Free K2 by Ed Viesturs Page A

17: I can’t keep the group organized as climbing leader cause they (most anyway) aren’t strong enough or experienced enough to be out front so they just scoot around dropping loads all over the mountains! They are gonna falter big time up high.”
    Even sometimes when a teammate genuinely tried to help lead or push supplies, it backfired. On July 19, as we were carrying loads from Camp I to Camp II, an American teammate told me to go first, since I was faster. But then, inexplicably, as I wrote in my diary,
    Just as I get going he jumps on the [fixed] ropes right in front of me. What am I supposed to do? Climb up his ass? So I wait & wait & just go slowly right behind him & take my time. He stopped constantly to bend over & breathe, looking back down at me—staring. Drove me nuts!… Finally he stopped @ CII & I blew by to CIII.
    There was one woman on our team, but it was clear to me from early on that she wasn’t strong or experienced enough to get high on the mountain. That summer, the only really talented and ambitious woman on K2 was Chantal Mauduit. Although she was French, she had been a member of the Swiss team. When they gave up and went home, Chantal stayed on—which, strictly speaking, in terms of her permit, was illegal. According to the rules in Pakistan, once the expedition leader leaves the mountain, the rest of the team must do so as well.
    By 1992, only three women had climbed K2—all three during the disastrous summer of 1986. And by now, all three were dead. Liliane Barrard and Julie Tullis had died on the descent that year, after making the summit. The Pole Wanda Rutkiewicz, the finest high-altitude woman climber of her day (and perhaps of all time), had survived K2 only to die just a month before the beginning of our 1992 expedition on Kangchen-junga, when she was caught in a storm near the summit.
    Though it may seem macabre, the fact that no living woman had succeeded on K2 lent a huge cachet to Chantal’s effort. She was already famous in France for other exploits, but it would mean a huge boost in celebrity and sponsorship if she could get up K2.
    Chantal was a very beautiful woman, with long brown hair and sparkling eyes. She had a habit of flirting with virtually everybody. I found it disconcerting—when she gave me a certain look, did it mean something special or was it simply the way she interacted with all the male climbers on the mountain? In any event, everybody seemed to like Chantal.
    One of my American teammates, Thor Kieser, had had a previous relationship with Chantal, but she had broken it off. I got the feeling thatThor was still in love with her. And she still liked him well enough to agree, after the Swiss had gone home, to pair up with him for her own summit effort.
    With Scott out of action, I started to climb a lot with Neal Beidleman. He was an aerospace engineer from Aspen, very successful in his profession. He was also a solid climber, one of the few guys on the mountain who really pulled his own weight. We got along well right from the start. What I especially liked about Neal was his strength, the depth of his climbing experience, and his easygoing personality. Unfortunately, he had work commitments back in the States and planned to leave base camp on August 5 to get back to his job, so it looked as though he’d have at most one shot at the summit.
    Through the last week of July, the weather remained mostly bad. This didn’t stop the more overeager climbers from trying to force their way up the mountain. They included three of the Russians, Vlad, Gennadi Kopeika, and Aleksei Nikiforov (I called the last two Gnady and Alex), as well as Thor and Chantal. Because it had snowed so much, the climbing conditions were pretty sketchy.
    On July 20, Neal and I finally got a tent pitched at Camp III, at 24,000 feet, and spent the night in it. In the morning it was snowing and windy, with a smothering whiteout. It was obvious to me that it was still too soon for a serious summit