. I don’t want to descend the way I came. It’s too dangerous due to the large snowfield that could avalanche with the new storm snow. I work my way up a faint ridge of steep snow above the bivy cave. This exertion warms me from the thighs out. I traverse towards steep waterfall ice I’d seen the day before and start my rappels.

It’s raining as I step onto the glacier late that afternoon. Failure is often bitter. But I am elated with the challenge that lies ahead of me, satisfied by what I’ve learned, and filled with the knowledge that I will spend the coming year training for and dreaming about climbing K7.