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ENJOY and thanks for coming to "K2- The Ascent of the Savage Mountain"

A sincere thanks to all of you who have followed along with me on the 2009 Gasherbrum III Expedition.

As reported form Pakistan, we did not summit, but managed to establish a route up the lower west face of GIII. We then traversed back into the cwm to 7300meters before Bruce Normand came down with a debilitating altitude illness. When his blood-oxygen saturation dropped to below 40%, things got a little dicey. Despite zero visibility and many harrowing rappels down the center of the icefall, we all managed to make it back to our high camp. As I reported in my last dispatch, Bruce is a very strong guy - and he stuck it out despite his severely weakened state. We now look back to that time with typical climber nonchalantness - a resident (and convenient) characteristic of those who continue to push the limits of higher exploration.

A few days after getting back to base camp, we planned to return to Camp 2 to retrieve our tents and gear. Before our departure I managed to contract some flu-like sickness, so my partners headed up without me. A clear weather window enticed the boys to make another summit shot, and despite being very tired from our prior attempt they made it back up to our high point of 7300meters. Look up the word "stubbornness" in the dictionary to see images from this attempt. Yet, despite sunny days and a promising forecast, the fatigue of altitude forced them back down; a strong effort in my book.

A few days later we left base camp for home. (FYI- for security reasons I don't report our travel progress in Pakistan.)

A special thanks to everyone for your thoughts, prayers, and support for us during those difficult days on the mountain. Also, a special thanks to my expedition partners: Bruce Normand, Guy McKinnon and Billy Pierson for their commitment, drive, and teamwork. Spirit fingers everybody. (Spirit fingers: See video if you don't get that---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDbnkfHtD_E

Next on the agenda for me is a K2 Multimedia Presentation speaking tour - coming to a theater near you. As new dates and specific locations are confirmed they will be added to the events calendar on this website (click on "events" on top tool bar). Here's a quick synopsis of dates and places:

Sept 15-Oct 6th  Northern Europe.
Oct 6- Oct 31st  Midwest USA
Nov 10th-Dec1st  Western Canada

If you are in these regions and interested in booking this presentation at your school, club, charity event, corporation, baby shower, etc., please contact Jill at info@calpinist.com.

Hope to see you out there!

Don

...A  few rappels later I found myself at a small icy stance with Billy. We both looked at each other and with various (not so creative) language and exclaimed how crazy it was that we were descending smack dab in the middle of the icefall.

As we waited for Bruce to come down the rope, I stared above at the thousands of tons of overhanging and teetering loose blocks of ice above us. I could not conceive spending the entire rest of the day wandering around under such a threat, yet I knew that we would have to do just that. At these moments, I try to humor myself by recalling old Kung-Fu movies, when the grey-bearded master tells the student to "...think like...er...invisible man."

The last two rappels deposited the four of us in a narrow chute between ice serac walls. At the bottom of the chute we stood among huge chunks of ice and avalanche debris. After a quick rest we roped up again and I lead down the lower chute, trending left toward the bottom of the GIII west face. After punching through into a few black crevasses, I finally managed to find a safe way over to the face proper - albeit, under a whole new line of different seracs. Fresh snow and avalanche debris covered the lower slopes, and the four of us down climbed toward the bottom of the face roped together.

 Just as I managed to punch through the bergshrund, Guy yelled, "Avalanche coming!". I looked up to see a white powder cloud spilling over the seracs above and hoped to myself that the slide would be no deeper than my head and shoulders - since that was the only part of me that was sticking out of the bergshrund hole.

A few hours later the four of us finally climbed across of the last of the avalanche debris and under the protection of the serac ice chunk hiding our Camp 2 tent. I shook everyone's hand and encouraged them for such a great effort - except for Bruce who was busy vomiting. (I encouraged him too. Just after.) It was an excellent effort by all and I felt very proud and thankful to be back in Camp 2. An hour or two later, as we lay brewing up in our sleeping bags, I measured Bruce's sats: 73%.

