Climbing Broad Peak: No Place for Softies

‘You must be climbing K2,’ purred the blonde airhostess on my Islamabad flight, when I let slip I was going mountaineering. I pointed out that, while I’d be staying near the so-called Savage Mountain, I was actually targeting another 8000m peak just across the Godwin-Austen Glacier - but by then she’d lost interest.

I was travelling to Pakistan under self-imposed duress. Over the years, I’d been fortunate to summit various mountains around the world, but I could never be a well-travelled peak bagger till I climbed something in the Karakoram. Stretching 500km along fractious frontiers between Pakistan, India and China, the Karakoram Range - or Black Gravel Mountains - contains four peaks above 8000m and another hundred over 7000, giving me plenty to choose from.

When British soldier-come-spy Francis Younghusband slipped into the Karakoram in 1887, on a secret mission during the so-called Great Game, he was clearly impressed. ‘This world was more wonderful far than I had ever known before. And I seemed to grow greater myself from the mere fact of having seen it. Having once seen that, how could I ever be little again?’ This was inspirational stuff, though he added the caveat: ‘Austerity, hard and stern, was this region’s leading feature. Softness there was none. And no one who is soft could ever penetrate these mountains.’ By my third attempt at a Karakoram summit, I feared he had me in mind.

My first trip, to Spantik (7027m) in 2019, foundered in heavy snow; while my second, to Gasherbrum II (8035m) three years later, was foiled by a litany of excuses, including exploding bowels. For my third and final shot, I selected Broad Peak, the world’s twelfth highest mountain at 8051m. Though overshadowed by its more famous, shapely neighbour, K2, it’s generally less fickle and fatal to suitors, which made it attractive to me.

My expedition was organised by American guiding company, Madison Mountaineering, whose founder, Garrett Madison, has transformed Karakoram climbing by importing strong teams of Nepalese Sherpas to assist fit, if relatively inexperienced clients summit the previously exclusive K2 - so he sounded just the man for me. Though Garrett himself was leading another K2 expedition, he provided my logistics and two of said Sherpas.

After meeting Garrett’s team in Islamabad, we flew to Skardu. (On my previous trip, I’d driven there via the Karakoram Highway, as every well-travelled peak bagger should do - but once is enough.) On the confluence of the Indus and Shigar rivers, Skardu appears a green, fertile oasis, when viewed from above. At ground level, it’s dusty and scruffy, with goats roaming the streets. The Karakoram veterans amongst us ignored the handicraft shops selling carpets and gemstones, and rather procured large umbrellas.

The next step was a jolting jeep ride on narrow dirt roads above precipitous drops, while our young driver simultaneously performed wheelspins and fiddled on his phone. After six hours, the road finally disintegrated at Askole, a medieval village at 3000m, where we spent our first night under canvas. From here, it was a 100km hike to base camp, taking five days. With no settlements on route, our team was augmented by a long procession of porters, mules and doomed cows and goats.

For the first two days, we followed the north bank of the Braldu River, sometimes high on scree slopes, sometimes down on the sandy shore. The trail got more interesting once we reached the Baltoro Glacier, zigzagging over the moraine and fording frothy rivers – but there was still no shelter from the sun, other than our brollies.

We slept cheek-by-jowl with other teams at the few viable campsites; such as Urdukas, on stone platforms constructed by the Duke of Abruzzi’s K2 expedition in 1909, when it looked like the long drops had last been cleaned. As dust and dirt took their toll, we all got sick at one end or another. The compensation was the scenery and the further we progressed, the more spectacular it got. From Urdukas, we watched alpenglow alight the Trango Towers, while arguing which was which. At Biarchedi, we saw Broad Peak and several Gasherbrums floating above clouds. And on our fifth day, when we reached Concordia and turned north up the Godwin-Austen Glacier, we were confronted with K2’s thrilling pyramid.

Broad Peak Base Camp was five kilometres up the Godwin-Austen Glacier, towards the right hand bank. The peak owes its unflattering aptronym to British explorer Martin Conway who, seeing it in 1892, was reminded of the similarly stout and tri-headed Breithorn (or ‘Broad Horn’) above Zermatt - which I’d climbed decades ago, though doubted that would help. Viewed from camp, Broad Peak’s triad stood in ascending order, left to right: North (7500m), Central (8015m) and Main (8051m).

It was first summited in June 1957 by an Austrian quartet, which included the only two climbers to make first ascents of more than one 8000m peak: 32-year-old Hermann Buhl (who four years earlier had soloed Nanga Parbat) and 25-year-old Kurt Diemberger (who three years later climbed Dhaulagiri). Deploying somewhat different tactics to mine, they eschewed supplementary oxygen and porters above base camp. But for all their purist ethics, it wasn’t a happy trip, with the quartet fracturing into rival pairs, refusing to wait for each other on the summit, arguing about the order their names should be credited, and afterwards sneaking off separately to unclimbed 7000m peaks - with Buhl and Diemberger attempting Chogolisa, where Buhl plunged through a cornice to his death.

