PART FOUR: Calling the Shot, Life Saving Choices, and Triumph (but not the one you think)

Making life-saving choices never stops when you are at high altitude. Every decision matters. I hadn’t thought about it quite that way before this trip. I don’t think we are all used to making that many important life-defining choices all day long, each day.

Every year a lot of people lose their lives in the pursuit of high-altitude summits. Altitude sickness kills people at Everest Base Camp every year. That rarely makes the news. You don’t need to be in the Death Zone on Everest to die. On K2, 1 in 4 climbers die every year trying to reach the summit. That’s 25% chance that you die if you attempt that summit. We don’t think about it that often, but lots of things can easily kill you in the mountains. The biggest are altitude sickness, poor conditioning, weather, and one of the most dangerous - bad decisions. You might say that failure to condition properly, failure to address altitude sickness early, and underestimating weather are all bad decisions in some form.

It’s easy to look at a series of decisions in the mountains - after the fact - and see where things went wrong. It’s much harder to make good decisions consistently in real time. Humans often have the innate need to compete, to win, to triumph at all costs. Especially in pursuits that require months of preparation, expense, and pride or ego. I know a lot of people for whom checking off successful summits is the ultimate, if not the only, prize.

One thing about high altitude mountaineering, in my opinion, is that you must be prepared to be unsuccessful relatively regularly if you want to enjoy the sport for a long time (i.e. not die or have a catastrophic injury), so those people who suffer from “summit fever” are especially at risk in this sport. Learning to accept that you can do everything right and still not “win” is an important life lesson. The mountains teach that over and over again.

I was about to put all that to the test.

If you’ve been following along on my journey, you know that Camp 3 was a harrowing adventure all by itself. But now, we were moving up to Camp 4 in preparation for summit day.

Camp 4 was 19,000 ft and extremely desolate. The site itself is just a small outcrop of rock, unprotected from the ravages of the higher peaks, with no water source, and no animal or plant life. On the way up to Camp 4 the wind had been moderate, which left me feeling unsettled after surviving the serious windstorm at Camp 3. We made the decision to set up only one tent, as we would be taking it down at around 2am before we left for our summit bid. We decided to take the guide ropes from the other tent and reinforce everything surrounding this tent. We spent the late afternoon gathering rocks to pile strategically around the outer tent fly. By the time we were ready to eat dinner and go to bed, the tent was nearly bolted to the rock slab under us. That was a good thing because around 9pm, the powerful winds from the high peaks whipped back down on us with renewed strength. This time, we had all our gear and both of us in the tent, so we had more weight to anchor, and we were both glad we had taken the time to reinforce the structure itself. The loud winds shook the tent violently at a balmy 70-80 mph, but it held. I thought for sure that our summit bid was over as these wind storms can rage for 24 hours+. However, at around 1am, they started to subside to around 20-30mph, and Matias made the decision that it was safe enough to go for the summit.

We left camp at around 2:30am in the pitch-black night with no moon. It was minus 10 degrees. We had only head lamps to guide us over the sharp, steep rock. I was wearing an expedition suit and four layers, so my body was warm, but I had been struggling with keeping my hands and feet warm - even with good systems in place. I’d gotten used to being cold and uncomfortable, and I still wasn’t feeling the effects of altitude except for loss of appetite. Legs, lungs, and heart were strong, and my blood was staying reasonably oxygenated. We beat our first split by 15 minutes. Matias was thrilled that we were on target for a strong, early summit.

That’s when things took a serious turn.

Out of nowhere the first big wind gust hit me hard making me unsteady for a minute. I hoped it was an isolated one. It wasn’t. Within ten minutes, we were climbing in 50mph gusts, and we were on exposed rock at 19,800 ft. Matias was a big guy, so while this wasn’t fun for him, he wasn’t getting buffered around. I was. As the wind speed started to increase, I was becoming less steady even with a heavy pack. A big gust hit me hard and I immediately dropped to prone on the ground to keep myself from being blown dangerously in any direction. So here I am laying face first on a narrow path with a steep drop to my left trying to ride out the gust. Even laying on the ground, the wind was still moving me across the rock. I waited for the gust to subside, got back up, and kept going. I was growing increasingly nervous, but Matias was thrilled with our progress and encouraging me to keep pressing on.

