The Spanish climber
Luis Fraga's line of porters passed by our tent this
morning under cloudy and snowy skies. The Spanish
team was the last of four expeditions to leave K2
base camp in the last few days. The Tibetans, the
two Spanish and Henry Todd's International teams
have trekked out to Askole in the last 4 days and
have made K2 base camp similar to a ghost town. It
has snowed for 5 days straight. Doubts of a summit
attempt have started to enter our minds. The
Japanese, Spanish-Mexican and Charlie and I are the
last to reside at base camp. The Japanese team is
finished on K2 and will be leaving on the 4th or 5th
to attempt Gasherbrum II. Then there will be only
five climbers here at base camp to climb K2: Three
members in the Spanish-Mexican team and Charlie and
Christine.
One of the Pakistan rules of climbing in the K2 area
is all expeditions must have an Liaison Officer
present with the team. A Liaison Officer is an
officer within the Pakistan military that stays with
the expedition and sees that the expedition is
abiding by the climbing rules and he acts as a
correspondent to the Ministry of Tourism if a
request needs to be made from the expedition. We are
on the International permit. When our leader left,
they signed us off to the Japanese Liaison Officer.
Now the Japanese want to leave as early as the 4th
or 5th. According to the rules we are required to
leave with the Japanese LO. We are trying to work
out an option to stay longer, but it's hard to
justify the fight when the weather is so miserable.
We may try to push our stay for a few days longer to
enable us for one more summit push. However we would
need the weather to change in the next couple days.
Overall there hasn't been much progress on K2 this
season, except for the Tibetan team. They arrived at
base camp late May. It wasn't until July 20th when
they got as high as 8400 meters (above the
bottleneck) under marginal conditions. The Tibetans
reported that on their descent they took 7 hours in
white out conditions to locate their high camp. The
Japanese expedition spent this past week at camp 2
(6900 meters) on the Abruzzi ridge route waiting for
clear skies for an attempt at the summit. They gave
up and are coming down.
The snow continues to fall and load the slopes
higher on the mountain with deep snow. Above 6500
meters the snow has been reported as unconsolidated,
"sugary, and knee to waist deep. It may take several
days of sunny weather for the slopes to become
stable enough for safe travel. One weather forecast
we received predicts drier conditions after August
3rd, which gives us some hope.
In the meantime we keep ourselves busy by reading,
short hikes around base camp and socializing with
our few neighbors who remain. We will keep everyone
posted if the weather changes. Christine
