Read Online Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains by Mark Horrell - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Horrell
says Gordon. “That's a f---ing bulls—t idea. They did that where I worked once, and it ended up costing me 200 bucks. I wasn't allowed to make any sexist comments either, and all the girls in the office turned up to work showing cleavage and bending over to open bottom drawers. It drove me mad!”
Poor Gordon.
21. Day 1 of doing nothing
Wednesday 1 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Day 1 of doing nothing, and for most of the day it's easy. As I lie in my tent and listen to the snow pounding on the roof, it's clear nobody's going anywhere for a while. I finish reading my book
Shogun
, all 1243 pages of it, and am glad of it. It's full of death, people having their heads chopped off with samurai swords, and people committing suicide by slicing their own bellies open and watching the entrails spill out onto the floor. I prefer reading books with sympathetic, likable characters, and am looking forward to returning to my classics.
Gazing up at Gasherbrum I
At about 5pm, after snowing non-stop all day, the sun comes out and everyone emerges from their tents to look out upon a fantastic winter mountain scene. Michael takes down his tent and re-erects it on a flatter platform. Phil, whose attempts to charge the big battery he's brought along from various solar panel's he's erected outside his tent has become something of a comical Keystone Kops-style theme over the last week or so, is absolutely delighted. Several of us take the opportunity to photograph this very different looking landscape. Since the whole team is here in one place for the first time in a few days, we also have a group photograph on the puja platform with Gasherbrum I in the background.
22. Tea with the mountaineering elite
Thursday 2 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Day 2 of doing nothing. It's fine weather for most of today, but due to the fresh dump of snow over the last couple of days, we still can't go up the mountain until the snow's consolidated due to the risk of avalanches.
After washing some clothes I go for a wander up the moraine finger beyond the army camp with Ian and Michael to try and get an alternative view of Gasherbrum II, which can't be seen from where we're camped on the moraine. Unfortunately, although it's predominantly sunny there is a small amount of cloud in the Gasherbrum Cwm which obscures most of the mountains, including G2. Back in my tent it's absolutely sweltering. I try to read some of my latest book
Tom Jones
, but it's uncomfortably hot, so I spend most of the afternoon playing cards with Gordon, Gorgan, Ian and Michael in the dining tent. After Gordon spots me taking a sneaky peek at Gorgan's cards everybody spends the rest of the game trying to stitch me up. Thankfully they fail, and somehow I still manage to win the game.
The Finnish mountaineer Veikka Gustafsson and Jagged Globe leader David Hamilton join us for afternoon tea. Veikka is here to climb Gasherbrum I, and if he's successful it will be his 14 th and final 8000 metre peak, putting him into a select group of less than twenty climbers. We discuss the various weather forecasts available to us, which no longer seem to be correlating. The popular consensus seems to be that there may be one or two fine days ahead of us, but there will be a lot of new snow arriving on 6 th , and then clear weather afterwards. G2 is dangerously avalanche prone above Camp 2 after new snow, and Phil knows this only too well after he watched a group of German mountaineers trigger an avalanche there two years ago, killing two members of their party and effectively closing the mountain. There therefore doesn't seem to be much point budging from Base Camp onto G2 until the 7 th at the earliest.
“But that still means we could potentially summit on the 10 th or 11 th ,” says Phil. “We could go straight from Base Camp to Camp 2 like we did the other day. You were all strong enough to be able to do that.”
I don't know whether he's
Poor Gordon.
21. Day 1 of doing nothing
Wednesday 1 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Day 1 of doing nothing, and for most of the day it's easy. As I lie in my tent and listen to the snow pounding on the roof, it's clear nobody's going anywhere for a while. I finish reading my book
Shogun
, all 1243 pages of it, and am glad of it. It's full of death, people having their heads chopped off with samurai swords, and people committing suicide by slicing their own bellies open and watching the entrails spill out onto the floor. I prefer reading books with sympathetic, likable characters, and am looking forward to returning to my classics.
Gazing up at Gasherbrum I
At about 5pm, after snowing non-stop all day, the sun comes out and everyone emerges from their tents to look out upon a fantastic winter mountain scene. Michael takes down his tent and re-erects it on a flatter platform. Phil, whose attempts to charge the big battery he's brought along from various solar panel's he's erected outside his tent has become something of a comical Keystone Kops-style theme over the last week or so, is absolutely delighted. Several of us take the opportunity to photograph this very different looking landscape. Since the whole team is here in one place for the first time in a few days, we also have a group photograph on the puja platform with Gasherbrum I in the background.
22. Tea with the mountaineering elite
Thursday 2 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Day 2 of doing nothing. It's fine weather for most of today, but due to the fresh dump of snow over the last couple of days, we still can't go up the mountain until the snow's consolidated due to the risk of avalanches.
After washing some clothes I go for a wander up the moraine finger beyond the army camp with Ian and Michael to try and get an alternative view of Gasherbrum II, which can't be seen from where we're camped on the moraine. Unfortunately, although it's predominantly sunny there is a small amount of cloud in the Gasherbrum Cwm which obscures most of the mountains, including G2. Back in my tent it's absolutely sweltering. I try to read some of my latest book
Tom Jones
, but it's uncomfortably hot, so I spend most of the afternoon playing cards with Gordon, Gorgan, Ian and Michael in the dining tent. After Gordon spots me taking a sneaky peek at Gorgan's cards everybody spends the rest of the game trying to stitch me up. Thankfully they fail, and somehow I still manage to win the game.
The Finnish mountaineer Veikka Gustafsson and Jagged Globe leader David Hamilton join us for afternoon tea. Veikka is here to climb Gasherbrum I, and if he's successful it will be his 14 th and final 8000 metre peak, putting him into a select group of less than twenty climbers. We discuss the various weather forecasts available to us, which no longer seem to be correlating. The popular consensus seems to be that there may be one or two fine days ahead of us, but there will be a lot of new snow arriving on 6 th , and then clear weather afterwards. G2 is dangerously avalanche prone above Camp 2 after new snow, and Phil knows this only too well after he watched a group of German mountaineers trigger an avalanche there two years ago, killing two members of their party and effectively closing the mountain. There therefore doesn't seem to be much point budging from Base Camp onto G2 until the 7 th at the earliest.
“But that still means we could potentially summit on the 10 th or 11 th ,” says Phil. “We could go straight from Base Camp to Camp 2 like we did the other day. You were all strong enough to be able to do that.”
I don't know whether he's
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