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K2 expedition packed with trials |
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Thursday, 27 December 2007 |
 Bishop resident Don Bowie sits atop K-2 this past summer. It was after the successful summit bid that Bowie and Co. ran into a series of misfortune. Photo courtesy DonâBowie By Gary Nickell
Register Correspondent 12-25-2007
In northern Pakistan there’s a mountainous region known as the Karakoram, an extension of the great Himalayan chain where the world’s second highest mountain, K2, rises 28,253 feet above sea level. Climbing K2 is considered by many to be the most difficult and dangerous peak on Earth, surpassing even Mt. Everest which is 776 feet higher but far less technical.
Bishop climber Don Bowie reached the summit of K2 last summer, and the feat was not without its obstacles. Stolen crampons, the death of two other climbers, the rescue of a disabled climber, an untimely storm, and a fall leading to his own injury made the risky experience even more dangerous, but the worst part is that most of these things occurred during a brief time frame, making Bowie’s safe return a near-miracle.
The entire trip to and from the mountain took place from May 16 through July 31, 2007, and the five-person team placed all three of its climbers – Bowie, Chris Warner of Maryland and Bruce Normand, a Scot – on top of K2 on July 20. It was after the successful summit attempt that the misfortunes and misdeeds began.
As the summitters were descending to High Camp, the highest established camp on the mountain at about 26,500 feet, it all started with “the chaos from rescuing a Czech climbewho was exhausted and hypothermic (dangerously low body temperature),” Bowie explained, and members of a few expeditions were also just “trying to get out of there, we could tell a storm was moving in.”
In the ensuing confusion, someone apparently made off with Bowie’s crampons (a set of spikes that attach to climbing boots). “We assumed they were stolen from in front of our tent at High Camp,” Bowie confirmed. “In the morning I got up and looked for them for about an hour but there were no crampons.” He knew he was wasting time and had to get a start on his descent, so Bowie departed without the devices, which are extremely crucial for purchase on steep ice descents.
Sure enough, “about 200 feet above Camp 3 (23,950 feet) I was lowering myself with just my ice axes when suddenly I was going from zero to 60 down the mountain,” Bowie remembered. Miraculously, he landed on a sort of platform, but during the fall he had torn all the ligaments in his left ankle.
After resting a while at Camp 3, Bowie continued his descent, which he was forced to do alone because his partners “were still stuck above me with the Czech climber,” he said. Then, late in the day, he lost his headlamp. The two remaining team members at Base Camp, Joel Shalowitz and childhood friend Chris Stensland, were keeping track of his progress in the fading daylight through a telescope, and watched as the lit headlamp tumbled downslope. Fearing the worst, they assumed he was still attached to the lamp. “They knew what had happened and there was a consensus that my odds of making it down the mountain without making a fatal mistake were very low,” he said, adding that he had also lost radio contact with Base Camp.
In addition, Bowie was recording the climb on film, lugging his photography equipment as well as stopping to film, continuing to shoot as he came down the mountain despite the injury.
While the combination of circumstances was consistently working against Bowie, he recalled that “I actually felt pretty good the whole time I was descending,” he said, “and the motivation to get down was strong.”
Choosing to climb without supplemental oxygen, which, among other advantages, would have aided his injury and ability to sleep, Bowie spent a tough night at Camp 2, where he and four other climbers wedged into a two-man tent. He then descended to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) the next day, meanwhile going on his fourth day without food and second day without water. That was followed by another day during which a different American team carried him down to Base Camp, where a doctor incorrectly diagnosed his injury as a broken ankle. Later he was transported once again to a landing area near the Base Camp at nearby Broad Peak (another of the world’s highest mountains), and finally he was low enough where a helicopter could fly in and remove him.
Bowie was flown to the Pakistani village of Skardu, but the hospital X-ray machine there did not produce the quality pictures necessary for a correct diagnosis, so the next day he began a two-day bus ride to the much larger city of Islamabad. At Islamabad, he simply boarded a plane for home, foregoing any further medical care in Pakistan.
On Aug. 1, some 10 days after the fall, Bowie received the appropriate medical treatment at a hospital in Colorado Springs, where he stayed one day before flying back to California. He just recently fully recovered from the ankle injury.
Bowie, who said his goals are to continue climbing the world’s technical high peaks, is already planning his next adventure, an assault on Nepal’s Annapurna, the 10th tallest mountain on Earth, and Kangchenjunga (third highest, at 28,169) in March 2008. He attempted Annapurna once before but stopped about 2,000 feet below the 26,500-foot summit when another climber needed rescuing.
Born and raised in Canada, Bowie, 38, has been climbing for 16 years and has lived in Bishop the past six years. He was the expedition’s Team Medic and is a member of Inyo County Search and Rescue and was joined on the trek to Base Camp by fellow Search and Rescue partners Becky Pierce, Ann Stanley, Paul Daniel and Jon McConachie. Grant Bentley, also from the Eastern Sierra, and Dan Stensland were also part of the expedition.
Bowie presented a slide show of his K2 experiences at the Inyo Council for the Arts in Bishop a while back, and is working on offering the show in Mammoth Lakes in January, with the date and place to be announced. NBC purchased the film of the expedition and aired it recently, and Bowie said it will likely be re-broadcast at a later date. It can also be found online at nbcsports.com/K2, and a DVD is for sale there as well.
For those who would like to see more of the K2 expedition, you may visit Bowie’s Web site at www.donbowie.net, plus people may subscribe to get updates and announcements, and dispatches and videos from the field during future expeditions.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 08 February 2008 )
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