Free Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day by Peter Zuckerman, Amanda Padoan Page A

sentiments. “We were all so young and strong. I never thought there would be an accident.”
    Parveen was more realistic. In late May, as her husband prepared to leave for his third attempt of K2, she made a last-ditch effort to stop him. She told Karim that they didn’t need the money; she could support him with her general store. Shimshal’s most successful female entrepreneur, Parveen had invested her husband’s mountaineering earnings in a one-room shop that sold soap, pens, children’s shoes, embroidery, and nail polish. The family no longer needed to rely on Karim’s dangerous career. “I asked him to stay in Shimshal,” Parveen said. “Then I begged.”
    Karim embraced his wife and his children, grabbed his pack, and left the house he’d built. He walked down the irrigation channel, crossing barley fields cloaked in waki sholm wush , a yellow wildflower. Karim’s father, Shadi, met him by the jeep track that runs through the village. Shadi also tried to convince Karim to stay.
    No Shimshali has ever died on K2, Karim replied. Then, to make the assurance ironclad, he added, “Father, I’m going with Shaheen.”
    As he listened to his son, Shadi stared at the riverbed and remembered how three glaciers—the Khurdopin, the Virjerab, and the Yukshin—had once conspired to exterminate the village. Slow-flowing rivers of ice, the glaciers drain their summer meltwater through a subterranean channel. A natural ice dam constricts the flow, blocking a torrent. In 1964, the dam broke. Snowmelt gushed down, and the river rose 90 feet. It uprooted apricot orchards, hurled homes down the valley, and washed away half the settlement. Villagers scrambled to higher ground. The water tore through the gorge that leads out of Shimshal and demolished the village of Passu 40 miles downstream. Nature had devastated Shadi’s family once. He knew it could happen again.
    Shadi looked back at his son and tried to reason with him. “I said, ‘You don’t need to climb K2 again. What about carpentry? ’ But Karim smiled and told me: ‘Father, I can’t stop yet. Just this one summit, then maybe.’ ”
    When Karim left that afternoon, Shadi watched the jeep disappear down the river basin, kicking up sand. He stayed fixed on the spot long after his son was gone.
    “Insha’Allah,” he prayed—if God wills it.

PART II
    CONQUEST

    Shimshal to K2: From Shimshal, the climbers drove to Askole, the village where the trail to K2 begins. This trekking path is too treacherous for jeeps, so climbers employ hundreds of low-altitude porters, who ferry food and supplies to Base Camp.

6
    The Approach
    T he Karakorum Highway, barely two lanes wide, rolls through the intersection of the Karakorum, Himalaya, and Hindu Kush. The builders of the original road faced tribesmen who stalled construction by “ rolling down avalanches of rocks upon them.” Blasting a modern highway from the cliffs was nearly as treacherous. It took twenty years and cost nine hundred lives—about a life a week. Today, jeeps bumping down the highway dodge pits and boulders, swerve around hairpin turns, and squeeze between trucks tricked out like pinball machines.
    In June 2008, Karim Meherban left Hunza in a baby-blue Jeep Scrambler and jostled down the Karakorum Highway. He passed miners scraping rubies from the hillsides, children panning for gold along the river, and guards flaunting Kalashnikovs at military checkpoints. Near the town of Skardu, he passed an airfield and military compound best known as the home of the Fearless Five. Its hangar was emblazoned with a snarling snow leopard and a pentagram, signifying the squadron’s five tenets: sacrifice, courage, devotion, pride, and honor. The Fearless Five command a fleet of helicopters used to defend Pakistan’s borders and to airlift injured soldiers and avalanche survivors. Karim hoped he’d never need them.
    Splashing through the milky-green water of the Shigar River basin, his Jeep then moved onto a