McDonald Winter 8000

Climbing the world's highest mountains in the coldest season
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912560-40-0
Verlag: Vertebrate Digital
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

'He appeared, without a word, in the tent's entrance, covered in ice. He looked like anyone would after spending over twenty-four hours in a hurricane at over 8,000 metres. In winter. In the Karakoram. He was so exhausted he couldn't speak.' Of all the games mountaineers play on the world's high mountains, the hardest - and cruellest - is climbing the fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres in the bitter cold of winter. Ferocious winds that can pick you up and throw you down, freezing temperatures that burn your lungs and numb your bones, weeks of psychological torment in dark isolation: these are adventures for those with an iron will and a ruthless determination. For the first time, award-winning author Bernadette McDonald tells the story of how Poland's ice warriors made winter their own, perfecting what they dubbed 'the art of suffering' as they fought their way to the summit of Everest in the winter of 1980 - the first 8,000-metre peak they climbed this way but by no means their last. She reveals what it was that inspired the Poles to take up this brutal game, how increasing numbers of climbers from other nations were inspired to enter the arena, and how competition intensified as each remaining peak finally submitted to leave just one awaiting a winter ascent, the meanest of them all: K2. Winter 8000 is the story of true adventure at its most demanding.

Bernadette McDonald is the author of ten mountaineering books, including the multi-award-winning Freedom Climbers (2011). Among its international awards, Freedom Climbers won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival, the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the American Alpine Club's H. Adams Carter Literary Award. Her other mountaineering titles include Toma? Humar (2008), Brotherhood of the Rope: The Biography of Charles Houston (2007), Keeper of the Mountains: The Elizabeth Hawley Story (2012) and Alpine Warriors (2015). McDonald's books have been translated into eight languages, and her international awards include Italy's ITAS Prize (2010) and India's Kekoo Naoroji Award for Mountain Literature (2008, 2009 and 2011). She has also received the Alberta Order of Excellence (2010), the Summit of Excellence Award (2007) and the King Albert Award for international leadership in mountain culture and environment (2006). She was the founding vice-president of Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre and served as director of the Banff Mountain Festivals from 1988 to 2006.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mcdonald, Bernadette

