Jim Wickwire - K2: Summit and Bivouac

K2: Summit and Bivouac

K2 has been termed the "Savage Mountain" in writings about its high altitude climbing. Among its dangers are its notorious weather conditions, stretches of technical climbing on rock and ice, marked cliff exposures, and enormous, high-altitude serac. It has the second-highest fatality rate among the "eight thousanders" for those who climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Unlike Annapurna, the mountain with the highest fatality rate, K2 has never been climbed in winter.

When Jim Wickwire finally climbed K2 for the first time, seven climbers had already died becoming victims of the mountain (however no one has died on any of Jim Wickwires climbing expeditions on K2). His first attempt on K2 was in a 1975 expedition that broke down in disputes and never got above 22,000 ft.

Wickwire reached the summit of K2 with Louis Reichardt on September 6, 1978. (This ascent was emotional for the American team, as they saw themselves as completing a task that had been begun by the 1938 team forty years earlier). The pair took photos on the summit, and then Reichardt started his descent immediately because he was out of supplemental oxygen. Wickwire lingered a little longer, with the intention of catching up. Upon his descent it was beginning to get dark however, and Wickwire did not have a headlamp. Concerned with being able to move safely in the dark, he decided to spend the night where he was, which was below the summit, above 27,000 ft/8,200 m. Wickwire had done bivouacs before, and knew that he just needed to gut it out until daylight which was risky because of the thin air and severe cold. Risks include: hypoxia, hypothermia, frostbite, and cerebral and pulmonary edema.

Wickwire did not have a tent, sleeping bag or water. His oxygen ran out half way through the night, and his gas stove became inoperable. His only protection other than his immediate winter clothing was a thin nylon bivvy sack, which is uninsulated but windproof and helps to retain body heat. He shivered uncontrollably from the extreme cold (estimated to be -35 degrees below zero F.). He consequently kept slowly sliding down the slope. He was forced to get out of his sack to remedy the problem and discovered that he was at risk of sliding over an edge that rolled off to drop 10,000 ft/3,000 m below. "No on had ever survived a solo bivouac above twenty-seven thousand feet".

Fortunately, I had been through enough miserable bivouacs to know that the night would end. I also think that having reached the summit was a critical element in my survival, it gave me an adrenaline rush and great sense of satisfaction that saw me through the night. The hardest thing was trying to get moving in the morning. By then I was pretty far gone. What motivated me were thoughts of my wife and children.

-Jim Wickwire on surviving a bivouac on K2

The next morning, John Roskelley and Rick Ridgeway found him continuing down while on their way to the summit. Wickwire lost parts of two toes and underwent lung surgery due to blood clots on his lungs (pulmonary emboli); he also caught pneumonia, and pleurisy. Wickwire was taken by helicopter right from the glacier at the bottom of the mountain by the Pakistani army and immediately went into lung surgery. The surgeon expressed uncertainty of Wickwire ever climbing at high altitudes again. Nevertheless, Wickwire continued high-altitude climbing after a couple years of his ordeal and surgery by climbing the slopes of Alaska’s Mount McKinley getting ready for his climbing expedition on Mt. Everest.