Well That Was An Ass-Kicker!

Congratulations K2, I haven’t even set foot on you yet and already you’ve provided me with easily the two most difficult days in the mountains since I started climbing in the Alps three decades ago, and the Himalayas aged 24.

Friday 29 June, K2 Base Camp, 5,000 meters

It is 10am and we’re standing outside the mess tent at K2 Base Camp on our first morning here.  It's breath-taking. We’ve just had breakfast and I’m staring up at this majestic mountain in perfect weather, casting my finger down the outline of the Abruzzi ridge (our probable route) to point out the likely site of camp 2 to a teammate when suddenly no words come out.  I cannot speak, as in literally cannot speak, and sadly not in the new OED definition of 'literally' either.  I make the motion with my hands as if to try and get something out of my mouth and she thinks I am signalling that I am going to be sick.  I am not, I am perfectly lucid but simply cannot talk.

At that moment Rick, a teammate who is doubling up as team doctor, walks past.  I signal to him and he stops to see what is the matter.  He asks me a series of questions to which I nod or shake my head.  By looking at my face he quickly concludes that it is not a stroke (!) and then asks me to hold my arms out straight in front of me, hands cupped.  If you have HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) you cannot do this with your eyes closed as one arm will always drop.  Neither does.  He takes me inside, sits me down and asks me to say ‘A...B...C...D...’ etc.  I get ‘A’ out and then nothing else.  This is weird.  Then about two minutes later, or seven minutes into the whole thing, my speech returns.  I even enunciate the word ‘enunciate’, partly to show off, partly out of relief. If this happens again it could signal the end of my expedition but for the moment we all agree this 'temporary aphasia' probably just the result of deydration at altitude and the full stop on a truly hellish 48 hours. 

So I need to go back a couple of days prior to explain how I could have got here and why it should be OK.

QUICK DISCLAIMER: Lots of people exaggerate their ‘difficult’ stories in the mountains.  I really don’t – I have nothing to sell and if you read my Everest 2009 blog it was pretty uneventful and free of drama, the way a good climb should be. But I can't help wanting to share some of the hell I've just been through...so bear with me, or wait for the next post for some proper mountaineering stories!

Wednesday 27 June, Goro 2 Camp, Baltoro glacier, 4,100 meters

Two days earlier, we’re at the Goro 2 campsite at 4,100 meters, at the end of day 5 on the trek up the Baltoro Glacier from Askole. So far I have been loving my teammates and feeling very strong on the hike.  I arrive into camp early around 2pm and as I walk in I ask someone to fill my water bottle.  It comes back within 2 mins, cold, and I don’t question it.  Big mistake...

Over dinner it is announced that rather than heading to Concordia tomorrow at 4,500 meters, we’ll push on all way way to Broad Peak base camp at almost 4,850 meters.  That would actually mean a shorter day the following day to K2 base camp and everyone seems happy.  

After watching a spectacular sunset over Gasherbrum IV and Masherbrum, both bathed in pink light with collars of clouds, the temperature suddenly drops to well below freezing (we are camped in the middle of a glacier) and I head to bed, looking forward to the next day....

I’m just about settled in and cosy in my -25C sleeping bag after a 30 min wrestle to get my stuff sorted when it starts.  Increasing  pain creeps up from the bottom left hand-side of my stomach and across to the right, while the whole area bloats.  This is not good.  I cannot get to sleep even though I am dead tired.  Then the extreme shivers start, then the aching muscles and joints, and those aren’t from the exercise either.  It feels like flu combined with food poisoning.  I am SO thirsty its unbearable and have a full litre of cold water with electrolytes in it right by me, but I’m fairly sure its the water that gave me this so I dare not touch it.

After much internal debate I decide I have to leave the tent.  Outside it is now -20C and there are no loos set-up as we’re only here for a night.  I check the dining tent for water and there is none, just two goats tied up inside.  Back in the tent Rick is up (we’re sharing). We debate the merits of repeated trips in and out of the tent all night in these conditions vs taking something to stave it off until morning, particularly the nausea, and we eventually go for the latter.  It means I don’t leave the tent again but I am wretching and increasingly uncomfortable.  I ache and shiver almost uncontrollably.

The hours tick by - 11pm, 1am, 3am, shit we’re up at 5.30am and walking by 7am.  Then 4.30am, wow I’m not going to sleep at this rate, what the hell am I going to do?  Suddenly I wake with a start at 5.30am – I had fallen asleep for a pathetic 45 mins and can feel the internal tension between the anti-nausea drugs and the foreign elements in my body, with the latter slowly winning.

After the mini ordeal of getting dressed and packed up (we unpack and set up every night on the trek in) I stagger to the dining tent and can barely make my way there and its only 20 meters away.  I can’t eat, someone has to pour me (boiled) water and within 30 mins camp is being broken down and we’re heading off at 6.30am.

My condition is so poor that I should really be staying put, and we later found out 3 world class alpinists on the same route did just that, and for 3 days (maybe that’s why they are world class and I am not).  I should be recovering and instead I am embarking on a 20 km trek with an 800 meter height gain to almost 5,000 meters

What follows are easily the two worst physical days of my life.  The ‘trail’ wound up and down endlessly as the glacier itself is covered in one huge moraine, strewn with massive boulders and like a gigantic lunar landscape.  Every step is agony, and on the uphill my thighs feel devoid of any muscle, let alone power.  Within less than an hour the anti-nausea drugs lose the battle and my stomach feels like it is under siege.  I stop and duck behind a rock and the day begins.  It is 8am and we’ve barely made a dent in today’s trek. We finally reach the others at lunch and I just lay down on the tarpaulin draped over a huge boulder in the middle of the glacier and fell fast asleep in the blazing sun, sprawled over someone else’s stuff.  I was spent.

