CHAPTER SIXTEEN

K7 is My Universe

The K7 massif taken from the summit of Hajji Brakk; K7 is the right of the two spires in the center, the snow covered peak to the left is K7-West which Marko Prezelj, Vince Anderson and I made a first ascent of in 2007. STEVE HOUSE

Charakusa Valley, Pakistan: June 26, 2004

LATE IN THE DAY THE RAIN STOPS and the clouds perform their slow, alpine striptease. Two-dozen peaks, ranging from thin soaring rock spires to hulking alpine massifs, emerge to ring our small grassy base camp. I can feel my teammates’ excitement at seeing this valley for the first time: cameras click, fingers point.

Last summer I visited this Karakoram valley twice – once coming from Masherbrum and again two weeks later when I soloed the virgin 20,000-foot peak I named Hajji Brakk. After that climb, I made four attempts to climb the most compelling objective in the valley: K7.

K7 is the most strikingly beautiful and complex mountain I’ve ever set foot on. A team of Japanese university students made its first ascent in 1984 via the southwest ridge. The only subsequent attempts were by a small team of Americans, led by Conrad Anker, and an adventurous group of Brits. It was the beginning of the British route that provided the key to the upper mountain.

By the fourth attempt I had refined my systems and my strategy. My pack weighed eight pounds, and I moved with complete confidence – not in success – but in knowing that I could deal with any situation. Though I failed to reach the summit, I realized I possess both the desire and the ability to climb K7 alone by a route of my own discovery. When I left the Charakusa Valley I knew I would return to complete my solo of K7, and I knew whom I wanted to bring with me.

By late winter I had commitments from a solid group of alpinists: Marko would come from Slovenia, plus Jeff Hollenbaugh, Bruce Miller, Doug Chabot and Steve Swenson from home. Pooling our money, we drew permits for K7 along with the unclimbed peaks of Kapura and K6 West. The five of them planned to attempt different objectives with different partners, depending on weather, conditions and individual interests. I planned to acclimate with the group, and then resume my solo project on K7. I trained long, hard and carefully through the winter and spring, eagerly anticipating the coming summer’s trip.

For the past two weeks the weather has been poor, but I remain ready. My teammates make various plans; they pack and repack, even change their objectives. I stay focused on soloing K7. I have little to pack. My agonizing is not over my gear or my goal; I am tortured by the weather.

Everything I am at the moment, everything I want, revolves around climbing K7. During drizzly afternoons I try not to play the life-isn’t-fair game. A two-year-old screams inside my head: mine, mine, mine! I want it! In calm moments, I ask myself pragmatically what I will do if the weather and the conditions prevent me from climbing.

I have one rule for my soloing: never climb alone because I don’t have a partner. Soloing must be a journey into a solitary, egoless universe. Whether my efforts result in something my fellow climbers perceive as success or failure is irrelevant. Success, when achieved, is deceptive – for there lies praise, closure, achievement. Failure is the more valuable fruit, borne as it is from the knurled vine of process. Taking up crampons and ice axes after failure forces me to own my shortcomings, learn from them, and to capitalize on the strengths that I found.

With partners I have pitched and belayed my way up some of the biggest walls in the world. In all those thousands of pitches I’ve fallen only once. What security did the rope really bring? It provided us the confidence to try, to act. By joining together we became stronger because we fought together, because we fought for one another. At the moment of greatest commitment, when we had to climb up and off the mountain to survive, the rope became true partnership.

But I don’t want that this time; I can’t handle it right now. Since the Slovak Direct four years ago I have not been able to replicate that connection of pure partnership. Subsequent partners have let me down. They did not stay by me or they did not let me in. Marko is a prime candidate now. On North Twin we worked well together, but for some reason the mysterious bond was not formed. One, or both, of us is not ready.

I should have more carefully heeded Scott Backes’ warning. I must take my time. Adopt a beginner’s approach to climbing; prepare myself for the partner that will once again provide that magical synergy.

In the afternoon there is a bump in the barometer. I depart, climbing through the first rockband of ledgy granite. Leaving the moldering fixed ropes left by the Brits, I switch from rock shoes to boots, and scramble 1,000 feet before making a bivy. I use my ice axe to scratch out a body-length flat spot in the tilted gravel. To ensure I don’t roll off, I perch a few large rocks on the downhill edge. Then I roll out my sleeping mat and start the stove to melt snow. A few feet away the edge of a small glacier sweeps up, steepening until it’s lost in the thinning mist roiling through the rocky ramparts surrounding me.

Starting at 3 am, I retrace the route I discovered the year before. Past the small bivy cave that marks my previous high point, I pull onto the ridge, a wind-whipped whirl of snow just inches wide at over 20,000 feet. Here my route joins the Japanese route and I continue treading carefully through knee-deep snow on moderate terrain.

After climbing nine-and-a-half hours, with 700 feet to the summit, I am stopped in my tracks. An impenetrable bastion of rock guards the summit ridge. I stare at it, looking for a way to climb it.

I tenuously continue along the left side of the ridge; it steepens. I cling to the sharpened edge, plunging my tools into the snow to gain ground. The snow approaches vertical and becomes too dangerous, too insecure. I retreat and rig my rope to rappel down the right side. I make three raps, searching for a route around this obstacle. At the end of the fourth rappel, I see no possible route and climb back to the ridge crest.

I pause to eat and drink, trying to imagine how and where the Japanese climbers went. They probably stayed close to the ridge; maybe they placed bolts here, for aid climbing. But I can’t find any sign of their passage.

