Doesn’t have a spoon, toilet paper, shave cream, etc. Not very well prepared.
Inevitably, on expeditions, cabin fever sets in. You’re in such close proximity to your partners day and night, 24-7, and under such tension about whether you can get up the mountain or not, that every last thing some guy does or says can drive you crazy. It gets especially bad when you’re trapped together inside a small tent during a long storm. It can get so that the very sound of him chewing his breakfast or blowing his nose threatens to push you off the deep end.
This can happen even between best friends, let alone among virtual strangers you’re thrown together with on an expedition. Fortunately, in 1992 I was with Scott most of the time, and we got along great. That was a particularly good thing, since neither of us ever bonded with the Russians.
Another source of tension that summer was the perception on the part of a few that we were competing with the international team led by Rob Hall and Gary Ball. Both of our teams would be hard-pressed to find adequate campsites on the Abruzzi Ridge. It was usually first come, first served when it came to grabbing those precious sites.
It was at base camp that I first met that famous New Zealand duo—Hall & Ball, as everybody called them. They had a vast amount of experience in the Himalaya, and they’d pulled off a tour de force by climbing the Seven Summits—the highest peak on every continent—in only seven months. And this was already their third attempt on K2.
When I first shook hands with Hall & Ball, I thought,
Oh my God, these guys are superstars. They’ll leave me in the dust
. But Scott told me, “Take it easy, Ed. They’re just normal guys.” Then, on the mountain, I discovered that I was as strong as or stronger than these superclimbers. There were days when I broke trail and fixed rope for them and Hall & Ball trudged into camp hours after I did. That was a real revelation.
During those first weeks, Scott and I paired up with Hall & Ball to fix ropes up the lower part of the Abruzzi Ridge. (Only a few of the other members of our team contributed to this effort; the rest seemed unwilling or unable.) In general, Hall & Ball cooperated well with Scott and me as we shared the grunt work of establishing the route. I got more and more frustrated by some of the half-assed efforts of other guys on the mountain. Some of them would carry only the lightest loads; they’d claim the conditions weren’t good enough for a heavy carry. And sometimes they’d get only halfway to the higher camp so they’d just dump their loads in the snow and head down. I picked up a bunch of those loads, but I drew the line at carrying other guys’ oxygen bottles for them. If they couldn’t get their own oxygen to the higher camps, how the hell did they expect to use that oxygen to go for the summit? Eventually, we worked it out so that the folks hoping to use oxygen higher up labeled their bottles with their names. That made them solely responsible for moving the bottles up the mountain.
It would have helped a lot if Vlad had turned out to be a real leader. But from the get-go, Vlad was strictly doing his own thing. He was just not a team player. So without any real plan or structure in place, everybody else started doing his or her own thing as well.
The frustration of taking on more than my share of the work, of having other climbers shirk their responsibilities, and of having no leader who would assign tasks built inside me into a towering resentment. But I kept it all inside; I never blew up and chewed anybody else out. (That’s typical for me, I’m afraid—I tend to avoid overt conflict.)
I didn’t mention this in
Shortcuts
, but the reason I tried Everest solo the next year was because of my disappointment with the poor teamwork on K2. I’ll always pull my own weight, and I’m happy to pull evenmore than my weight, as long as others genuinely try to contribute. But after I got back
Inevitably, on expeditions, cabin fever sets in. You’re in such close proximity to your partners day and night, 24-7, and under such tension about whether you can get up the mountain or not, that every last thing some guy does or says can drive you crazy. It gets especially bad when you’re trapped together inside a small tent during a long storm. It can get so that the very sound of him chewing his breakfast or blowing his nose threatens to push you off the deep end.
This can happen even between best friends, let alone among virtual strangers you’re thrown together with on an expedition. Fortunately, in 1992 I was with Scott most of the time, and we got along great. That was a particularly good thing, since neither of us ever bonded with the Russians.
Another source of tension that summer was the perception on the part of a few that we were competing with the international team led by Rob Hall and Gary Ball. Both of our teams would be hard-pressed to find adequate campsites on the Abruzzi Ridge. It was usually first come, first served when it came to grabbing those precious sites.
It was at base camp that I first met that famous New Zealand duo—Hall & Ball, as everybody called them. They had a vast amount of experience in the Himalaya, and they’d pulled off a tour de force by climbing the Seven Summits—the highest peak on every continent—in only seven months. And this was already their third attempt on K2.
When I first shook hands with Hall & Ball, I thought,
Oh my God, these guys are superstars. They’ll leave me in the dust
. But Scott told me, “Take it easy, Ed. They’re just normal guys.” Then, on the mountain, I discovered that I was as strong as or stronger than these superclimbers. There were days when I broke trail and fixed rope for them and Hall & Ball trudged into camp hours after I did. That was a real revelation.
During those first weeks, Scott and I paired up with Hall & Ball to fix ropes up the lower part of the Abruzzi Ridge. (Only a few of the other members of our team contributed to this effort; the rest seemed unwilling or unable.) In general, Hall & Ball cooperated well with Scott and me as we shared the grunt work of establishing the route. I got more and more frustrated by some of the half-assed efforts of other guys on the mountain. Some of them would carry only the lightest loads; they’d claim the conditions weren’t good enough for a heavy carry. And sometimes they’d get only halfway to the higher camp so they’d just dump their loads in the snow and head down. I picked up a bunch of those loads, but I drew the line at carrying other guys’ oxygen bottles for them. If they couldn’t get their own oxygen to the higher camps, how the hell did they expect to use that oxygen to go for the summit? Eventually, we worked it out so that the folks hoping to use oxygen higher up labeled their bottles with their names. That made them solely responsible for moving the bottles up the mountain.
It would have helped a lot if Vlad had turned out to be a real leader. But from the get-go, Vlad was strictly doing his own thing. He was just not a team player. So without any real plan or structure in place, everybody else started doing his or her own thing as well.
The frustration of taking on more than my share of the work, of having other climbers shirk their responsibilities, and of having no leader who would assign tasks built inside me into a towering resentment. But I kept it all inside; I never blew up and chewed anybody else out. (That’s typical for me, I’m afraid—I tend to avoid overt conflict.)
I didn’t mention this in
Shortcuts
, but the reason I tried Everest solo the next year was because of my disappointment with the poor teamwork on K2. I’ll always pull my own weight, and I’m happy to pull evenmore than my weight, as long as others genuinely try to contribute. But after I got back
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