As Pemba was reviving Confortola with bottled oxygen, he received a radio call from Pasang Bhote and Tsering Bhote, who reported that they had rendezvoused with Jumic Bhote and two of the Koreans (most likely Hwang Dong-Jin and Park Kyeong-Hyo) at the top of the Bottleneck. They said that aside from some frostbite, Jumic Bhote was basically alright, and that everyone was coming down. Pemba told them to hurry down, as the serac was very unstable.

The rescue team went on to say that they had witnessed a climber in a red suit with patches fall from the middle of the Traverse, the section of the route which connects the top of the Bottleneck couloir to the summit slopes. Apparently the man was swept off by an avalanche, and was 15-30 minutes behind Jumic Bhote and the two Koreans. Moments after this radio communication, Pemba heard a large avalanche and witnessed the bodies of two Sherpas and two Koreans tumble by him.

I learned months ago in email correspondence with Pemba that the rescue team had succeeded in reaching Jumic Bhote and two of the Koreans. But it wasn’t until I met with him in Kathmandu and we had the chance to speak extensively about K2 that I heard about the man in the red suit behind Jumic and the Koreans. Though both Gerard McDonnell and Pakistani guide Karim Meherban wore red suits, only McDonnell’s had patches on the front, matching the description given in the radio transmission. Accordingly, Pemba believes that this man was his friend and teammate McDonnell.

The precise circumstances of Gerard MacDonnell’s disappearance has been one of the most enduring questions of the K2 tragedy. A story written by Omar Waraich in the UK paper The Independent on August 9th (purportedly based on Mr. Confortola’s first newspaper interview after the tragedy) seemed to suggest that the three Koreans died in their presence: “For three hours, McDonnell and Confortola tried to right them, but it was in vain. All three died. It was at that moment, “for some strange reason”, that McDonnell began to walk away.” A lengthy article in Men’s Journal written by Matt Powers (who also was in Islamabad interviewing the survivors) reported that: “By mid-morning, Marco and Gerard had left the Koreans and continued toward the traverse… Suddenly, Marco said later, Gerard turned around and began to climb back up the slope, back toward the Koreans, offering no explanation.” Finally, Michael Kodas wrote in Outside Magazine that: “They spent three and half hours trying to free the Koreans but gave up when the glacier let loose nearby and reminded them of their perilous location. McDonnell, perhaps confused by the lack of oxygen, climbed back up the slope toward the summit. Confortola shouted to his friend but couldn’t get his attention. Then he heard an avalanche and recognized two yellow boots in the slide.”

Pemba’s account of the radio transmission requires that the overall tragedy be re-examined. It seems possible, if not probable, that Gerard McDonnell continued efforts to revive Jumic Bhote and the two Koreans after Van Roojen and Confortola descended, and that McDonnell succeeded in getting the injured climbers mobile so that they could descend the Traverse to the top of the Bottleneck, where they were met by the rescue team of Pasang Bhote and Tsering Bhote. Sadly, many published accounts have portrayed McDonnell’s final actions as being irrational, perhaps the result of hypoxia or hallucination. It now seems quite likely that McDonnell nobly continued rescue efforts right up until the moment he was killed.

It is readily clear that the media owes the family, friends, and loved-ones of Gerard MacDonnell an apology for so misrepresenting his memory. As someone who’s written about K2 a lot, I include myself as being partly to blame. In “Heros in Fine-print”, I implied that McDonnell, along with Van Roojen and Confortola, had abandoned the Koreans, while the Sherpas launched a rescue. Abandoned is a very strong word, and it bears nothing in common with what I now believe were Gerard MacDonnell’s final actions.

There are still lots of unanswered questions as to what exactly happened on August 1st-2nd on K2. Marco Confortola has written a lengthy testimony that details his recollections of the summit push.

Wilco van Roojen has yet to provide a similarly detailed account.

Originally published on the Huffington Post on December 24th, 2008.

Outside and Men’s Journal recently published feature length pieces on the K2 disaster. Both stories lead with the tale of three European men, Wilco van Rooijen, Gerard McDonnell, and Marco Confortola, who bivouaced at nearly 28,000 feet after the catastrophic serac avalanche stripped the Bottleneck Couloir of its fixed ropes on the evening of August 1st. The next day, they were forced to down climb the Bottleneck un-roped. Along the way they passed a party of distressed Korean climbers; the three abandoned them to continue their own descents to safety. Two of them made it, but McDonnell was swept to his death in an avalanche.

While Confortola and van Rooijen can hardly be faulted for not doing more, it does seem like their teammate Cas van de Gevel is right — the tragedy was a grim game of Russian roulette. It was every man for himself.

Yet some extraordinary acts of bravery and selflessness did occur on K2 — you just might have to read the fine print to hear about it.

On a recent trip to Nepal, I tracked down two Sherpas, Chhiring Dorje and Pemba Gyalje, who were among those who summited on that fateful day. I had corresponded with them both via email for my own article in Rock and Ice, and I felt drawn to meet them in the flesh.

