Gasherbrum, ‘the beautiful shining wall’ … that’s what the name means. It derives from the fantastic face of golden crystalline limestone which mirrors the rays of the late afternoon sun when you look at it from the Baltoro glacier. Gasherbrum IV is not the highest peak of this group, but has given its name to all of them.
My fifth eight-thousander belongs here, in this family of peaks, which comprise four summits around the magic 8,000 metre mark, as well as a band of ‘kids’, several seven-thousanders.
Gasherbrum II is 8,035 metres ... a beautiful pyramid of perfect symmetry. I still find it hard to believe that I have now been up there, my third eight-thousander in fifteen months after Makalu last spring and Everest in the autumn. A magic run of luck …
Only a few days ago I stood on top, together with my companions from Austria, Bavaria and ‘that other part of Germany’ (as my neighbours insist on calling Germany beyond Bavaria). Well, that ‘other part’ had contributed no less than Reinhard Karl to the enterprise, an expedition organised by dyed-in-the-wool Himalayan hand, my friend Hanns Schell. Reinhard was obsessed with the idea of a Baltoro Marathon (an idea nobody else shared) and he was dreaming of a solo ascent of Hidden Peak, which rises right next to our mountain. Reinhard was a man full of ideas ahead of his time ... It made for a lot of discussion! We also made the acquaintance of many other people, for the solitude which characterised the fifties was over. Almost as a symbol for the new epoch Jean-Marc Boivin floated under his hang-glider high in the sky above the Baltoro glacier … much to the amazement of hundreds of Balti porters.
However, we did not tackle our mountain very differently from the way our party climbed Broad Peak twenty-two years ago – without the boost of oxygen or the help of high-altitude porters. Luckily, our walkie-talkies did not weigh eleven kilos, as they had then, and also the double-boot had been invented. Nevertheless, the Karakorum weather was as unpredictable as ever and we had quite a struggle, being beaten back more than once by storms.
‘But now all fatigue is forgotten. Gasherbrum II is ours, and when I think back to Broad Peak, it seems to me that a whole lifetime has passed since then’ … I write in my diary.
When will I stand again below a big mountain and demand of the clouds whether I should climb it, as I did that time on Makalu?
Today is the last day here, the last morning – and a strange thing happens: suddenly in the clear blue of the sky above the big mountains delicate loops, skeins and ribbons appear – then disappear – in a slow flowing movement, a surge. The beautiful pyramid of Gasherbrum is shrouded in a fairy veil of fantastic shape which continues to change as if bewitched. Now, Hidden Peak too wears a curved hat comprised of countless shimmering fibres, which slowly flow beyond its bounds and dissolve away.
Perhaps there’s a storm coming?
Now, above Sia Kangri, it starts to shine in all colours … green, violet, orange ... pale silver.
I gaze at the dance of the veils, deeply moved ...
Spirits of the Air. Greeting me.
The view from the summit of Gasherbrum into the mountain desert on the Chinese side of the peak, with its deserted valleys and the big ice floes with thousands of pointed towers, changed my world. A new longing was born: I must get down into that place!
How did that happen ... ?
‘Götterdammerung in the Karakorum’ — that is what I wrote in 1979 in my diary of climbing this eight-thousander:
Never in my life have I arrived on a summit in such gloom. We struggle higher, full of fatigue, stopping time and again – this Gasherbrum II is after all an eight-thousander! Really, we should be ascending one of the most enthralling peaks on earth. But today? Clear view into the distance, but with a strange twilight above overlaying everything, like a burden ... I cannot help thinking of the fantastic sunset display Hermann Buhl and I experienced over there on the summit we shared, an unearthly play of light that seemed to penetrate our very souls. The gods were close to us then. Not now. Did they flee from the many people into the distant spaces of Sinkiang, this immense mountain world stretching to the horizon, empty of people as at the beginning of creation ... Behind me, on the Pakistani side, I knew of a dozen expeditions on this Baltoro glacier where Hermann and I had enjoyed total solitude. The place I came to know when I was twenty-five no longer existed. And I was searching for a new horizon. I found it up there, at the age of forty-seven, gazing out into Sinkiang with the Shaksgam valley at my feet, a deep furrow in a field of hundreds and hundreds of peaks ...
That same year my life changed course, quite subtly. I met Julie again, who I had known briefly over a number of years, and this time we became rope-partners, not to be separated any more: in the same way as Wolfi Stefan and Kurt Diemberger ‘conquered’ the Alps as a recognised team in the fifties, so it was now with Julie Tullis from England and me, except that we went to the Himalaya and Karakorum. And instead of the old student lifestyle of my great years in the Alps, there was now a different impetus – our film-making. Soon we would be the highest film team in the world. I did the camerawork, Julie the sound recording, and as for ideas – we found them together. When we made our first joint documentary on Nanga Parbat in 1982 (it earned three international awards) we were, in the eyes of many, no spring chickens: I was just fifty and Julie forty-three. But that did not matter to us. The horizons were open ...