I start again, and stay just underneath the right tip of the ridge top. I climb under the curled lip of the cornice; like ducking under a frozen wave. After 50 feet I exit and surmount a big boulder. In the wall above is a bolt.

The bolt is in smooth rock near a 10-inch wide ice runnel that ends atop a 40-foot thin crack the Japanese must have aid climbed. I can’t get off the far side of the boulder, so I retrace my route under the cornice and climb down the way I rappelled earlier. After 100 feet, I traverse toward the granite bastion and ascend an ice couloir to the base of the 40-foot crack.

After five feet in the crack the wall steepens and I get spooked. The exposure is tremendous; a fall from here would send me thousands of feet. I place a piton, tie a sling to my harness and clip myself to it. Reaching higher, I place a nut and clip another sling to that. I add another piece of gear in the narrow crack and attach myself to it with a third sling. I place a fourth piece of gear up high, reach down, and unclip myself from the lowest piece and clip that same sling into the new gear. As soon as I’m clipped into three pieces again, I knock out the bottom piton. Leapfrogging, I progress slowly.

After an hour I clip the first bolt. This is where the ice starts and the climbing – for me – becomes easy. I don’t even clip into the second bolt as I climb past. The young Japanese must have been new to ice climbing, but good at rock climbing. I hurry, knowing that darkness is coming.

The ice ends under a large, horizontal roof of granite. A foot-size ledge continues to the right. I brush away snow to find handholds. I find tattered remnants of the fixed rope last used in 1984. Unwilling to trust the old rope I continue across, free soloing. As the traverse continues the ledge gets wider until I step onto a snowy shoulder.

Climbing to the top of the shoulder, I look up and see a narrow ridge leading to a short snowfield, which in turn leads to the summit. The way is clear, but I have just two hours before dark and the summit looms three or four hours above me. I can’t get there today. To stay out overnight is to forfeit fingers and toes, possibly to die. Accepting this, I fix an anchor and begin descending 7,000 tedious and dangerous feet in the dark.

Back in base camp failure gnaws at me. And this time I use the word failure decisively. I did not summit K7, and I pushed too far. I had difficulty descending the complex gullies and snowfields in the dark. I was too cold to stop and rest, and one bad decision would have had dreadful consequences. That I escaped does not justify taking so many chances. I need to rein in the risk.

I wish I had summitted and so ended this baleful obsession. I hate that I must go up there again. I am angry that I train so hard for these routes but am unable to climb them. I berate myself for squandering my opportunity to be a professional alpinist; with all this time and support, I am still unable to do the big climbs, the groundbreaking climbs.

At night I lie in my tent, eyes closed, questioning: Where is the line, what risks are acceptable? What price am I willing to pay? Maybe a partner? Should I invite Marko to climb with me? What happened to my relationship with myself? Why am I so isolated from the rest of the world? In soloing did I travel so far within myself that I am unable to return to normality?

In the dark of early morning I wake to the realization that to complete this cycle I must follow the path before me. I am committed. Like the Slovak Direct with Mark and Scott, North Twin with Marko, I must climb up and off K7 to move on, to survive. Anger cedes to frustration. In the daylight my angst has receded; I laugh with my mates again.

This is the equipment I used on my second to last attempt on K7. When packed, this kit totaled seven pounds. On the successful attempt I eliminated the left-most bundle of slings below my helmet. STEVE HOUSE

At the high point of my sixth attempt on K7, I was above 22,000 feet and the summit of K7 was visible. I was turned back by the oncoming night, the fading light of the sunset is visible behind me. STEVE HOUSE

K7 is my universe. This pitch, my world. The movement, the yellow rock edges toward which I direct my crampons, the crack in which I cam my pick. This is my moment.

I climb past that first bolt 7,000 feet up the mountain. Above a white granite wall I swing my ice tools into old, dirty-white, iron-hard ice. When I lever the shaft of the axe upward, the ice creaks and cracks and sometimes breaks. This time the weather is with me. I started before dusk yesterday and climbed the well-rehearsed lower mountain in the dark, leaving the warmest daytime hours to get past this difficult rock tower below the summit.

The sun is just kissing the western horizon when I stand on the summit. Deep orange rays are broken and scattered by the chaotic skyline of jagged clouds and rugged summits. I feel nothing because, suddenly, there is nothing to feel. My breathing slows. My movements cease. For several quiet minutes I take in everything between myself and the horizon.

K7 lies at the top of the mighty Charakusa Glacier. The peaks of the Karakoram – K2 and her brethren – lay before me, holding court over the world. I study this view to understand what I have done and where I am. Night is approaching. As I promised Rasool, I take a photo of myself with the Pakistani flag he gave me. Then I dig out my headlamp, flip it on, and start down in the gathering darkness.

I down climb the summit snowfield and traverse back across the stegosaurus’s icy spine to where I am forced to begin rappelling. I pull a steel piton out of my pocket, something I scavenged from the Japanese climbers. I find a diagonal crack in the granite and drive in the piton. I attach a carabiner, one of only 20 I carry, clip in my skinny rope, meant to hold just thrice my body weight, and rappel into the night. I move ceaselessly for the next 14 hours, down climbing wherever I can to save gear and rappelling where I must.

It is midmorning when I walk into base camp. I have climbed K7 alone, by a new route, and in a single 41-hour, 45-minute push. I am exhausted, dizzy as I collapse on the offered stool. Rasool unlaces my boots while our liaison officer, Captain Amin, mixes a large pitcher of Tang. I eat only a little and fall into my tent for that first sleep, the dreamless, unconscious sleep of exhaustion. At dusk I get up and eat again. That night I sleep like a man at peace.