The Will to Climb: Obsession and Commitment and the Quest to Climb Annapurna--The World's Deadliest Peak by Viesturs Ed & Roberts David

Author:Viesturs, Ed & Roberts, David [Roberts, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Travel, Biography
ISBN: 9780307720443
Amazon: 0307720446
Goodreads: 12006976
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

By the early spring of 2002, J.-C. and I had agreed to go to the south side of Annapurna, to attempt the east ridge together. It would be my second campaign on the peak in three years. It would be J.-C.’s fourth, stretching across a decade. If ever a man was determined to get up a mountain and lay to rest his personal ghosts, J.-C. was that man.

In No Shortcuts to the Top, I write that I was completely surprised and shocked to learn afterward (through a friend who translated passages from Prisonnier for me) that during our 2002 expedition, J.-C. harbored a secret fantasy to join forces with the rest of us only during the early stages, then break away to attempt a solo ascent of the 1992 route on the south face where Béghin was killed. But now, on rereading my diary and sifting through my memories, I remember that as we passed beneath the south face, J.-C. kept looking up at that line as he vaguely remarked, in his broken English, “I’m having thoughts of going over there.” It was nothing definite—just a kind of musing: “I’m thinking of this other idea …”

Maybe I didn’t take that musing seriously at the time. I do recall that J.-C. actually mentioned the possibility of splitting off from the rest of us and attempting a line up the south face solo. He wanted to contribute to the east ridge effort as much as possible, acclimatize, and then do his thing alone. In the end, it didn’t matter, because he eventually gave up the idea of trying the 1992 line solo. The east ridge, he came to realize, was so intense that he felt it was a worthy goal.

As for me, on rereading my diary, I realize that I was in a constant state of tension during that expedition. By now Paula and I had two children, since Ella had been born in 2000, and I really missed my family. The diary is full of comments such as “Stayed up til 9 P.M. to call Paula & kids [on our sat phone]. All sounds well—they got the postcards,” and, “Can’t wait to get home!!”

By the spring of 2002, I was forty-two years old. This was my twenty-sixth expedition to an 8,000-meter peak. I’d reached the summit of eleven of them, leaving only Broad Peak, Nanga Parbat, and Annapurna to complete my Endeavor 8000. I knew already that if a single mountain was likely to thwart my best efforts, it would be Annapurna. My anxiety about the mountain was based not only on my setback on the north face in 2000, with all the risks that we encountered, but also on reading and hearing about other teams’ efforts there. Annapurna was not to be taken lightly.

During my early years in the Himalaya, going off on an expedition wasn’t such an emotionally wrenching transition. I wasn’t leaving behind anybody who mattered to me more than any mountain, or who I knew would worry about me every single day that I was gone.

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