Thanks
to the late-arriving permit, the last of the Polish team’s baggage
arrived in Kathmandu on 20 December 1979 and it wasn’t until 4
January that base camp was fully constructed on the south side of the
mountain. Yet within ten productive days, the first three camps were
in place and Andrzej began
to wonder why no one had tried this before.The news from Camp 3,
however, wasn’t good. Above the tents reared the Lhotse wall, one
continuous sheet of hard ice. They had hoped for snow, into
which they could easily kick steps, but the winter winds had stripped
the face down to its icy core, presenting the Poles with much more
difficult climbing. When the frigid temperatures and screaming winds
of January bit hard, their spirits fell. The team retreated to base
camp, where the anemometer
often registered 130 kilometres per hour and the temperatures fell to
-40° Celsius at night. They began to understand why they were
completely alone on the mountain.
To
compensate for the harsh conditions, Andrzej surprised the tired
mountaineers with a plastic bathtub from Warsaw. The plastic soon
cracked in the cold, but Andrzej replaced it with a giant aluminium
basin he had purchased in Kathmandu. A fire burned constantly in the
kitchen tent, providing
piping hot water for the tub, into which the alpinists lowered their
weary bodies, wallowing in its warmth. Another feature at base camp,
though less popular than the tub, were two 20-metre
aluminium radio aerials, the handiwork of Bogdan Jankowski, a climber
from Wrocław. Bogdan was responsible for not just the aerials but
three long-distance transmitters, eight radio telephones, tape
recorders used to record communication between camps, a gas-driven
high-voltage generator and batteries. Bogdan sent out daily bulletins
to Poland so the public could monitor their progress on the mountain.
Return messages reminded the mountaineers of home. Hanna Wiktorowska,
secretary of the PZA back in Warsaw, was charged with communicating
the crucially important newsflashes from the families to the team:
‘Zosia has got one tooth up, one tooth down … Are you remembering
to wear warm socks?’
For
weeks, shrieking winds battered the climbers, eroding their strength
and their will. From Camp 3 to the saddle of the South Col was a
distance of only 850 metres, but in these conditions, those 850
metres took nearly a month to surmount. By this time, many on the
team were too exhausted to continue.
Others were injured. Krzysztof Żurek was knocked over by the wind
and tumbled twenty metres before the nearest piton stopped his fall.
He managed to reach Camp 3, but then slipped into a crevasse –
twice – on his way to base camp. Both Zyga Heinrich and Alek Lwow
were suffering from
frostbite in their hands. The climbers’ throats were inflamed from
the cold, dry air and their camps were routinely destroyed by
hurricane-force winds. The busiest person on the expedition was the
doctor at base camp.
By
10 February only a few were still strong enough to function well in
the otherworldly conditions: Walenty Fiut, the unstoppable Zyga
Heinrich, and the two youngsters on the team, Krzysztof Wielicki and
Leszek Cichy. Andrzej moved them about like chess pieces, looking for
the magical combination that would take them to the South Col. ‘I
was convinced it was only a psychological barrier preventing us from
reaching it,’ he said. Leszek, Walenty, Krzysztof and Jan Holnicki
set out from Camp 3 on 11 February. Each one climbed alone, at his
own pace, immersed in his thoughts. They reached the Yellow Band,
continued towards the Geneva Spur, and began a long, exposed,
slanting traverse. Partway across, Jan turned back, but the others
reached the South Col at 4 p.m. A breakthrough. Leszek quickly
returned to Camp 3 in the face of the screaming winds battering the
col. Walenty and Krzysztof battled with their four-season tent but
were unable to erect it in the wind, so they settled for a small,
inadequate bivouac tent. They survived the night, but spent the
entire time propping up the tent pole. The thermometer inside the
tent showed-40° Celsius.
Base
camp was worried. They talked on the radio throughout the night with
Walenty and Krzysztof, encouraging them, calming them. There wasradio
chatter from other camps as well, including one rather badly
receivedmessage from Leszek, who was resting in relative comfort at
Camp 3. When he
suggested Walenty and Krzysztof should continue since they were so
near the top, his comment was greeted with howls of protest from the
rest of the team. The next morning, the lead climbers fled, Krzysztof
to Camp 2, complaining of frostbite in his feet, and Walenty all the
way to base camp. Andrzej sensed this was a critical moment: there
was a perceptible shift in mood. ‘How powerless is any leader at
moments like these?’ he asked. ‘If I wanted to save the
expedition, there was only one thing to do, and that was to attempt
the climb myself.’
Andrzej had not yet
been as high as Camp 3, and now he was proposing to climb the
mountain. A preposterous idea, but within two days he and Ryszard
Szafirski were on the South Col.
