The result was chaos.
“Porter stages, load sizes, fees, rest days, etc., all became open to negotiation,” Curran elaborates, “and almost every expedition was dogged with strikes, go-slows, and thefts. Some expeditions even failed to reach Base Camp and a vast amount of ill-will was generated.”
By 1992, the authorities had worked out most of the logistical kinks. Porter strikes were not a problem on our approach to base camp. After the chaos of 1975, the Pakistani Ministry of Tourism had established fixed wages for the porters. Foreign climbers had to pay the standardized rates, and the porters had to accept them or go home. On the other hand, when I had to hire my own porters in Askole for the eight-day trek to base camp, I was so poor I could afford only three porters to carry my four loads, so I ended up humping my own sixty-pound pack all the way in.
Our so-called team was disorganized from the start. To save money themselves, the Russians had decided to drive overland all the way to Rawalpindi. They got there long after we Americans did. After cooling our heels for a frustrating week as we waited for the Russians, my teammateThor Kieser and I decided to snag a last-minute trekking permit and hike in by ourselves. Scott had already left Askole with his own trekking permit, escorting two paying clients to base camp in an effort to fill his nearly empty pockets. Along the way, Thor and I caught up with Scott and his trekkers. By the time we arrived at base camp on June 21, only a five-person Swiss team was on the mountain.
In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that from the very start, our expedition was plagued by stress and frustration. But I was so gung ho at the time that I ignored the distractions. After all our preparations, it was beyond my wildest dreams to be camped beneath the holy grail of mountaineering, and for weeks I floated along on a manic high of enthusiasm and hard work.
Not long ago, I let a friend read my K2 diary. He made an interesting observation. “Ed,” he said, “do you realize that the writing in your diary is far more blunt and critical than anything you write for publication, or anything you say when you give a slide show?”
No, I hadn’t realized. But when I recently reread my dairy, I saw that my friend was right. As I’ve said, the diary was for myself—I never expected that someday someone else would read it. So I’m sure I used those daily entries to vent my frustration. I tend to be nonconfrontational, so I guess that writing in my diary was a way for me to let off steam. I also believe that in certain tense situations, it’s often best to let it ride, rather than venting immediately, because hard feelings tend to smooth out with time and reflection. The question, though, is, which version is the truer account of what happened on K2—my diary or what I’ve written for publication?
There’s an old and honored tradition in exploration literature that you don’t air your dirty laundry in print. Whatever bickering, name-calling, grudge nursing, and dark funks really took place on the expedition, they’re nobody else’s business. You can read the whole of Sir John Hunt’s
The Ascent of Everest
and never suspect that a single cross word was exchanged by the climbers who supported Hillary and Tenzing’s monumental push to the summit. Maurice Herzog’s
Annapurna
—the bestselling mountaineering book of all time, and the book that more than any other inspiredme as a teenager and made me want to become a climber—characterizes the 1950 French team as an ideal brotherhood, with each member making heroic sacrifices to support the others and, in the end, even to save their lives.
When I learned, about a decade ago, that that wasn’t the whole story, that there had been plenty of conflict and resentment on the first ascent of Annapurna, I felt only slightly dismayed. By then I’d been on enough expeditions to see for myself how interpersonal conflicts and team dynamics
“Porter stages, load sizes, fees, rest days, etc., all became open to negotiation,” Curran elaborates, “and almost every expedition was dogged with strikes, go-slows, and thefts. Some expeditions even failed to reach Base Camp and a vast amount of ill-will was generated.”
By 1992, the authorities had worked out most of the logistical kinks. Porter strikes were not a problem on our approach to base camp. After the chaos of 1975, the Pakistani Ministry of Tourism had established fixed wages for the porters. Foreign climbers had to pay the standardized rates, and the porters had to accept them or go home. On the other hand, when I had to hire my own porters in Askole for the eight-day trek to base camp, I was so poor I could afford only three porters to carry my four loads, so I ended up humping my own sixty-pound pack all the way in.
Our so-called team was disorganized from the start. To save money themselves, the Russians had decided to drive overland all the way to Rawalpindi. They got there long after we Americans did. After cooling our heels for a frustrating week as we waited for the Russians, my teammateThor Kieser and I decided to snag a last-minute trekking permit and hike in by ourselves. Scott had already left Askole with his own trekking permit, escorting two paying clients to base camp in an effort to fill his nearly empty pockets. Along the way, Thor and I caught up with Scott and his trekkers. By the time we arrived at base camp on June 21, only a five-person Swiss team was on the mountain.
In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that from the very start, our expedition was plagued by stress and frustration. But I was so gung ho at the time that I ignored the distractions. After all our preparations, it was beyond my wildest dreams to be camped beneath the holy grail of mountaineering, and for weeks I floated along on a manic high of enthusiasm and hard work.
Not long ago, I let a friend read my K2 diary. He made an interesting observation. “Ed,” he said, “do you realize that the writing in your diary is far more blunt and critical than anything you write for publication, or anything you say when you give a slide show?”
No, I hadn’t realized. But when I recently reread my dairy, I saw that my friend was right. As I’ve said, the diary was for myself—I never expected that someday someone else would read it. So I’m sure I used those daily entries to vent my frustration. I tend to be nonconfrontational, so I guess that writing in my diary was a way for me to let off steam. I also believe that in certain tense situations, it’s often best to let it ride, rather than venting immediately, because hard feelings tend to smooth out with time and reflection. The question, though, is, which version is the truer account of what happened on K2—my diary or what I’ve written for publication?
There’s an old and honored tradition in exploration literature that you don’t air your dirty laundry in print. Whatever bickering, name-calling, grudge nursing, and dark funks really took place on the expedition, they’re nobody else’s business. You can read the whole of Sir John Hunt’s
The Ascent of Everest
and never suspect that a single cross word was exchanged by the climbers who supported Hillary and Tenzing’s monumental push to the summit. Maurice Herzog’s
Annapurna
—the bestselling mountaineering book of all time, and the book that more than any other inspiredme as a teenager and made me want to become a climber—characterizes the 1950 French team as an ideal brotherhood, with each member making heroic sacrifices to support the others and, in the end, even to save their lives.
When I learned, about a decade ago, that that wasn’t the whole story, that there had been plenty of conflict and resentment on the first ascent of Annapurna, I felt only slightly dismayed. By then I’d been on enough expeditions to see for myself how interpersonal conflicts and team dynamics
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