The rest of the path to this summit is very steep and treacherous. We were roped, but that was little consolation, and frankly not much help. At this point I was getting buffered around quite a bit, but I was riding it out. We came to a narrow ledge with a rock wall of uneven rock pillars - probably 3 or 4 stories high and a straight 10-12 story drop onto jagged rock. The path to traverse this was about 18 inches wide and probably 200 yards long. The sun had just come up, finally.

I was about half-way across the ledge, when I heard a familiar sound. Laying in my collapsed tent at Camp 3 for 24 hours, I had learned what the biggest gusts sound like when they start up high in the peaks. It sounds like a low growl. You know when they hit a few seconds later, it will be fierce. I heard that sound on this ledge. I made the split-second decision to throw myself at an opening between two rock pillars and hold on with all my might. I hoped that the wind would come to help push me into the rock and not push me towards the drop off the ledge. I wasn’t lucky, and the wind wasn’t in my favor. It hit me hard at probably 60 or 70mph and ripped at my pack trying to throw me off the ledge. My only saving grace was the decision to throw myself into that small opening. If I had been standing on that ledge in the open when the wind hit, I would have been blown off that ledge and perished. The fall would have been unsurvivable, and I knew it. My single good split second decision saved my life. I stood wedged in that crack, looking down at the drop below, and I shook. I wanted some time to collect myself, but I needed to get to the other side before another gust came because the rest of the ledge was a sheer rock face. Nowhere to hide and nothing to protect me. I made it.

I immediately said to Matias that I thought we should consider descending. He felt that we should push on because we were making such good time. Reluctantly, I agreed to continue. I knew we had a razors-edge coming up that was fully exposed with drops on both sides. I had no idea how we would cross it in this wind, and it was just wide enough for boots to go in single file one after another. Sure enough, no sooner had we begun that traverse, then another big gust hit us. This time, Matias also heard the gust approaching. He threw himself on top of me, tackling me to this narrow precarious ledge, and used our combined weight to hold us to the ledge. By this time the temperature had also dropped further to around minus 18 degrees. We were at 20,600 ft. The summit was about 1,000 ft above us.

Matias still wanted to continue. We were so close. He didn’t want to give up the summit. I did not feel the same. I’d been quietly chanting “let’s not die today” under my breath for the last 45 minutes as a marching cadence that kept me pacing forward. We had a tough conversation, and whether he meant to or not, he made me feel that I was cowardly for not pressing on. We argued about it for a bit, but in the end we descended. Sometimes, my stubborn nature comes in handy.

It was a hard descent in that wind, but I still had plenty in the tank, so we made good time, and as we descended down to 18,000ft, the wind subsided. We decided to descend all the way down in one afternoon, not stopping at any camps. I was ready to be off the mountain.

We ended up descending 11,000 ft, and we covered 15 miles that afternoon. I had a lot of time to think. I love trips like this one for that exact reason. They strip away the trappings of normal life. Costco runs, dining out, Zoom meetings, drycleaning pick up. Life comes into sharp focus. We walk around in our normal lives invincible most days, but we are still mammals with basic needs that must be met, In the wild, our mortality is incredibly fragile. I’ve been through those experiences a few times in my life, and each time, I come back with a renewed focus, deeply grounded, and profoundly thankful. For me, mountaineering has never been about the prize of the summit. I always strive for that, but I don’t need to raise a banner on the top of the world to have a triumphant experience. My triumph is continuing my own personal growth, exploring my capabilities, and running up against challenges that test my own self-awareness. That is why I love the big mountains.

Now that I am home, I don’t flinch at 15,000 ft. That’s a good trail run now. Once you change your perspective on hard, old achievements become your new baseline. That’s one of my absolute favorite feelings - when you move your personal understanding of hard because you challenged yourself. And you don’t have to be a mountaineer to enjoy that feeling.