Andrzej
knew he was unlikely to go any higher since he wasn’t sufficiently
acclimatised, but he had made a staggering effort in order to salvage
team morale. It worked. Almost immediately there was a renewed
energy. Oxygen bottles were soon cached at 8,100 metres for the
summit team; Krzysztof and
Leszek were at Camp 3; and Zyga and Pasang Norbu Sherpa were at Camp
4 on the South Col, feeling strong and ready to try for the summit.
As it was 14 February, they now faced a bureaucratic problem that
seemed insurmountable. Their permit was about to expire and orders
from Kathmandu were clear: no more moving up the mountain after 15
February. After that, the only allowable activity on the mountain
would be to clear their camps and descend. Since Andrzej doubted they
could climb it by that date, he dispatched a porter to relay a
request to the ministry of tourism for an
extension. The porter had his own ideas about a permit extension: he
was fed up with the expedition and wanted to go home. So, he
cunningly requested only two more days. Two more days, and the
suffering would finally be over. Two days was all they got.
Climbing
without supplemental oxygen, Zyga and Pasang began their summit bid
on 15 February. The winds had stopped, but it was snowing steadily.
Zyga was known for his careful attitude towards risk, and it soon
became clear from radio transmissions with Andrzej that the
accumulating snow was making him nervous. They reached 8,350 metres
before turning around and descending: a bitter decision, but a new
winter altitude record. There were now only two alpinists high on the
mountain: Leszek and Krzysztof. With just two days remaining on their
extended permit, the pressure
was enormous as they left their tent at Camp 3 on the morning of 16
February, bound for the South Col.
That
night, the temperature plummeted to -42° Celsius and the wind
continued to roar. ‘We were in a trance,’ Krzysztof recalled of
the followingmorning, the last day of the permit. ‘When we left
towards the summit …we already had blinders on. Only the summit
mattered … when you feel the nearness
of the summit, you feel that it’s within your reach. And it’s
easy to lose your sensitivity. You stop being able to measure your
strength versus your ambition. And when you pass a certain boundary,
then only luck is left.’They understood there was no choice: Poland
was Poland, and Everest was Everest. They had to climb it.
They
lightened their loads as much as possible by taking just one bottle
of oxygen each. Krzysztof could no longer feel his feet but he kept
plodding on, drawing on his reserves. Moving without a rope, they
took turns breaking trail through the snow. The two rarely spoke.
There was no need. As they climbed higher, the jet stream hit them,
knocking them off balance. Krzysztof recalled that the Hillary Step,
the crux on the upper part of the climb, was surprisingly easy, being
completely drifted in with snow. He clipped into fixed lines left by
previous expeditions and soon after saw Leszek raising his arms: he
was on the summit. Krzysztof joined him and recalled vaguely that
they hugged.
The
rest of the team was waiting. ‘The tension was unbearable,’
Andrzej their anxious concern. ‘Hope and despair followed one
another at each passing moment. As the hours passed and there was
still no word over the radio telephone, our anxiety was
overwhelming.’At 2.25 p.m. Leszek’s voice boomed over the radio:
‘Do you copy? Do you copy? Over.’‘Negative, say again. Say
again.’ ‘Guess
where we are!’
‘Where
are you? Over.’
‘At
the summit. At the summit.’
As
base camp erupted into screams of joy, Andrzej raised his hands to
silence the commotion. He needed to be certain they were on the true
summit. His voice crackled over the radio: ‘Hey you, can you see
the triangle?’ The Tibetan and Chinese climbers who’d summited in
1975 had left a metal tripod to mark the summit. Leszek assured him
they were standing beside the tripod, and he promised to leave a
maximum-minimum thermometer, a small cross and a rosary to prove they
had been there, and to record some data about winter temperatures on
the summit of Everest. The following
spring’s Polish team planned to retrieve the items, but a Basque
team beat them to it. Unfortunately, the Basque climbers didn’t
realise what the thermometer had recorded, so they shook it and lost
the minimum temperature measurement.
Everest Layer Cakes
Andrzej
radioed Hanna at the PZA, where she had been anxiously waiting for
hours. ‘Today on 17 February at 2.30 p.m. the Polish flag appeared
on the highest point in the world. Thereby the Polish team set a
record in winter climbing. Best regards from all the participants.
Zawada. Over.’ Both Leszek and Krzysztof later admitted if the goal
hadn’t been Everest in winter, theywould have given up weeks
earlier. But the objective, and Andrzej’s leadership, had inspired
them to their highest level of performance.
Bernadette McDonald: 2020.
Published by Vertebrate Publishing. Details...here