About a dozen teams were installed on the rocky moraine beneath Broad Peak. I wasn’t staying here, however, but rather with Garrett’s expedition at K2 Base Camp, five kilometres further on. While adding an hour each way onto my commute, it meant I’d have company between rotations, plus the amenities of Garrett’s camp, including a heated dining tent, yoga dome, nightly movies, selection of wines and hot steamed face towels at dinner. If this sounds somewhat luxurious, compared to Buhl and Diemberger’s quarters it possibly was. But we were still on a glacier at 5000m, with patchy outside comms and a communal thunderbox loo. On reaching camp, our Sherpas and porters set about civilising the landscape, moving boulders and levelling the ground. But it was a Canute-like endeavour, with the melting glacier continually undoing their work.

Our Sherpas also strung up prayer flags and erected a puja altar, adding colour to the austere moraine. The Buddhist Sherpas and Muslim Balti porters got along fine, sharing some linguistic roots. And when our puja degenerated into a mass snowball fight, they quickly joined forces to pelt us Western climbers. Though the snowball fight was fun per se, it indicated that we’d no sooner reached Base Camp than it started snowing, barely letting up for a week. While we’d been hiking in, earlier arrivals had forged a route on Broad Peak up to 6000m, but the bad weather suspended further progress and kept me off the mountain.

Though naturally indolent, I kept myself mildly active with regular hikes over to the Gilkey Memorial, a couple of kilometres from camp. Initially a rudimentary cenotaph to Art Gilkey, who perished on K2 in 1953, it’s become the traditional place to commemorate those lost on Baltoro peaks. The memorials ranged from tin plates with a name scratched on, to gold embossed tablets bearing portraits and epitaphs. One of the plaques was to Polish climber Maciej Berbeka, who in March 1988 claimed the first winter ascent of Broad Peak, alone, after his team retreated in a whiteout. It subsequently transpired, however, that he’d only reached Rocky Summit, some 25m lower and several hundred metres short of the actual top. Returning in 2013, he was part of a Polish quartet which finally made the first winter ascent, but disappeared on the way down along with a team mate.

The weather eventually relented, but unconsolidated snow made an acclimatisation trip up Broad Peak unappealing. Garrett had a permit to attempt Kharat Central, a 6800m virgin, 10km further up the Godwin-Austen Glacier, and invited me along. We were 120m short of the top when we ran out of time and conceded defeat. Having failed on another Karakoram peak, I started to fear I was cursed, never mind soft.

I spent the next 10 days largely confined to Base Camp, with the weather the proverbial pants. As the season drew to a close, several teams made banzai bids on Broad Peak, to be rebuffed at 7000m by chest-deep snow. While I knew it was essential to hang on till the last possible moment, I was nevertheless getting despondent and thinking of home. It was too much effort to leave, however, and simpler to stay and mope.

Then, suddenly, it was a go. I’d just had breakfast when an updated weather forecast hinted at a possible summit window. Leaving camp, I was minded of Herbert Tichy’s words to his fellow Austrian mountaineer, Kurt Diemberger: ‘Come back safe. But even if you don’t, I wish you joy.’ But nobody said anything profound to me, with Garrett’s team at lunch in the mess tent.

I was accompanied by a fast moving, gargantuan rucksack, beneath which was the diminutive, ever-cheerful Temba Sherpa, who’d climbed K2 and Everest seven-fold. After crossing the glacier, we slogged up a scree slope to the designated Crampon Point. Chivvied on by adjacent rockfall, we briskly fitted crampons, harnesses and jumars, and started up the fixed ropes.

Initially, the route took a direct line straight up greasy cliffs, while melting snow sent a waterfall cascading down our necks. Having started quite late, we had the ropes to ourselves, and now realised why. Fortunately, once on the snow slope above, we exited the shower and the gradient eased. After six hours we reached Camp 1, on a stony balcony at 5600m. With other teams having pressed on higher, Temba and I were the only guests. Normally when climbing an 8000m peak, you do several acclimatisation rotations and, by your summit push, are familiar with the route’s nether regions. Despite having been here a month, however, this was the first time I’d set foot on Broad Peak – which was probably just as well, for I’d found the going far harder than expected.

The following day, we were joined by my lead sherpa, Aang Phurba, who nipped up to join us after breakfasting at Base Camp, bolstering our collective cv with multiple 8000m summits. Having Sherpas assist you is all very well, but can leave you feeling quite inadequate. Though only climbing 500 vertical metres, the route to Camp 2 was taxing enough, tracking conglomerate outcrops which provided dubious anchors for the fixed lines and frequent fusillades, one of which brushed my helmet. If inviting from below, Camp 2 was grim on arrival, with a score of crowded tents tethered together. Plus, the surrounding scree was glazed with ice, making going to the loo embarrassing. Having caught the rest of the pack, I spent the night listening to a chorus of coughing.