An hour later I was woken, it was time to leave.  I had drunk a little but eaten nothing and felt worse if anything due to sleeping in the baking sun.  Shortly after we start again I grind to a halt, hunched over my ski poles, panting for breath.  I am very, very unwell.  I could easily sleep standing up, or over on that rock.  But that isn’t an option as we’re in the middle of the Baltoro glacier, the temperature will soon drop to well below freezing and the team needs to move ahead.  Staying put is impossible. I have to keep moving.

I ask Hassan how long to Broad Peak base camp and he replies ‘2-3 hours, in your condition maybe 5 hours’.  5 hours!  It is already 4pm and it will be completely dark by 7pm.  I have a head torch but navigating this terrain, with the ice under the rocks meaning constant slipping will be almost impossible.  Quietly Victor walks over to me and gently says ‘we’d better keep going’ and ‘if you slip or if anything happens that shortens your breath, don’t stop, just reduce your pace, however slow, until you’re back at Sunday stroll pace’.  It is the best advice and I don’t stop again. 

Finally we reach camp just after 6.30pm and 12 hours of almost constant movement.  Once in the dining tent I’m told I look better than I did at lunch, a low bar.  Someone hands me a cup of warm Ovaltine and it feels good but I am too tired to even try to eat and head to bed.  Once outside and past the cook tent I lose control, something that never happens to me. I convulse and convulse until I have literally nothing left in me.  I head to my tent figuring that a good sleep and some breakfast should prepare me for the shorter 5 hour trek to K2 base camp in the morning.

NOT SO FAST.

Thursday 28 June, near Broad Peak Base Camp, 4,850 meters

I am woken at 6am by my tent being shaken hard and two anxious looking porters looking in.  ‘Ready?’  Er, no.  What is going on?  When we agreed to trek all the way from Goro 2 to Broad Peak base camp the idea was that we’d be rewarded with a lie in given the short day.  But in missing dinner I also missed the update that the porters wanted to leave early, dump their loads at K2 base camp, and then try and make it all the way back down the glacier to Urdukas the same day.  As I frantically try to get all my stuff together one of the cooks leans in and asks me if I’d like a chapati and bacon?  YES!  Perfect, I could probably keep that down and I badly needed something for the trek. But it never materialises.

There is nothing like an army of Balti porters ripping a temporary camp to pieces to impart a sense of urgency.  It was now snowing heavily too.  I emerged from the tent and nothing of the camp remained standing, apart from my tent which was quickly dismantled with me barely retrieving my rucksack before it was collapsed.  Total bedlam and I realised how laughable the chapati with bacon offer had been.  Very deep down I could see the funny side of the whole situation.

I realised I hadn’t put my ankle brace on and with all the fresh snow I knew it was going be slippy and I had been turning my ankles all week (the ligaments in both are shot, two old injuries).  I looked for somewhere to take my boots and socks off that wasn’t being frantically packed and found a used dirty potato sack on the floor.  Shoes and socks off I began to put by brace on and felt a tugging around my bottom.  Yes apparently the sack was required and for some reason, immediately.  Hopping over to a rock I put everthing back on, saddled my pack and began the trek put of ‘camp’ towards K2, now completely invisible in the snow-storm.

Once I hit the uphill I realised that my continued illness combined with no liquids or any sort of food in me was going to be exceptionally difficult, particularly in these conditions.  I reached into my pack and found a Cliff energy bar, but it was frozen.  I gnawed away at it like some demented rat and finally got about half down.  Better than nothing I guess.

Then the sole of my right trekking boot comes off, with half of the sole flapping as I raise my foot - perfect, so now I have no grip at all.  They say never break in a new pair of  boots on a big trek but these are 15 years old and I am regretting not getting new ones.  The rest of the trek seems endless – fresh snow-covered smooth rocks, up and down and round.  I was completely spent and put almost all my weight on my ski poles with every step.  Crossing one snow-field my left foot sank into the snow and cold water underneath up to my knee.  Again my gaiters were ahead of me.  No problem, its just water.  Oh no wait, it is freezing so within 10 mins the whole thing was as inflexible as Theresa May.  Then in goes the right foot!  Brilliant, now I have a pair to complete my zombie-like ‘Night of the living dead’ look.  On and on it goes for hours until I see what must be K2 base camp.  Now usually you want your camp to be as far along and as close to the mountain as possible so the distance from your tent to the route is shorter, but today I hope its the first.  Or course our expedition is well organised and it is the very last.  I stumble into camp at midday and spent the rest of the day sorting my tent.

Then the next morning is Friday and I am standing, recovered I thought, outside the dining tent, when I become unable to speak.

Amazingly after all that I am feeling much better... this too shall pass they said, although it was hard to believe for a long time.  We are now settled and are as a team resting up and acclimatising for the next few days. We are planning some ice training and discussing routes up the mountain. 

Despite all the above, what an extraordinary privilege to be here. It is a deeply foreign, harsh and beautiful landscape and takes both my breath and apparently my words away. 

I've just agreed to cook Cacio e Pepe pasta for the whole team so I'm off into the kitchen....

From K2 base camp, over and out for now. 

Note:  bar Sat phone calls, communications have been non-existent on the trek and here at K2 base camp. Our expedition only got our Satellite modem working (and thus very limited WiFi) today - hopefully we should now be stable and I’ll be able to post things every few days.