Onto the ice
This post chronicles the transition from the green human worldto the elemental landscape of rock and ice where we are only visitors. Unliketreks in Nepal and the like, this trip requires three days of glacier traveljust to reach the base of the Karakoram giants.
June 26: Urdukas to Goro II
This is one of the shorter days of the trek. After an hour orso with the group, I was feeling good and used the opportunity to “stretch mylegs.” I often find a day or two on the approach to open up my stride and walkat my own pace. I make sure to keep my effort under my aerobic threshold (thepoint where breathing does not “break away” into a labored rhythm). For me,this is a heart rate of around 130 bpm at sea level. I also enjoy the alonetime to clear my mind away from the organized chaos of the expedition. I spenta few hours walking with a ~14 year old porter. Though he couldn’t speak a wordof English, we connected a bit and shared some of my lunch. Goro II is a stark contrastfrom Urdukas and the camps below as it’s on the ice and completely exposed towind. There’s also a definitely a human waste issue. A member of another teamfell seriously ill here.
June 27: Goro II to just below Iranian Camp
This turned out to be an epic day. The story all season hasbeen the incredible amount of snow. An expedition before us was stopped heredue to waist deep snow…far too much for the donkeys and porters to handle. Theporters have minimal footwear, often just socks and sandals. To overcome thisobstacle, we were attempting a new variation on the route, which hugs the leftside of the glacier. We quickly realized that this was a challenging choice asthe trail went up and down constantly—something that wore us out and that we knewwould be an ordeal for the porters and animals. Nonetheless, we marched on andreached our destination, near Iranian camp, after a long effort. After severalhours of waiting in the cold into the early evening, we began to get concerned.After all, we were sitting on a glacier at about 16,000 ft with no resources,no means of communication and no idea how everyone else below us was faring.After some time, the sirdar (head staff member) ran up and told us we had toretreat. After changing back into our hiking clothes, we hiked down the glacierwhere we soon found our team.
June 28: Final stretch to K2 base camp
This is always an exciting day. At last we get to put our packs down, build camp and settle in to relaxed base camp life. I hiked with Ibrahim, our kitchen runner/server, and found the Sherpas hard at work when we arrived in camp. It’s really quite an effort to flatten out a glacier and stack rock platforms for the kitchen, dining tents, and camping tents. While I’m not nearly as strong, I pitched in for an hour or two, allowing me to not only show good faith, but also to scope out a good tent site (in case you ever are in the market, you’re looking for something a bit of a distance away from the kitchen and main trail through camp). I helped build a perfect spot in ‘the suburbs’ with spectacular mountain views.