Pemba and Chhiring reached the summit at approximately 6.35 and 6.37 PM on August 1st, making history by becoming the first two Sherpas to summit K2 without oxygen. But that’s not what makes them exceptional.

On the descent, at least seven climbers chose to bivouac rather than continue down in the darkness. Chhiring, the owner of Kathmandu-based Rolwaling Excursions guide service, continued. When he reached the Bottleneck, he discovered the ropes were missing. Small pieces of ice continually poured down the narrow gully from the serac above. He knew it could release another catastrophic avalanche at anytime. It was imperative to get out of harm’s way as quickly as possible. But another Sherpa guide had dropped his ice axe, effectively stranding him, so Chhiring tied him to his harness, and down climbed the couloir with his friend hanging off him. This was at 27,000 feet, in the middle of the night, after he had just summited K2 without oxygen.

Pemba Gyalje also downclimbed the Bottleneck that night. The next morning, he went out searching for his teammates van Rooijen and McDonnell. After returning to camp IV unsuccessfully, he went out again, and eventually found Confortola passed out in the snow. As he revived him with oxygen, they were hit by another serac avalanche. Pemba held on to the helpless Confortola, saving him from being swept away with the slide. Then he walked him back to camp IV, and, rather than rest, descended by headlamp to Camp III, where he rescued his partner van Rooijen the next morning.

Pemba will be making a visit to Washington DC this month to be honored by the National Geographic Society. After speaking to them, it was clear that both men are far too humble to consider what they did that extraordinary. Even so, the cynic in me couldn’t help but think that if these guys were from Europe or the States, they’d probably have big money endorsement opportunities, get invited on Oprah and have their faces on the cover of People Magazine.

As things turned out, you have to read the fine-print to hear about them.

So, here is a good look at what two heros look like:

Originally published on November 12 in the Huffington Post.

This has become the accepted narrative, as it were, though contradictory statements and problematic truths swirl just below the surface. Above all, as so often happens when the mainstream media reports on mountaineering topics, accounts have universally failed to put the K2 disaster in its proper historical context.

The nationalities of some of the deceased is one clue to unravelling the mystery of what went wrong. Virtually all reports agree that two Nepali and two Pakistani climbers were killed. This is a subtle red flag, because it is safe to say that the Pakistani and Nepali victims were on K2 for business, not for pleasure — they’ve been described in the media as “high altitude porters” or “guides”. While a large labor force of local Sherpa guides are regularly employed on Mt. Everest and the popular high peaks of Nepal, traditionally they’ve played a much smaller role in mountaineering in the Karakorum. There are several reasons for this. The mountains of Pakistan are steeper and require more technical skills, which means that they have never attracted the sheer number of climbers as other peaks in the Himalaya. While local Himalayan porters and guides are universally acclaimed for the physical strength and toughness, they are also notoriously unskilled in the technical aspects of climbing, such as building anchors and fixing ropes. Thus the delays caused because of improperly fixed lines should not be surprising; a similar problem happened during the Everest disaster of 1996, when Sherpa guides failed to fix ropes beyond the South Summit. Exactly whom the Pakistani and Nepali guides were working for, and how much their employers were relying on them for further support on summit day, has not been adequately explained.

It’s also become an established part of the K2 narrative that climbers were “stranded” or “trapped” above the Bottleneck after the avalanche stripped their ropes from the mountain. This has been reported by many mainstream sources, including the New York Times piece, as well as by veteran climbing writers, including the mountaineering pundit David Roberts who is quoted on the National Geographic Adventure blog as saying: “If this disaster was triggered by climbers being stranded above the Bottleneck after a collapsing serac took out the fixed ropes, then I can’t think of a comparable death trap in mountaineering history.” Yet reports also indicate that four climbers successfully negotiated the Bottleneck after the avalanche: Dutchmen Cas Van de Gevel and Wilco Van Rooijen, Italian Marco Confortola, and Nepali Pemba Sherpa. Historical context supports the assumption that it is feasible for an experienced climber to negotiate the Bottleneck unroped. As climbing journalist Allison Osius has pointed out, as late as 1992, when ascents of the Abruzzi Ridge were relatively common, there were no pre-placed fixed ropes on the final summit climb. Rather, climbers moved up and down the mountain unroped, or traveled in self-sufficient teams, carrying a small amount of cord between them.

Lastly, it’s worth considering the weather conditions as the events unfolded. By all accounts Friday, August 1st was a bright blue day in the Karakorum, windless and clear. A perfect day often lures climbers into pushing beyond the normal rules of safe mountaineering judgement and may help to explain why so many were on the summit so late. After darkness fell, temperatures plummeted, and the new moon provided little light to guide the climbers down. Assessing conditions the next morning, on Saturday August 2nd, is more problematic. In an interview published on the National Geographic Adventure blog, Wilco van Rooijen described his descent from below the Bottleneck:

“People at base camp saw me go over the wrong side of the ridge and they radioed people in camp IV. I had to sit out a whiteout because I couldn’t see anything and I knew I couldn’t go down any further. So I waited for a few hours. And then I saw through the clouds that I could go down on an easier glacier.”

