THE HIMALAYAS: Conquest of K-2

In the high, bleak Karakoram, mightiest of the Himalayan ranges, China, Russia, India. Tibet. Afghanistan and Pakistan merge in a tumult of mountains. Dominating the peaks, in the northernmost corner of Pakistan-held Kashmir, is the world’s second highest mountain: 28,250-ft. Mt. Godwin Austen, known to mountaineers as K-2.* For years, K-2 has been regarded as unclimbable. Last week the news came through that the unclimbable had been climbed by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio, 57, a geology professor at the University of Milan.

Stubborn as Sin. Desio’s was the sixth attempt to conquer the “killer mountain,” as K-2 is often called. The Duke of the Abruzzi tried and failed in 1909; so did the Duke of Spoleto in 1929. Always before, men were driven back by cold as severe as Everest’s, gales that can stop a man’s breathing, rock falls that roar like siege guns, flinging boulders the size of trucks.

K-2 became known as the “Italian mountain,” as Everest was the British, Nanga Parbat the German, Annapurna the French. (In the ‘305, Americans joined in on K2. reached 26,000 feet in 1938, 27,000 in 1939, 25,800 in 1953.) Professor Ardito Desio had climbed with the Duke of Spoleto. The professor is a mild-mannered little man with a Punch-andJudy nose and a mountaineer’s reputation of being “stubborn as sin.” Last spring Desio organized another Italian expedition, with eleven mountaineers, five scientists and a Pakistani army colonel.

Up the Gorges. From Skardu (pop. 2,000), ancient capital of Baltistan. they moved north to a valley where the slow ascent began. Week after week, they toiled upwards in a climate where a bareheaded man with his feet in the shade can get sunstroke and frostbite simultaneously. They bounced across torrents on inflated goatskin rafts, threaded their way through gorges whose walls rose sheer to pinnacles two miles above them. In May they left behind the last green spikes of living vegetation, and entered into a land where no birds sing. In their faces was a biting wind, boring relentlessly down from Baltoro glacier.

Climbing the glacier was agony. At such altitudes, sweat and tears can turn to frost. One day Desio radioed (by portable transmitter) that his Hunza porters had deserted, fearful of the gaping crevasses. the toppling pillars of ice. For the next 23 days, nothing more was heard from him.

Death on the Ridge. Professor Desio and his men laid Camp 1 at the foot of the Abruzzi Ridge, a gaunt rib which lances upwards towards the summit of K2. On the fearful Abruzzi, perhaps the longest continuously steep climbing ridge in the world, a man is like a fly on a wall. He must edge himself up a vertical “chimney,” 100 feet high; if he grabs too hard at the rock, it crumbles in his hand.

One of the most powerful of the climbers was Mario Puchoz, 36, whose friends called him “the Mule.” In World War II Puchoz fought on the Russian front—but K-2 proved harsher still. On June 21 the Mule died of pneumonia, at 19,000 feet. He was buried near the grave of U.S. Geologist Arthur Gilkey. who was swept away by an avalanche during the 1953 U.S. assault on K2.

By day the Italians struggled upwards. nailing down a rope-rail that stretched every inch of the way. Nights, they crouched in tents, often with half the canvas hanging over the slope for lack of level ground. K-2 gave no quarter, and after many days of heartbreak, they were driven back down to 25,000 feet. There the expedition reorganized, and Desio sent the fittest to try the assault again.

Victory at the Summit. They scrambled to the ice-ridge at 27,000 feet. At last they reached the top, and planted the flags of Italy and Pakistan on the treacherous summit itself. From Skardu last week came this laconic but triumphant message: “Victory dated July 31. All well. Together at base camp. Professor Desio.” Anxious to avoid any repetition of the “who got there first” disagreement between Everest’s Hillary and Tenzing, Desio had kept the names of the victors secret.

There would be glory enough for all. Back home in Italy, grave old (80) President Einaudi, immersed in a copy of the Economist, dropped the magazine and leaped out of his chair in glee. “It’s like a flower in the buttonhole,” glowed Turin’s La Stampa. In absentia, Professor Desio, a reserve officer in the Alpini, was promoted from captain to major.

* The surveyors’ method of numbering the peaks of the Karakoram range.