The Summit Page #3

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when you go climbing

will be to select

a good climbing partner

or somebody

that you're compatible with.

I've been... I've been lucky,

you know, really.

There's Speedy Gonzales,

Mr. Pemba Gyalje.

Pemba was the one person

Ger wanted to climb K2 with,

and they talked about it

for years and years.

He loved mountaineering.

He knew he could do it.

He loved that mountain.

Ger wanted to climb K2.

Is he in the rock?

Chhiring,

do you know if everyone

is coming down at this point?

Over.

When the accident happened,

Gerard was also asking,

"Do we have time enough

to reach the summit, huh?"

"Aren't we too late?"

And Pemba said, "No, no."

"We can just reach the summit."

"There is time enough."

And then we said, "Okay."

"Then this is the decision,

to move on."

So we just moved on.

We had a big Korean team ahead.

Then you have

your Norwegian guys,

then us in the middle,

with the Spanish guy in front.

I carried on climbing.

I didn't wait.

I didn't see anyone else

until I was going down.

We were climbing,

climbing, climbing,

and then you see the first guys

reaching the summit,

and then you think,

"Please let it be the end,"

you know, because you

are really, completely,

you know, exhausted.

At the last moments,

you really live it fully.

I knew the summit

was waiting for me.

I had won it.

Alberto

was kind of a mythic figure.

So I didn't see Alberto

close up at all

until I met him

when he was on his way down.

And then I asked him

how far it was.

And he said, "Yeah,

a little less than an hour."

One moment, you realize

that it is in your reach.

You're going to feel

that you're going to make it.

It's only a matter of time

to keep on going

to reach the summit.

Yeah!

Gerard, Gus, Pemba...

Over.

We're on the summit of K2!

Whoo-hoo!

Yo, yo, yo.

The light was exceptional,

brilliant, you know.

We're at the end of the Earth,

Heaven almost.

You're thinking, you know,

"This is it," you know?

"It's over. We've done it."

It is definitely a place

of extremes,

but with those extremes

comes extreme beauty.

In many ways,

those very extremes,

they're addictive.

We were all very strong.

We were normal talking.

We didn't have problems

with the altitude.

We were feeling very good.

We were having good moment

on the summit,

and now we are going down.

Marco was coming up.

He said, "Somebody

has to take pictures of me."

So I said, "Yeah, yeah,

go up, up."

"Quickly. Quickly."

It was still clear.

It wasn't dark yet.

But the sun was going down.

Then you realize,

"F***, we have to go down,"

you know?"

Now the surviving starts.

President McAleese

has said her thoughts

are with the family

of a County Limerick man

who is among nine climbers

missing and feared dead

in the Himalayas.

Icefall on the world's

second highest peak

that may have killed

as many as a dozen climbers.

With as many as a dozen

of them were caught out

in a collapse of an foe ledge

just beneath the summit...

Straddling the border

of Pakistan and China,

K2 is slightly smaller

than Mount Everest,

but its reputation

has always been much larger.

And another Pakistani,

a French national,

and an Austrian are missing.

They summited on the Friday,

Friday the 1st of August.

I mean, come Saturday,

just-the internet

was rife with stories.

You had the Fredrik Strang story

about 'em pulling bodies

off the mountain.

One of the climbers,

an American guy, Nick Rice,

had his blog up on the Sunday,

and he said that Ger

refused to come down

the mountain.

I mean, he said, "Refused

to come down the mountain."

Anyone that knows Ger

knew what Ger was about.

Something wasn't right.

Someone might throw

some comment out on their blog

about what they think

might be happening

or, you know,

some rumor they heard

and not realizing, like,

"Hey, we are waiting

for our loved ones."

We're hanging

on every single word

and even how it's written

to get some kind of clue

of what was going on.

Those guys

are making big stories,

even when the tragedy

is still going on,

actually, on the mountain.

So coming down,

you're a bit clumsy.

It's... it's not a matter of...

It's always the same.

The real heroes, you don't hear.

The stupid thing is,

if we would have been

successful, which we were,

because we reached the summit,

there was only

such a small piece

in the newspaper, you know?

And now,

because 11 climbers died,

it went all over the world.

Everybody wants to know

how it was possible.

What happened to us

was just a matter of misfortune,

you know?

It was such a successful story

till we went to the summit.

We were the first expedition

on the mountain.

We had a beautiful time,

because everything

was really organized.

We had good food.

We had good cooks.

Every detail

was planned and organized.

We are a very strong team

compared to other expeditions.

We were putting

all of our fixed rope-

everything we were doing

by ourself.

Bringing up those ropes

to 8,000 meter,

it's a hell of a job.

The first four till five weeks,

every day fixing the ropes

100 meter by 100 meter

by 100 meter,

and then going back

just by the rope, you know,

going down to the base camp.

Camp Two, base camp. Over.

The snow conditions

and the wind-

Weather conditions-

are also really bad for you.

And maybe ifs a good idea

to postpone the project one day.

Over.

No. Not possible.

We have to be ready in July.

We want to quit this expedition

the end of July,

because most of the accident

happened in August.

The humidity

is getting bigger, you know?

So more avalanche danger.

But we said, "Okay."

"We wants to go the end of July."

That was the plan,

and we were ahead of schedule.

And in that period,

all the other teams

were arriving,

the Koreans...

- Good luck.

- Very, very cold.

The Americans...

- It's the end of a hard day.

- Yeah.

The Serbian guys...

- Peace.

- Resting in peace?

French guys...

Perfect.

And the Norwegian team.

No, unfortunately not.

There's a lot

of different cultures up there,

Sherpas from Nepal,

high-altitude porters

from Pakistan.

There were different approaches

to the climbing.

The South Koreans

are the main big, like,

old-style, big expedition.

Sherpas, oxygen,

a lot of rope, and many camps.

Yeah, beautiful day.

The Norwegian expedition,

we were only four friends

on the trip

trying to climb K2.

Time to break out

the whiskey, so...

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a good idea.

I like whiskey.

Gerard was visiting us a lot,

and we visited them as well.

And-and Ger and Rolf

were friends.

Both were the same kind of guys.

When I met Rolf in 2003,

I felt that I met a soul mate.

In 2005, we went to K2 to try

to get to know the mountain.

We were there for 93 days.

We only got to a little higher

than Camp Three.

So this time,

I don't think we really thought

that we were gonna get

to the summit.

Of course,

you have to want that.

Otherwise, you won't make it.

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