Free Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains by Mark Horrell
Authors: Mark Horrell
carry out a rock climb of this scale. Expedition teams therefore switched over to Gasherbrum I if they had permits, or simply went home, and this is one of the reasons why Phil has decided to get permits for both mountains this year.
“I hope no stupid c---s trigger an avalanche this year,” Phil murmurs.
It's US Independence Day today. Phil, as a Brit who has lived in New York for over twenty years, is the nearest thing we have to an American in our team, so Gordon decides to serenade him with bagpipes. This involves holding his nose and karate chopping his throat while humming Star Spangled Banner. Slightly eccentric.
25. Watching the winds on Gasherbrum II
Sunday 5 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
The wind hammers on the tent for some hours around midnight – I can hear it through my ear plugs – but I remain warm and comfortable inside my thick down sleeping bag. By morning there's been a fresh deposit of snow on the ground, the thickest since we arrived here in Base Camp. Gorgan and Philippe had been intending to go up to Camp 1 this morning, but they're still here at breakfast.
By 8 o'clock it's a fine morning, however, and I resolve to walk up the moraine to try and get the view of Gasherbrum II up the South Gasherbrum Icefall that we're lacking from Base Camp. Every time I've tried this journey so far, I've been thwarted by low clouds in the Gasherbrum Cwm, so this morning I set off straight after breakfast with Ian and Michael. Ian takes the safer undulating route up and over each moraine hump, but I decide to look for a flatter, more direct route breaking trail through thick snow to the left of the moraine. I need to be a little more careful on this route, as I need to distinguish snow from glacier and look out for crevasses. After twenty minutes or so Philippe, armed with his trekking pole for probing away in front of him, overtakes me and takes over the lead. Eventually after a few close encounters with crevasses, one of which swallows the whole of Michael's leg, Philippe stops at a spot looking right up the icefall. Although the sky is cloudless, the fresh snowfall is evaporating off the mountains, obscuring Gasherbrum IV, but even with a slight haze around them the view of G3 and G2 is fantastic. We can see the whole of the route up the latter from just below the Banana Ridge to the summit. The slopes look dangerously overloaded with snow, and a cloud plume on the top half of the summit pyramid is the telltale sign that it's being battered by the fierce winds of the jetstream. Despite the apparent fine weather down here at Base Camp, now is still not the time to attempt climbing G2.
Lenticular cloud batters the summit of Gasherbrum I
The weather remains fine for the rest of the day, but we need a few more of these to make the mountain safe again. We also need the jetstream to move off the summit. Our patient vigil must continue.
26. The virtues of patience
Monday 6 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
A second day of fine weather. After breakfast Michael, Ian and I set off down the moraine through the rest of Base Camp in the direction of Concordia. Tents are strung out quite a long way and it takes us nearly half an hour to pass the last of them as we climb up and down mounds of moraine on our way out. My plan is to see if there's a way across the Abruzzi Glacier on moraine to the foot of Chogolisa, a dominant triangular shaped mountain rising above Base Camp at the point where the glacier turns a corner on its way back to Concordia. It's a mountain with a rich mountaineering history, being the place where the great Austrian mountaineer Hermann Buhl – the only person to make a first ascent of an 8000m peak solo when he climbed Nanga Parbat in 1953 – fell and lost his life just two weeks after making the first ascent of Broad Peak. The answer to my question is probably positive – there does appear to be a line of grey humps crossing over the glacier to
“I hope no stupid c---s trigger an avalanche this year,” Phil murmurs.
It's US Independence Day today. Phil, as a Brit who has lived in New York for over twenty years, is the nearest thing we have to an American in our team, so Gordon decides to serenade him with bagpipes. This involves holding his nose and karate chopping his throat while humming Star Spangled Banner. Slightly eccentric.
25. Watching the winds on Gasherbrum II
Sunday 5 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
The wind hammers on the tent for some hours around midnight – I can hear it through my ear plugs – but I remain warm and comfortable inside my thick down sleeping bag. By morning there's been a fresh deposit of snow on the ground, the thickest since we arrived here in Base Camp. Gorgan and Philippe had been intending to go up to Camp 1 this morning, but they're still here at breakfast.
By 8 o'clock it's a fine morning, however, and I resolve to walk up the moraine to try and get the view of Gasherbrum II up the South Gasherbrum Icefall that we're lacking from Base Camp. Every time I've tried this journey so far, I've been thwarted by low clouds in the Gasherbrum Cwm, so this morning I set off straight after breakfast with Ian and Michael. Ian takes the safer undulating route up and over each moraine hump, but I decide to look for a flatter, more direct route breaking trail through thick snow to the left of the moraine. I need to be a little more careful on this route, as I need to distinguish snow from glacier and look out for crevasses. After twenty minutes or so Philippe, armed with his trekking pole for probing away in front of him, overtakes me and takes over the lead. Eventually after a few close encounters with crevasses, one of which swallows the whole of Michael's leg, Philippe stops at a spot looking right up the icefall. Although the sky is cloudless, the fresh snowfall is evaporating off the mountains, obscuring Gasherbrum IV, but even with a slight haze around them the view of G3 and G2 is fantastic. We can see the whole of the route up the latter from just below the Banana Ridge to the summit. The slopes look dangerously overloaded with snow, and a cloud plume on the top half of the summit pyramid is the telltale sign that it's being battered by the fierce winds of the jetstream. Despite the apparent fine weather down here at Base Camp, now is still not the time to attempt climbing G2.
Lenticular cloud batters the summit of Gasherbrum I
The weather remains fine for the rest of the day, but we need a few more of these to make the mountain safe again. We also need the jetstream to move off the summit. Our patient vigil must continue.
26. The virtues of patience
Monday 6 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
A second day of fine weather. After breakfast Michael, Ian and I set off down the moraine through the rest of Base Camp in the direction of Concordia. Tents are strung out quite a long way and it takes us nearly half an hour to pass the last of them as we climb up and down mounds of moraine on our way out. My plan is to see if there's a way across the Abruzzi Glacier on moraine to the foot of Chogolisa, a dominant triangular shaped mountain rising above Base Camp at the point where the glacier turns a corner on its way back to Concordia. It's a mountain with a rich mountaineering history, being the place where the great Austrian mountaineer Hermann Buhl – the only person to make a first ascent of an 8000m peak solo when he climbed Nanga Parbat in 1953 – fell and lost his life just two weeks after making the first ascent of Broad Peak. The answer to my question is probably positive – there does appear to be a line of grey humps crossing over the glacier to
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