K2's unclimbed North Ridge Expedition report from the K2 base camp -- Wednesday, July 24 Tension over workload brews Well, we had a big storm the last several days, about two feet of snow in base camp. There was a lot of avalanche activity on the face. Starting tomorrow a number of us--everyone, really--are going up in the next few days. We're hoping for better weather. In terms of progress to date, nine of 11 of us have overnighted at Camp II which is 21,600 feet, and two of us, Krysztof Wielicki and Ryszard Pawlowski, have overnighted at 7,150 meters, which is about 250 meters below Camp III. Our team is currently working on finalizing fixed rope to Camp III which is at 24,278 feet. That'll happen in the next few days I'm sure. We think we're a little bit behind in terms of our anticipated schedule but our team all feels our prospects to summit are excellent. We're expecting to make summit bids, weather permitting, within the next two weeks, and perhaps maybe Krysztof and Ryszard will try to get on top within the next week or so. Okay, now here's my commentary. We have a number of stars on this team and each has high expectations, but you have to characterize the climb to date as just simply hard work. Going from Base Camp to Camp II it's about 800 meters vertical--enough to test even the best climbers. The route is very steep. It requires a lot of fixed rope which we had to place, and some of the traverses are quite awkward. In terms of establishing Camp II, the work was not shared equally which was one source of tension in our team. But hopefully this will even out higher on the mountain. Another element influencing our progress is the weather and the weather conditions we face. The weather seems to change very quickly on K2. One minute you have good weather, warm and sunny. The next blowing snow, arctic conditions, high winds. It's very difficult to anticipate. The temperature and wind seem to be influenced by how high on the mountain we are. It can be mild, even warm, at advanced base camp while at the higher Camp II it will be blowing snow and nobody can get out to work at all in the open. So the unpredictability of the weather and the difficulty of working high on the mountain is making K2 exceptionally challenging to us all. It's a much harder climb than Everest, according to the people who have climbed Everest--and we have about six people who have climbed Everest. We expected a lot of hard work. We expected some tensions because of the composition of our team, but we didn't really anticipate how K2 is turning out to be from a weather angle. The bright spot is the Russian team. Nineteen strong, they are just fabulous people and great climbers and they just go at it every day like a machine. Every day four people go at it up on the mountain, no matter what the weather conditions are like and we're working well together. So, like I said, our next goal is to get to Camp III and maybe in the next week or two we're going to get to the top. Well, we've got three national groups, we've got a team of Poles and they're driving force and very supportive of getting Krysztof Wielicki on top. This is his thirteenth out of the 14 8,000-meter peaks. So they tend to support each other and work together. They've been doing the bulk of putting in the fixed rope. The Italians have only been climbing about four years but they're very accomplished in terms of their 8,000-meter peaks. They've got, I think, six 8,000-meter peaks each to their credit. But they tend to want to follow which creates a tension because we all feel it's important to have everybody sharing and putting in the fixed rope. For example, Carlos Buhler and I put in the rope to Camp II. And Carlos and I are somewhat independent. I didn't know him before the expedition and he's very experienced. But we're very different and we tend to operate as individuals. So you know if we're sitting around a table, you'll hear a lot of Polish. There's not a whole lot of interaction at this point between me and the Italians but maybe that will change in the future. We expect avalanche conditions because of the traverse up to Camp I and also we're always worried about avalanche conditions on the face. It's very steep, 1,800 meters on the face. Every time there's a little snow fall, you're talking a lot of sweep there and there's a lot of snow that builds up. They've brought a number of fixed ropes up on the mountain. They haven't actually placed any fixed rope yet. We put all the fixed rope in almost to Camp III. Perhaps a few of them will be able to help us putting in fixed rope. After they showed up we had no problem blending in with them. They're hard workers and we've had no problem working with them. I suspect higher on the mountain when it comes to Camp IV we may even work with them.