Edge of the Map by Johanna Garton

Author:Johanna Garton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680512892
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

DISAPPOINTED MORE BY THE POLITICS than their climbing performance on K2, Chris and Charlie returned to Colorado. Asked about the experience later, Chris said, “I used to feel I had to make the goal; I pushed and pushed. Over time, I’ve started to back off because so many friends and acquaintances have died climbing. I’m learning to listen when things aren’t progressing right.”

It would be another fifteen years until dual-citizen Vanessa O’Brien would become the first American (and British) woman to successfully summit K2 in 2017. Like Chris, Vanessa came to the sport later in life, having already achieved success in the business world before turning her attention to mountains. “By the time K2 entered my radar,” Vanessa said, “I was amazed that no American woman had ever summited. Christine had six 8,000-meter peaks to her name and if I were lucky, K2 would be my fifth. The way I looked at it was what had happened with Chris and Charlie in 2002 was simply bad luck—they climbed in a year of no summits on the mountain. Since 1986, there were twelve years of no summits, ergo, almost a forty percent chance in any one year of not seeing the summit on K2. It took me three consecutive years to get my summit, and luckily, I discovered my love of Pakistan along the way.”

Similar to Chris, who preferred to climb with little support, Vanessa returned after her first attempt to lead her own expeditions. She sought out the services of a local logistics provider, one who knew his way around the Pakistan Alpine Club for permits, who could secure the services of experienced low- and high-altitude porters, and who could safeguard transportation to base camp. She was directed to the man who’d become well-respected since his own Everest summit in the year 2000 as the first Pakistani. He’d grown a successful mountaineering company since then and when it came to K2, there was nobody better. Nazir Sabir was her man.

“I poked around and learned that Chris had led Nazir to the summit of Everest and that pretty much sealed the deal,” Vanessa recalled. “It was an amazing fact. This Pakistani man being led to the top of Everest by a woman just blew me away. I told him, ‘Nazir, we have to meet.’ I knew he understood the strength of women.” The gregarious mountaineer understood that women could be just as successful as men on K2. Perhaps, as Vanessa suspected, he had come to his belief by way of something the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, once said: “There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. But there is a third power stronger than both, that of woman.”

About Nazir, Vanessa said: “Here was a man, so confident and strong in both his career as well as his masculinity. It didn’t take long for my immense admiration to form. Nazir knew I needed to call the shots and it didn’t intimidate him that I was female.

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