I have just finished reading the book. A true page turner, it actually took me over a week to digest. At some point, I just did not want to know what happened next. In the book — on K2 in August of 2008; and in the very present time — on K3 (better known as Broad Peak). While the history of the former events had already been written into the pages, the later was unfolding in front of the world watching…
For me, it all started on Tuesday morning Eastern time, March 5, with the exciting news about four Polish mountaineers — Maciej Berbeka, Adam Bielecki, Tomasz Kowalski and Artur Małek — who have just made the historic first winter ascent of Broad Peak — the twelfth highest mountain in the world, and the neighbor of K2 (the second highest) in the great mountain range of Karakorum. And the night before, I have just finished Part 1 of “Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day”. It was a pure coincidence, and I have not really followed Polish expedition to Broad Peak prior to this announcement. Since, I have started following it closely.
Part 1 of “Buried in the Sky”, called “Ambition”, mostly paints a historic background leading to the dreadful events of the summer of 2008 on K2. “Outside” magazine in its February edition calls it “the sluggish first hundred pages, which veer into everything from Buddhist mythology to Nepal’s civil war”, but I have actually enjoyed it a lot (to give “Outside” deserved credit, it also points out that the entire book, published in June of 2012, is “easily the most riveting and important mountaineering book of the past decade”, and it was Outside’s review that made me read it). The last few pages of Part 1 describe winter on Broad Peak:
(…) Broad Peak turns brutal in December. Winds pummel the slopes at up to 130 miles per hour, gouging out tents, shredding ropes, and shooting hail like rounds from a machine gun. No climber has managed a winter ascent. Only a few have been daring enough to try.
I read these words late Monday evening, March 4. During the night I was dreaming about trekking through the hills of southern Poland, covered in snow. Perhaps it was a memory of my own winter ascent of Babia Gora with my old climbing partner Jurek Zielinski, some 15 years ago… I woke up on Tuesday, March 5, to the news delivered by Polish Radio Channel 3, praising the success of the Polish Winter Mountaineering on Broad Peak.
“Buried in the Sky” has two more parts. Part 2, called “Conquest”, tells the story of the final ascent of K2 between July 28 and August 1, 2008, performed by the joined forces of several expeditions, all aiming for a very narrow window of relatively good weather that was in forecast. The story certainly gains speed from now on. And even though the speed was not necessarily the domain of the climbers, most of those who attempted the summit bid on August 1, have reached the top (sooner or later in the afternoon and evening hours). Mountain Goddess, looking down from her throne at 8,611 m above sea level, claimed “only” two fatalities on the way up.
On March 5, 2013, between 5:00 and 6:00 PM local time, all four Polish climbers have reached the top of Broad Peak, rising at 8,047 m above sea level. It was celebrated in the media. But the next day, we were faced with different, more troubling news: two of four Polish mountaineers who made the first ever winter ascent of Broad Peak have not arrived at Camp IV as scheduled, and as per the team leader, the situation was very serious.
Part 3 of “Buried in the Sky” is called “Descent”. And that is where the book and reality of the present climb tragically mix together. There were many tragic events unfolding on the way down from the summit of K2 in 2008, and I will leave it to the readers to discover, but among them one seems to be of a pattern in such situations: because of many different reasons, climbers somehow cannot make it back to the highest camp (the closest one to the summit that they had left from on their summit day) before nightfall, and are forced to make a “bivouac in the open”, in the alien world called the Death Zone (approximately at or above 8,000 m or 26,000 feet above sea level).
March 6, 2013, 2:00 AM. Artur Małek and Adam Bielecki are in camp IV at an altitude of 7,400 m. Tomasz Kowalski and Maciej Berbeka are bivouacking on the pass at 7,900 m. It is approximately -36 degrees Celsius at 8,000 m at night. Pakistani climbers who were a part of the team are preparing for the rescue at Base Camp. One of the climbers, Shaheen Baig, was also an important figure on K2 in 2008.
The rescue on K2 continued until August 3 in 2008; 11 lives were lost, but some were saved. And on Broad Peak in 2013, the hope for the missing Polish climbers was still alive until March 7. But eventually, on March 8, they were declared dead.
These are two different mountains, K2 and K3, although neighbors in the same range; two different seasons, summer of 2008 and winter of 2013, although it seems that the conditions were favorable in both cases; and two different stories about the unconditional passion for the mountains, personal ambitions, moral questions, calculated risks. I will make no attempt to compare them; I will not judge any decision that have been made; but I do believe that if these stories resonate with you, as they have with me, you should spend some time to meditate on them on your own, trying to understand. For me, the fact that I have read “Buried in the Sky” during this particular winter week, when similar drama was unfolding in the mountains, made them both even more meaningful.
To the climbers who stayed in their mountains.