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION
The Art of Suffering … there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men … Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft He stood out immediately. Towering over many of the best high-altitude climbers in the world, Andrzej Zawada was holding court. His natty tweed jacket atop a simple black turtleneck complemented his salt-and-pepper hair. Severe black-framed glasses balanced his angular bone structure, adding to his regal posture. Zawada was among a group of fellow climbers at the Polish Mountaineering Association clubhouse, celebrating the wrap of the 1994 Katowice Mountain Film Festival. The wintry city was enveloped in a thick blanket of smog. Although the building was dank and dingy, the windows smudged with residue from nearby smokestacks, inside was warmth, light and plenty of vodka. And stories: incredible stories of exposed traverses, high-altitude storms, desperate bivouacs and triumphant summits. I had helped organise the festival, and knew the reputations of many of the alpinists in the room, superstars of high-altitude climbing, both summer and winter. But it was my first meeting with Andrzej Zawada, a legendary winter specialist. I asked, ‘Mr Zawada, why do you prefer to climb in the Himalaya in winter when summer is so much more appealing?’ He looked down his long, aristocratic nose and said, ‘Because the Himalaya in summer is for vimmen!’ I spied a twinkle in his eye as he glanced around to gauge the response to his outrageous comment. Like everyone, I laughed. But there was no questioning the respect due this man who had inspired a generation of climbers to launch their high-altitude careers in the cruellest season. The concept of winter mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram was born in Poland, nurtured in Poland, and for years, dominated by Polish climbers. Almost 200 expeditions from dozens of countries have ventured into the highest mountains in Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet in winter, but the Poles, under the leadership of Andrzej Zawada, were the first to succeed in the coldest season at 8,000 metres. Years later, Adam Bielecki, one of Poland’s leading winter climbers, wrote: ‘Winter domination was the fault of Stalin and Bierut1 because they locked us in a cage. When others were doing first ascents of 8,000-metre peaks, we remained trapped behind the Iron Curtain. When it finally lifted, we jumped out of the cage. We were very hungry.’2 It’s true that after the end of the Second World War, Polish mountaineers were not part of the resurgence of activity in the Himalaya. While the Poles languished under Soviet rule, alpinists from around the world summited all fourteen of the 8,000-metre peaks. The French started it with Annapurna in 1950, and the Chinese finished the job on Shishapangma in 1964. Yet none of them were climbed in winter. Winter still offered an unexplored frontier for Himalayan climbers.   When you contemplate the reality of climbing in winter at 8,000 metres, the scale of the challenge becomes almost abhorrent. Gasping for oxygen in the thin air, throbbing headaches and retching stomachs are common at high altitude in any season, but winter accentuates the problem. As high-altitude medical expert Dr Peter Hackett explains, ‘Barometric pressure at high altitude is considerably lower in winter than summer – enough to make a clinical difference.’ Lower barometric pressure means less oxygen to keep warm and make progress, both of which are already harder because of the bitter cold. Temperatures at 8,000 metres in winter defy understanding. It is so cold your lungs feel as if they are burning. Eyelashes become coated in rime and cling together. Exposed skin freezes in minutes. Your extremities are horribly vulnerable and if immobile or constricted in any way can freeze as solid as wood. Fingers and toes die, turn black and must be amputated. Stoves malfunction. Metal snaps. Cold this cold is brutally unforgiving. It wraps itself around you and around your mind and then begins, ever so slowly, to squeeze. It’s terrifying. Savage winter winds rarely let up at high elevations on these peaks. For weeks on end, summits are buried in the jet stream. And these winds are not simply breezy or gusty; they have the power of hurricanes. Such winds can lift a grown person and throw them down. They destroy tents, fling barrels of equipment hundreds of metres, snap guylines and polish glacial ice to marble smoothness. They drive huge quantities of snow, packing it into deadly slabs poised to avalanche at the slightest trigger. They roar and howl and scream until even the most well-balanced climber begins to feel he is going insane. The degree of isolation in the highest mountains in winter is hard to imagine. With difficult ground access and dangerous flying conditions, any emergency quickly turns into a life-threatening situation. As winter Himalayan climber Darek Zaluski explains, ‘It’s difficult to find loneliness under the 8,000ers except in winter. Winter is at the end of the world.’ There is little colour in the high mountains in winter, only thirty shades of white, gradations of grey and blackest black. The variations of white provide a frame of reference for snow quality, avalanche risk and all kinds of clues that can help you survive. Black is the colour of the rock-hard ice that will deflect your ice axe, resist the bite of your crampon, and glisten like glass. Grey roils in with every storm: charcoal grey, dove grey, milky grey. Rarely, the heavy sky splits wide to reveal a startling blue so deep you could drown in it, luring alpinists into action for a day or two of good weather. And then it’s back to grey. Winter is darkness. Winter days are short, and those long winter nights feel like forever. In a tent at 7,000 metres, nights are not only long but filled with loneliness and uncertainty. During an open bivouac at 8,000 metres, prolonged darkness arouses emotions that can overwhelm you: fear, paranoia, even malice. In a word, suffering. Winter climbing at altitude is all about suffering, or as Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka described it, winter in the high Himalaya is the ‘Art of Suffering’. And yet there are those who are passionate about climbing at 8,000 metres in winter, even obsessed. They crave the mind-numbing isolation. They are trained and ready to dance across ice as hard as stone, to move lightly on unstable snow, to punch thousands of steps into knee-deep drifts. They know their equipment so well it’s like an extension of their limbs. They move quickly and efficiently, even while swaddled in down suits that restrict their movements and enormous mitts that render them as clumsy as infants. They recognise and react to potential threats, although they are peering through ice-filmed goggles. They understand patience. Patience to wait days or weeks, and sometimes months, in base camp, hoping for a break in the weather, that blazing blue sky, even if it’s only for two days. They push their bodies to the very edge, peer over that edge, and judge when to pull back to live another day. Their dance with suffering combines instinct, ingrained mountain wisdom and a formidable will to survive. These are the ‘Ice Warriors’.   It’s rare to meet a true visionary, a man elevated above the ordinary. Watching Andrzej Zawada interact with the world’s pre-eminent high-altitude climbers, observing their respect, their deference, their ready acceptance of the hardships, the cruelty and dangers of venturing into the highest mountains on Earth in winter, piqued my curiosity. As I delved into the history of winter climbing, I was astonished by the scope: over a period of four decades almost 200 expeditions and over 1,500 climbers had been drawn to the coldest season, from Poland and Italy, Japan, Russia and many other countries – too many to contain in one volume. Choosing whom to include was difficult; chronicling this complex history even more so. For simplicity’s sake, I decided to recount the story of the 8,000ers in winter in the order of their first successful winter ascents. It just so happened that it all started with Everest: not the most difficult 8,000er, but the highest. Writing it in the dead of winter – in fact, the harshest winter at my home in Banff in 131 years – seemed appropriate. Huddled at my desk beneath a frosty window, swaddled in down, I tap-tapped for hours, slipping away mid-day for a sprint around the local ski trails, hoping for a glimmer of sun to melt the frost on my eyelashes. Those frigid dashes provided ample time to imagine those same temperatures – but six and a half kilometres higher – and to reflect on the resilient characters capable of functioning in such conditions. I know, or in too many cases, knew, many of these winter climbers. Knowing them and their families made writing some chapters a gut-wrenching experience. But as I revisited the long conversations that led...