winterk2dis7

K2 winter expedition. The wind is nagging us all the time, carrying sharp dust that is sticking into our skin. The air is frosty and dry, our fingertips are bursting. Many times, we taste blood in our mouths.

Spitting camels

After two days of traveling from Kashgar with off-road cars and five days of hiking through Karakorum, the expedition set up the Chinese base at 3800 m.

From there, it is two days of travel time to the proper base (5100 m) on the K2 glacier. Krzysztof Wielicki had arrived there already today with a group of alpinists. A swing transport of equipment from the glacier's front upwards has begun.

We feel a bit uneasy on the main square in Kashgar, over which the huge Mao Zedong monument, permanently supervised by two policemen, is towering: we are the only colorfully-dressed people, as if we have come from another planet. Grayness and dust predominate all around. The inhabitants are walking down the streets with cotton masks on their faces. For two days, we are driving on the edge of the Takla Makan Desert, on a holey road leading to Tibet. Poverty looks similar all over the world. The one we are passing has no exoticism whatsoever. It is communistically mundane, frightfully sad and bureaucratisized.

Then we finally get into the mountains. The Himalayas and Karakorum begin where the Alps end, as they say. Surely enough, we are soon driving on the pass located a few meters higher than Mount Blanc. How different is Karakorum from the Himalaya mountain range that is 200 km away! The life-giving monsoon rains from the Indian Ocean, thanks to which the Himalaya valleys are thriving with vegetation and life, do not reach this point. Karakorum is a wild, desert and uninhabited mountain range.

The last town on our route, Yilka (3490 m), is a Chinese military base, consisting of one barrack, some very young, scared soldiers and hundreds of meters of barbed-wire entanglements. Supposedly, two Chinese escaped over the border to Pakistan last week. We are lined up two-deep and counted. On our way back, the number will have to be the same.

Porters in this uninhabited region are hard to find. The camel herdsmen that were awaiting us came from far away. They are from Kyrgyzstan, Uygur, Taj. Each of the forty camels carries 80 kg of luggage. If it wants to. If it does not feel like it, it will kick and jump until it throws off the load that can be usually picked up in pieces after the animal's rage. The camels can stand neither our smell nor our cargo. They spit at us with their thick, white foam. They are unpredictable. Many of them wear metal muzzles on their snouts. Their kick breaks a man's leg like a match.

Nevertheless, the caravan has finally started and has been walking for five days. The vastness of space is horrifying. Wind is nagging us all the time, carrying sharp dust that is sticking into our skin. The air is frosty and dry; our fingertips are bursting deeply and painfully. They will not heal here anymore. Many times, we taste blood in our mouths. Zippers and Velcros of badly sewed down jackets wound our chins and necks. Luckily, many of us have our own, tested gear. What is the tallest of us supposed to do, however, whose down sleeping bag reaches merely to his waist?

We spend Christmas Eve at the bank of the Shaksgam river, huge and mighty in the summer, now shallow and partly frozen. The wind subsided and it felt like it was warm, though it was minus eleven degrees. In the candlelight, we are looking at a small Christmas tree that Maciej Pawlikowski brought along. We share the Christmas wafer. We eat some mushroom soup and fish spread from cans. We also have a delicious gingerbread made by Darek Załuski's mother and many other cakes. The expedition participants spend the rest of Christmas Eve by the fire and queue up for the satellite phone. Gia Tortładze from Georgia disassembles and packs the Christmas tree in the morning. His Christmas Eve will only be in two weeks' time.

The next two marching days brought along the most emotions. We were walking down the kilometer-wide Shaksgam River bed. The river meanders, forming a labyrinth. You have to weave your way so as not to fall into the water. Jaś Szulc experiences his most difficult time. He uses the opportunity and gets on a camel. The animal gets rid of the pushy guy halfway through the river, however, and the alpinist, loaded with his rucksack, plummets into the water. When he reaches the shore, his clothes have already stiffened in the frost, and the rucksack freezes to him. He only thaws at the fire.

I was probably the only person to walk that long section on dry foot. I owe it to the chivalry of the foreigners. I crossed the river twice on the back of Ilias Tuchwatullin from Uzbekistan and the Hunza Sarwar Khan and once on a camel. On the last day of the hike, I also mounted a camel and now I know how it feels to fall from him, since a fur string burst that was supporting the cargo, so I plummeted down along with the luggage under the animal's hoofs.

We arrive at the Chinese base at 3800 m on December 26. From there, it is two days of travel time to the proper base at the foot of K2. Not everyone will go there at once. The first ones to arrive there will be the alpinists and a group transporting the equipment. The lack of a sufficient number of porters makes it necessary to divide the expedition into several groups. One part of the alpinists is on the K2 glacier, in the so-called Italian base (4400 m). Krzysztof Wielicki has already arrived at the proper base at 5100 m with another group, at the foot of the Northern Pillar. -

Written by Monika Rogozinska, "Rzeczpospolita"; translated by "Scrivanek".

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