The next morning, we joined the procession moving up. While the route wasn’t steep, my lungs were empty, and it was a long six hour haul to Camp 3 at 7000m. After watching Temba hack out a platform and erect our tent, I crawled inside for a siesta. I’d just drifted off into a weird dream, when it was time for our summit bid.

I kitted up and crawled outside, though this somewhat understates the kerfuffle of donning a down suit, harness, big boots and oxygen mask inside a cramped tent. Setting off at 8.30pm, we plodded for seven hours up the narrowing, steepening couloir separating the Central and Main towers. There were some 50 climbers going for it, thankfully including a strong Pakistani team who’d left before us and were installing fixed ropes. Initially bunched together on the line, it was difficult to find any rhythm or overtake, but by dawn the field had strung out, basically into those sucking supplementary oxygen and those without, who started slipping back.

The couloir was topped by a 10m cliff, which proved awkward to surmount, with loose boulders to wriggle through and a spider’s web of frayed ropes snagging our oxygen bottles. I was panting heavily when I crawled onto the ridge, and looked down the other side into Tibet. Any hopes for easier going hereon were dashed by the sight of the ridge rearing up to my right. Though mentally prepared for the heartbreak of Rocky Summit, I wasn’t prepared for all the false tops before it, nor the obstacle course of sharp pinnacles, snow mushrooms and dissolving cornices, with dizzying drops either side. It might have been spectacular, if I wasn’t in such a fug.

By the time I reached Rocky Summit, I was frayed. Many climbers give up here, with the true summit only 400m further on, but a wildly exposed notch in the way. Earlier on the ridge, we’d passed the Pakistani rope-fixing team, which gave my ego a boost, till I realised what that meant. In late May 1957, the Austrian quartet had arrived here at 6.30pm and, deciding it was too late, descended all the way to base camp, before returning over a week later to summit. But there was no way I was coming back. Besides, Phurba had already emerged from the notch and was impatiently beckoning me on. So, praying, swearing and hyperventilating, I slithered down and bludgeoned up the other side. Then I tottered along the curving ridge for another hour, geed on like a flagging racehorse by Phurba, who was concerned at the strengthening wind.

At 9.30am, we reached the top. The second team to summit that morning, we gingerly padded around in their footprints, not certain what was solid ground or just windblown snow overhanging Tibet. In the future this cornice might melt and collapse, making Rocky Summit the top, which would be good news for those who turned back there, if somewhat ironic for Maciej Berbeka. While I fumbled to right my South African pennant, Temba tied a silk scarf to the summit cairn and, less obviously, Phurba unfurled a banner proclaiming Buddha was born in Nepal. I vaguely took in the panorama: the Baltoro Glacier which we’d trekked up one month ago; the Gasherbrums which I’d once wanted, but now didn’t care for; K2 where Garrett’s team was hunkered down at 7300m; and, more pertinently, Broad Peak’s summit ridge which we now had to renegotiate.

By the time we’d backtracked along the ridge, abseiled into the couloir and waded through ankle deep porridge to regain Camp 3, we’d been going 18 hours and it was 2.30pm. So, when Phurba mooted carrying on down to Base Camp, I rather crawled into my sleeping bag. I later heard that 28 climbers summited that day and 40 that season - with one fatality, a Pakistani climber, killed by rockfall - but Karakoram statistics are probably unreliable since I appeared twice on the list.

We descended at dawn, keen to get off the route before it became a shooting gallery. We were greeted at Crampon Point by two of our kitchen staff who’d brought up refreshments. In the middle of the glacier, we were intercepted by another reception party carrying, less usefully, a large banner celebrating our ascent. And at Base Camp, we were garlanded with flowers and presented with a chocolate cake. I modestly revelled in being a hero for all of a day, till news broke that Garrett’s team had all summited K2 and I was quickly forgotten. Two army helicopters buzzed up the valley, searching for the bodies of two Japanese alpinists who’d fallen to their deaths, but otherwise it had been a remarkably successful and safe season on K2, with some 70 summits in two days. Of course, I now wished I’d joined Garrett’s K2 trip instead, but you can’t place your bets after the event.

A couple of days later, having sent our climbing gear out on mules down the Baltoro, we hiked over the Gondogoro La - which proved an alpine adventure in its own right, and I regretted having parted with my helmet and crampons. Then, between our last camp at Saicho and waiting jeeps at Hushe, a rather critical footbridge had been washed away, requiring us to cross the raging torrent in a small wooden crate suspended on a wire, yanked over with a rope-pulley, one-by-one.

In later life, Sir Francis Younghusband was chairman of the committee which organised the first British expeditions to Everest, including in 1924 when Mallory and Irvine disappeared. Reflecting on what motivates climbers, he wrote: ‘To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.’ And that he also believed in translucent aliens on planet Altair and, aged 76, started an affair with a married woman 32 years his junior, doesn’t make his comment less insightful. As it was, my own revelation was that I’d only summited Broad Peak on the back of Nepali Sherpas and Pakistani porters, and the Karakoram was no place for softies like me.