From Stu in the USA office
July 14, 2010
Just off the phone with Fabrizio and had a great conversation about everything that is happening on K2 and Broad Peak and I am as excited to follow them as they are to climb!
Broad Peak Summit Push
Everything is aligned really nicely and if the conditions allow we’ll be seeing our team off late on the 16th or early on the 17th for a summit bid!
Today Ben, Rob, Brian, Meagan, Asgar Taqui and Ghulam made it up to C2 and got down to the work of resting, eating and hydrating! They are feeling great and hope for a great sleep in anticipation of a key push to C3 tomorrow. On the 15th Fabrizio, Chris, Mike, and Jo will head up to C2 while the first group with Ben will move up to C3.
On the 17th they will hop again as Ben’s group will go to C4 and Chris, Fab, Jo and Mike will replace them in C3. As Chris and Fabrizio have been moving well and Jo and Mike will be utilizing O2 they will leave a bit earlier for the summit bid (on the 17th) than the C4 group and hope to join them for the move up the col and with luck across to the summit!
At this point Aziz and Farhad are resting after their hard work on K2 and will plan to join the team on K2 for the push to C4.
The remaining members are all using this push up the hill simply to acclimatize for k2 and will be taking it easy and clearing gear as they come down, This includes Ed, Garth, Katrina, Lhakpa, Luis and Tshering.
We have one BC services member only, Ian, and he’ll be making his own decision about summit timing but at this point looks to be joining along with the second group.
First Norwegian?
Jo Valseth is trying to become the first Norwegian to summit Broad Peak so we all wish him and his country great success. There are other Norwegians on the hill so with good luck there may be more than one countryman atop Broad Peak in the days ahead!
Over on K2
As always we try to play nice with other teams for fixing routes and sharing tents whenever possible and Fabrizio has been working very hard with the other climbers on the Cesen to ensure we all minimize our load carrying. So tents he and Aziz and Farhad carried up will be shared with at least one other team and we’ll likewise be spending a few nights in their tents during our push. The hope is to save as many resources for all teams as we can. Really nice to see this good cooperation and we’ll hope it continues throughout the summer!
As I continue to read Ed Viesturs book on K2 he comments a number of times about the differences between teams and groups and how they respond during times of crisis or challenge. I think that this is certainly an issue to be taken very seriously and I believe that we have a large enough team coming together and enjoying each others company that we have a strong team headed up Broad Peak and will have another on K2. The more dance parties and Jenga games we play the safer we are up high…go Jenga!
Fabrizio or Chris will drop a Gabcast every night so be sure to check the gabcast page as well as here for news each day!
Field Touring Alpine Audio Dispatches at Gabcast
Field Touring Alpine Audio Dispatches #92: Fabrizio calls in From BC with the Summit Push update for the 14th July!
Enjoy!
ps: Rewatched the classic flick “K2” last night and while so much of it makes no sense at all logistically and practically it does have numerous poignant moments and does offer a lot of insight into the old question of why we come to these high, cold and steep mountains.
Harold: It's beautiful
Taylor Brooks: Course it's beautiful, did you think I'd take you to an ugly mountain?
A few quotes
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102178/quotes
full text
http://www.angelfire.com/movies/closedcaptioned/k2.txt
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