Day 7 Intense rest day
Rest day (total 53 miles), 15.4 elevation
We woke up early and packed our day packed pretty light in anticipation for the long 12 hour day hike to K2 base camp. It was pretty cold last night, below freezing, but nothing that our sleeping bags couldn’t handle. We went into our big tent to have breakfast when I stepped out to look at the sunrise on K2 and I heard frantic, breathless woman, yelling Beth! Beth! It was Brigete, the very friendly German we met at the second camp, who fell ill with stomach issues and struggled to make it miraculously up to Concordia. She ran over to us frantically telling us that her husband, Jo, had a heart attack last night and she needed our help.
Her tour main guide was off at Broad Peak basecamp with the other half of their trekking group as they were going to go to K2 base camp today. The people left behind were either not able to communicate and not sure how to help her. They did not have a satellite phone so they told her that they would call for help when they got reception at 9 AM. It was 5 AM and he had a heart attack at midnight. We said this is not acceptable and Azam quickly got his satellite phone to call for help. The next 10 minutes was a bit chaotic as the guides weren’t sure who to call or how to get the helicopters up here. Andy instructed Azam to call Manzoor (our trek owner) because he can coordinate better than we can since he was back in Skardu and could coordinate an action plan with their operator. Luckily Manzoor answered the phone at 5:30 AM and contacted the other tour company. Some more back-and-forth we were told that the paperwork was in process to get the helicopter up here. Andy gave them the coordinates of our location as Concordia is a very large area. Next, we worked with Brigete and gave her some aspirin to give Jo to thin the blood as we knew, we would be waiting a while, probably hours, for a helicopter. Birgit asked if we’d be around since we had the satellite phone. Azam said no, we are going to K2 basecamp, to which Andy quickly responded, “no, we aren’t going anywhere until they are safely off the mountain”. It’s absolutely ridiculous that not every single tour company here has a satellite phone. We later found out that they were told the guide had a satellite phone, and of course they didn’t.
Things seemed to be in process, and just a couple hours later, another person ran up to Andy and Azam saying, oh you have a satellite phone?! A person in their group was violently ill and also needed to get off the mountain as quickly as possible. At this time, we heard that the earliest the helicopter would arrive was around 12 as it already had other reservations needing to attend to, and they don’t move things around for other life-threatening emergencies. Azam later told me that you either pay or you have a lot of social media followers to get the government to come rescue you. Apparently, the only reason the someone who died on K2 last year was taken off the mountain, just the other day, was because of their social media followers.
The helicopters arrived at 12:45 and it was intense. They circled the landing spot several times and Brigete and Jo slowly made their way. He was able to walk to the evacuation site with some help. Since our camp was closer to the LZ, Birgit and Jo walked over and stayed with us while waiting and he still had chest pains. The helicopter bounced around trying to land safely in thin air and swirling winds. Swarms of porters came around to take pictures (pilots had to push people away), not understanding how unstable a helicopter is at this altitude and wind. Jo made it in the first helicopter and Brigete the second. One person in these things at a time. The other women who was violently ill thought she would be getting in the second helicopter and had been assisted all the way across the camp site but no, she’ll have to get in line for a later helicopter unfortunately. Crazytown.
Watching the helicopters take off was terrifying as it went low against the terrain and quickly up the side of the mountain. The first helicopter circled waiting for the second to load then take off. The noise, the confusion, the tons of people, it was all so fucking intense. At one point, the second helicopter pitched towards the swarm of 50+ people flocked around.
After the helicopters both left, we went back into the tent emotionally and physically drained. To say “intense rest day” at this point feels like the understatement of the year.
We took a look at the weather forecast because we knew the rest of our trek would be dependent on when we could cross the pass. The weather forecast had changed throughout the day as the storm started to move up. We decided that there was no way we were going to go back down the way we came so we planned for Ali camp and the Gondogoro La pass the following day. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and planning for the big day ahead of us.