Simultaneously — virtually in the same sentence — Wilco suggests that he was lost in a whiteout, yet those in baseamp, 7,000 vertical feet lower, were able to see him clearly moving down the wrong side of the ridge. These statements are not necessarily contradictory; “patchy conditions” that alternate between short snow squalls and periods of clear weather holes often form on mountains such as K2. But clearly there was no major storm, like those that precipitated the massive losses of life on Everest in 1996 and on K2 in 1986 and 1995. Wilco’s account does speak to the immense physical and mental stress that the survivors were under as they made their way down the mountain. Those of us who have been watching and reporting on the events on K2 from afar would be well advised to question the reliability of firsthand reports from those who lived through such a harrowing experience.

Many more questions remain unanswered — but the presence of numerous hired local guides, as well as the extensive reliance on fixed ropes, suggests that modern climbers approach K2 with a fundamentally different mindset then they did 20 years ago. It will still take some time for a comprehensive account of what happened to surface; right now the shell-shocked survivors are still making their way out of Pakistan to return to their home countries. In the meantime, with the Olympics in Beijing, Russia and Georgia at war, and news of John Edward’s extra-marital affair, K2′s media cycle has come full circle. While the unique circumstances of the disaster make it all that much more urgent for the climbing community to get a carefully balanced account of what went wrong, I have a sinking feeling that the mainstream media may never get it right.

This piece was originally published on August 9th on the Huffington Post.

On August 1st, a large group (probably between 20 – 30 people) of international climbers left their high camp, located at 8000 meters above sea level, bound for the 8611 meter summit of K2. They were climbing on the Abruzzi Ridge, which is the most popular route on the mountain. The climbers were an ad-hoc collection of Dutch, Korean, Italian, French, Norwegian, Pakistani and Nepali climbers from different expeditions and with differing levels of preparedness and ability. This sort of high traffic situation is common these days on the world’s highest peaks. When the notoriously unpredictable mountain weather of the high Himalaya finally stabilizes, dozens of climbers rush to attempt the summit simultaneously.

The route to the summit of K2 follows steepening snow slopes towards a snow and ice couloir called “the Bottleneck”. Above this hourglass shaped feature, the climbers make an airy traverse under a steep ice cliff, or serac, to reach easier ground that leads to the summit. The steepest sections of the summit climb are between 50 – 60 degrees, steeper than the steepest trails at a ski area, yet far from the kind of vertical terrain routinely climbed by the world’s best alpinists.

So what went wrong?

In recent years, climbers on the world’s highest peaks have increasingly relied on fixed ropes, sections of cord that are permanently left on the mountain to facilitate travel. With fixed ropes, climbers can attach jumars — clamp like devices that work similar to a jam cleat on a sailboat or the mechanism inside your car seat belt — to protect themselves incase of a slip. In the Himalaya, of course, there’s no official organization responsible for maintaining these lines. Rather, it’s up to each expedition to equip the route as they desire. Often, lines will sit for years or even decades without being replaced. Nobody guarantees that the fixed ropes are in safe condition, or that they are there at all. On August 1st, while as many as 17 people neared the summit of K2, a large piece of ice broke off from the ice cliff below them. The ensuing serac avalanche swept down the Bottleneck couloir, stripping it of the fixed ropes the climbers had used to ascend to the summit. They were effectively stranded, with no ropes to help them descend.

The group of summiters faced a life or death situation: either down climb the Bottleneck unroped, or wait in hope that other climbers from below would ascend with more rope to re-equip the climb. Reports indicate that at least two climbers — a Sherpa and a Dutchman — successfully down climbed the Bottleneck on their own. Some sources report that a third climber attempted to descend as well, but slipped and fell to his death. The others apparently hunkered down to wait for help.

The climbers who remained chose to gamble their lives on circumstances beyond their control, like the availability of more rope and ready manpower lower on the mountain, rather than trust their own skills to successfully negotiate the Bottleneck. They resigned their fate to a battle against time. Above 8000 meters, the human body will inevitably weaken and die. In the notorious 1996 Everest disaster, for comparison, climbers stranded above 8000 meters expired in less than 48 hours. In all likelihood, the climbers on K2 had left extra survival gear such as tents, sleeping bags, and extra bottled oxygen at their high camp. Rescues above 8000 meters are an extremely arduous endeavor at best, and in the worst case situation impossible. While an emergency effort was immediately initiated, by the time you read this it is probably over. Unconfirmed sources are now reporting that as many as 9 climbers have perished.

Whenever disaster strikes in the mountains, it is important for the climbing community to study what went wrong so that others can learn from the mistakes of those who died. This process often crosses the line into finger pointing, harsh criticisms and accusations of blame. So while the time will come for a rigorous analysis of what happened on K2 this weekend, it’s not now.

All we can do is cross our fingers, and say a prayer for those climbers who — as you read this — are struggling for their lives on K2.

This piece was originally published on August 3rd on the Huffington Post.