The Roof of the World (part 2)
* Scroll to to the bottom for an annotated map of the full trek, based on GPS data
Day three — Monday, 20th June 2023
Khobutse camp. I sleep with my breakfast ration on my chest, so that I don’t break my teeth on frozen cashews in the morning.
From here on the glacier spills out into a vast and inhospitable panorama, over three kilometres wide and covered with up to a metre thick of rubble, accumulated over the years from the endless rain of loose rock and choss from the surrounding mountainside. With the ever-present risk of turning an ankle or falling into a hidden crevice, our pace slows to a crawl.
At this altitude, the sun beats down relentlessly, interspersed with gusts of freezing wind that rake across the ice. Fatigued, we choose to make an early stop and break camp at Goro II, once again making an unannounced visit at the local Army post.
This time, we are greeted by a young officer with a warm smile. His colleagues down at Jhoula camp radioed ahead, asking him to look out for the two unsupported muppets meandering towards K2. “Welcome. I am Captain Hussein*,” he says, in perfectly-enunciated English. “Please, camp with us. You are my guest.” A few of the men help us dig a level platform for our tent, and later take selfies with us, unaccustomed to visits from tourists.
The Captain has an air of natural, self-assured authority, despite being not yet thirty. I liked him immediately.
“We are deployed here four months at a time,” he says. “These posts are manned all year round. In winter, it is often minus twenty degrees. Conditions can be difficult here… but we go wherever our duty demands.”
“Do you get moved around a lot?”
“My next posting will be closer to home, Inshallah.” He is from Islamabad, and there is a large Army base in nearby Rawalpindi. “But next summer, I will be in base camp itself, as an Army liaison for the civilian expeditions.”
Tonight the winds blow eastwards, upwards, into the moonlit void and towards K2.
*All Pakistani Army names changed to protect their privacy. At their request, I have not published any pictures of their camp).
Day four — Tuesday, 21st June 2023
At sunrise, an extraordinary sight. One of the Army men stands atop a high rock on the perimeter, arms outstretched, and calls the azan, which cascades across the barren and inhospitable landscape.
“Allahu Akbar / Ashhadu alla ilaha illallah / Ashhadu anna Muhammadar Rasulullah”
His voice is raw and unadulterated, melancholic and soulful. Two days later, as we cross the high pass ten kilometres away against the rising sun, I will hear his voice echoing from the next valley.
It is noon when we reach Concordia camp, and here the glacier takes a sharp, perpendicular turn northward. We pass a solar-powered communications tower (which means there is only phone signal during daylight), installed and maintained by the Army. As landlines are chewed up by the continuously-moving glacier, the tower links directly to satellite.
As we round the corner, we see it immediately. K2 — the Savage Mountain, the second highest point on Earth — fills the entirety of our view, marking the end of the glacier. It is a mountain of indescribable vastness, and even though we are already at 5,000m above sea level, from where we stand you could stack the pyramid of Giza twenty times over until you reached the actual summit.
Base camp itself is unremarkable, its only distinguishing factor being its size. Being early in the season, only one group has arrived so far, and Musa disappears into the kitchen tent to schmooze the base camp staff. Emerging victorious, we are quietly ushered into the kitchen tent (paying customers take their meals in a separate dining tent), where we sit cross-legged on the floor with the expedition staff. I am surprised to find that they are almost all Nepalis, having just finished the Everest season.
Huge propane tanks fire a blast furnace on which the chapatis are fried, and the kitchen tent quickly reaches a pleasantly warm ambience against the freezing wind outside. The manager sits next to us. He is a Balti man in his thirties and impeccably friendly.
“We have spent the last four weeks setting up base camp, in advance of the expedition arriving. We build up our stores and also set up all the tents that you can see.”
“How many climbers are there in this expedition?”
“Twelve,” he says.
“How many porters did it take to carry all of this stuff up here?”
“Two hundred and nine.”
“Say again?”
“Two hundred and nine. After base camp all the low porters will go back to the village, and the Sherpas and high altitude porters will stay on, to open the road to the summit. There are around twenty Sherpas who will stay at base camp, plus all the kitchen staff who you can see here.”
A quick sidebar on the hierarchy.
Porters, sometimes called low porters, are generally farmers and village men looking to make some extra money for the season. Often wearing nothing but flip flops and light cotton shirts, they carry loads of up to thirty kilos to base camp, a two-week return trip for which they earn a fixed fee of 18,000 rupees (about US$70) each.