And there is one more twist:

The following day we roped up and descended down the glacier to G2 Camp 1. Upon arrival we noticed that the entire top of one of our VE25 tents had been ripped off, the fabric blowing in the wind. At first we suspected sabotage; that someone had torn or cut up one of our tents. I walked to a nearby Spanish member tent and asked an occupant if he had seen anything. I don't speak fluent Spanish, but did understand the phrase, "Grande boom". It appeared that one of the cheap Korean gas stove canisters had exploded in the tent only one hour after we left Camp 1 on July 7th. We did find various canister shrapnel around the tent, but the main canister body was long gone. I trust it landed somewhere on the glacier not too far from the Indian border. I haven't checked the news recently, but are there any recent border tensions between Pakistan and India?

(Webteam: Dispatch 8 is in 3 parts. Tomorrow we will post Part 3 of 3)

At 2am on July 10th I called home on the sat phone for another weather forecast; it appeared that the high winds would be lower on July 11th, and after a discussion with the guys we decided to wait it out a day at the 7300 meter camp. Bruce seemed OK and slept most of the day, even sharing on the brewing-up duties later that morning despite still feeling bad. But by early evening he began to struggle to stay awake, and every time he fell asleep he would periodically breathe deeply. (This means he would take 4 or 5 snoring, shallow breaths, then, stop breathing altogether for 20-30 seconds.)

By late evening Bruce began to vomit again. I again checked his vitals a few times and used the pulse oximeter I had in my first aid kit to monitor his oxygen saturation (sats). Bruce's first O2 sat measurements were low, and, soon began to drop even more. He then became extremely drowsy and could not stay awake. My own sats were hovering around the high 70's and low 80's - which was actually quite good for me at 7300 meters - at least we had that as a baseline.

Soon Bruce's O2 sats dipped into the high 40's and I began to really worry - and to add insult to injury, the snow and winds outside had picked up significantly.

The question that evening was: should we wait out the storm or begin descent in the night? That morning I had already started Bruce on various high altitude medicines and anti-nausea drugs, but they seemed to have little effect. (Although I knew that the dexamethasone was helping.) Bruce struggled to remain conscious throughout the evening and by the night of the 10th he was drifting in and out of consciousness, barely able to perform even the simplest tasks. His snoring and gasping for breathe was very loud, and the gaps between his periodic breathing grew longer. I stayed awake all night, stirring him every half hour or so, taking his sats and continuing to feed him appropriate medicines. Outside the winds were howling and visibility had dropped to zero. The last O2 sat measurement I took in the night for Bruce was a staggeringly low 37% - meaning he was functioning (somehow) on 37% oxygen. At this point I congratulated him for officially breaking the Guinness World Record for having the lowest oxygen sats and still being alive. He didn't laugh.

At 2am I roused Bruce enough to help him to get dressed - which was a slow and laborious process in the icy, cold tent. Outside Guy and Billy fought extreme cold and wind and packed up camp, but it was too cold and they retreated back to the tents for a few hours. At 7am we finally decided to fight the storm and forced Bruce from the tent. He immediately vomited. Guy put on Bruce's crampons while I got out my GPS - and then noticed that I had insufficient satellite coverage for it to even work. Despite zero visibility and no functioning GPS, we finally wandered off our ledge and into a complete whiteout. We had no choice.

As we walked down the cwm the mist and blowing snow would sometimes lift for a moment. And once I caught a glimpse of the rocks at the base of GIV east face at the edge of the cwm, I then used the compass on my GPS and set a bearing for the rocks. Bruce was doing surprisingly well at this point despite staggering behind on the rope and falling to the snow frequently. Believe me when I say this: Bruce Normand is one strong man!!                                             

After an hour or so - and by the grace of God - I noticed a few meters in front of me a bamboo wand stuck in the snow - the ONLY wand we had placed in the entire cwm. Somehow we were on track. After another rest for Bruce at the wand, I began to see faint footprints in the windblown snow. I followed the footprints and in a few hours we were at the top of the chute and somehow at the edge of the cwm.

Billy descended first over the edge to set up the first of many rappels. We had only lost 300 meters in elevation, but it had a noticeable affect on Bruce - who was still very lethargic and vomiting but managing along. I "fireman belayed" Bruce the first of the rappels, but despite his continued vomiting and swaying he was able to manage each pitch on his own, yet still collapsing at every stance. Soon we had rappelled to the bottom of the chute and to the start of the mixed traverse. The long 50 degree snow and ice traverse down to Camp 2 looked VERY loaded with snow, so we had one option left: descend the extremely dangerous center of the icefall....