A select few are allowed to stay on as kitchen staff, cooking meals and serving clients. For most, this will be their first opportunity to interact with clients and learn English, and they stand to make an extra 20,000–30,000 (US$80–120) rupees depending on how long they spend in camp.
Those who become proficient in English can then try their hand at becoming trekking guides. Again, they only go up to base camp, but by now their food and gear are carried by low porters (except poor Musa), and they can generally afford to purchase boots and warm jackets. Trekking guides receive about four times as much as low porters.
At the pinnacle sits the High Altitude Porter (HAP), who despite the name is in fact a fully qualified mountaineering guide (the direct equivalent of a Sherpa in Himalayan refrain). HAPs lead the route above and beyond base camp, using their bodies as human snow ploughs to clear a footpath for clients through the deep powder. They also fix ropes, set up advance camps and accompany clients all the way to the summit — and are accordingly treated with a certain reverence by the other staff.
HAPs use their own funds to acquire personal mountaineering boots, ropes, down jackets and the like, which can run into thousands of dollars, a fortune in Baltistan. Owing to this immense barrier, there are less than fifty qualified HAPs across the entire Shigar Valley (which has four of the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks), leaving ample room for the Nepalese to muscle their way into the lucrative commercial expedition trade.
Musa himself is currently saving up for boots and crampons — these alone will take an entire season’s wages.
In the kitchen tent, there are two Pakistani HAPs and the rest are Nepalese Sherpas. The Sherpa language is also closely related to Tibetan, so they and the Balti staff can sort-of understand each other. Altogether they share their meal of chapati, dahl and fried eggs with us. After four days of eating freeze-dried pasta I damn well nearly cried.
Day five — Wednesday, 22nd June 2023
Our first rest day. We have a lie-in at base camp until 6am, then take a casual meander back past the telecoms tower and over to Concordia camp, which takes around five hours.
There we meet an Italian trekking expedition, who are also on their way back to town. Their leader is an IFMGA-certified mountain guide from the Aosta Valley who approaches us with great enthusiasm.
“Bon giorno,” he says.
“Bon giorno.”
“Which way are you going back?” From here we can return the way we came, or turn southwards through Gondogoro La (‘La’ means ‘mountain pass’ in Balti / Tibetan). The latter is technically demanding but significantly shorter, saving two days as compared to the extremely boring and arduous trek back down the Baltoro Glacier.
Every year, local HAPs and rescue teams band together at the start of the season to fix ropes on Gondogoro La, allowing porters in their rubber shoes (and less technically-able expedition members) to navigate its steep slopes. This year, owing to heavy snowfall, the ropes have yet to be fixed.
“We are sitting here for two days waiting for them to fix the ropes,” he says. “But still nothing. So I don’t have any more days left. Tomorrow morning, we are going back down that fucking glacier.”
Luckily, we have a secret weapon of sorts. At base camp we met with Ali, a stocky and powerfully-built HAP who we had initially hired to guide us up Pastore Peak, a nearby 6,000m mountain. Said climb was aborted due to missing equipment, so we agreed instead to climb Gondogoro La, sans the fixed ropes.
For the rest of the day, we kill time by staring out into the abyss in silence. I lend Musa my boots and show him how to put on crampons.
A little after 9pm, we are deep are in our sleeping bags when we get a knock (so to speak) on our tent. It’s Musa and Ali.
“There is problem”, Musa says, looking uncomfortable. He’s translating for Ali. “Ali says… you must pay him extra to go up Gondogoro La.”
“We already paid him US$750 to guide us.”
“Yes but he says… you paid him for Pastoro, this climb is different, so must pay again.”
“But we didn’t climb Pastoro, because he told us his donkey was carrying the rope and it fell into a crevice. He hasn’t guided us on anything at all so far. Why would we pay him again?”
Musa doubled down on looking uncomfortable. “Ali says… you must pay him one thousand dollar or he will not go up Gondogoro La tomorrow.”
I tell Ali where to stick his extra fee (which I am not sure Musa translates accurately). This goes back and forth for a good fifteen minutes, during which I threaten to report him to the Ministry of Tourism for abandoning his clients halfway up a mountain. Reaching no conclusion, they walk away, leaving Bartek and I seething mad.
“I’m not paying this guy another fucking cent,” says Bartek.
“I agree. I’d rather walk back down the Baltoro.”
We debate attempting the pass ourselves, unguided, but without a map or any semblance of directions it is a hopeless endeavour. There is nothing to do but nod off and see what the daybreak holds.
Click here for the third and final part of the journey.
Map of the trek:
