K2 -- Summit Ascent, Rescues Are Factors In Converting Former Guide-Service Opponents Into Trusted Friends

SHOWTIME

-- Scott Fischer and Ed Viesturs will show slides of their recent K2 trek at 7 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Seattle Mountaineers, 300 Third Ave. W. Tickets, $5 in advance, $6 at the door, are available at the North Face or Feathered Friends. Details: 284-6310.

Twenty-eight thousand feet above Pakistan, Scott Fischer and Ed Viesturs looked at each other and saw men they hardly knew, but could not live without.

It was an odd place to get acquainted, the frozen top of the world's most deadly mountain. Odd, but effective. No bonds of years could compete with this sudden, ice-forged kinship between two relative strangers who have placed their lives in each other's hands.

Until a year ago, the two West Seattle residents were fierce competitors - business enemies in the combative Northest mountaineering business. But on this August day, nearly six miles in the air, the only combat was in their lungs. They had climbed here the hard way, without supplemental oxygen, making each breath all the more difficult.

Perched on the foggy summit of K2, the pair could see little of anything. What would seem a grandiose world of exploration had been reduced to the elemental: breathing, moving, keeping warm - pursuing a dream that many of the world's best climbers have chased to their deaths.

The dream is to stand atop the world's second highest mountain and then return. The challenge lies in bringing the prize home; many a climber has held it only for a relative instant before the cold shadows of the mountain's killer darkness stole it back.

Before this summer, the peak had not been climbed since the horrific summer of 1986, when 13 climbers fell to their deaths or froze on the high reaches of K2. Of those 13, seven had reached the summit and never lived to relish it. Fischer, Viesturs and climbing companion Charley Mace of Denver vowed not to join that list of seven.

In their 30 minutes on the summit, Fischer and Viesturs had little time to consider the past in a place people were not meant to be. Nor did they ponder a larger irony: Their fight to survive K2 was aided by the very competitive nature that once kept them apart.

On this climb, the skills Fischer and Viesturs honed while competing for Northwest guide trips kept them alive. And it helped them rescue three others who might have died.

Until this summer, the mountain had been climbed by approximately 70 climbers, but only a handful of Americans. Seattle's Jim Wickwire was one of four U.S. climbers to reach the summit in a well-chronicled 1978 expedition led by Jim Whittaker.

A year ago, it seemed doubtful that Fischer, 36, and Viesturs, 33, would even get a chance at K2. Not that they lacked credentials.

Fischer, owner of Mountain Madness guide service in West Seattle and an accomplished ice climber, was the first American to scale Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest mountain, and had led two expeditions to Everest, its tallest.

Viesturs, a guide with Rainier Mountaineering Inc., already had climbed Everest and Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest peak, both without the use of bottled oxygen. He needed only K2 to own the top three summits, and on separate 1991 expeditions in Nepal, he and Fischer stumbled into one another in a hotel lobby. They swapped aspirations and phone numbers.

Fischer already had taken the first step: He had a hard-to-obtain K2 climbing permit from the Pakistani government. They returned to Seattle and began fund raising, but the effort fell short. Frustrated, they learned of a Russian group with a permit - and a penchant to sell expedition spots to the first climbers with cash.

"Ordinarily, you select team members with experience and ability," Viesturs said. "This was a commercial expedition. It was a thing where, if you can write a check for 6,000 bucks, you can climb K2."

They wrote their checks and by June 25 were on the mountain, establishing base camps on the Abruzzi Ridge for Russian colleagues they'd never met.

Fischer and Viesturs got acquainted fast. While most of the Russian climbers ascended solo or in small groups, without roping together, the two Seattleites became a tight-knit team.

Their distinctly opposite climbing personalities meshed. "Ed is probably a little more cautious than I am," Fisher said. "We're both really driven, but Ed is a thinker. He's the kind of guy I like to have as a partner - because he keeps me alive."

Fischer, on the other hand, describes himself as "entirely focused, perhaps too much. . . . I'm going to go until I can't make it."

The two guides quickly were identified as the group's strongest climbers. That earned them the right to pioneer the difficult route up Abruzzi Ridge, establishing four camps - the final one, camp four, at 26,000 feet - and fixing ropes for colleagues to follow.

The trek proceeded on schedule until July 12, when Fischer slipped on an ice field and suffered a separated shoulder.

Viesturs, connected by a rope, pulled him from the crevasse and helped him down the mountain. The pain grew so great Fischer couldn't walk. Finally, a doctor arrived from the base camp with painkillers. He reset Fischer's shoulder and gave him the news: "For you, the climb is over."

Two weeks later, Fischer was back on the mountain, struggling to rejoin Viesturs. Within a week, the wounded climber would be headed for the summit.

By this time, Aug. 1, two Russian climbers had braved K2's notoriously wicked weather and reached the summit on their own. "They climb in any weather," Viesturs said, shaking his head. "It's a glory-or-die kind of attitude."

Fischer and Viesturs were at Camp Three, elevation 24,000 feet, when a second pair of climbers - a French woman and Russian man - reached the summit but were forced to spend a night high on the mountain. There, the woman became snowblind and exhausted. They made it back to Camp Four and radioed for help, saying the woman couldn't make it down on her own.

Fischer and Viesturs weren't surprised the others ran into problems. "They were all climbing betwen 26 and 29 hours straight from Camp Four," Fischer said. "And that's at over 26,000 feet."

Fischer and Viesturs converted their summit attempt into a rescue mission. Turned back by bad weather the first day, they neared the two climbers the next day - on precariously steep, unstable snow.

Fischer climbed ahead on a 50-foot rope. "We were the only two people on the mountain who traveled roped up," he said. "Ed is a Rainier guide, and I'm a guide, and, well, you just rope up on glaciers."

The rope proved a lifesaver. As Fischer tried to reach the stranded climbers, Viesturs, detecting several small avalanches above, began digging a hole in the snow and ice, planning to dive in at first sight of an avalanche.

"Just as I get done digging this hole, I look up and see a wall of snow engulfing Scott above me," Viesturs said. "I dive into the hole, and I feel the snow going over me. I'm thinking, `OK, it didn't hit me.'

"And then, BOOM! the rope jerks me. The avalanche has hit Scott, washed him past me and taken him down the hill. His momentum pulled me out of the hole, and we're both tumbling down the slope. Finally, I self-arrested with my ice ax."

They gathered their wits and resumed climbing, reaching the stranded climbers a short time later. For the next two days, they struggled to help the French woman down the mountain. One life saved.

Two days later, as Viesturs and Fischer ate breakfast and rested for a return trip upward, the Russian expedition leader made an announcement: "The expedition is now over. There's no more possibility of climbing K2." The Russians packed their gear and left. Viesturs, Fischer and Mace, the Denver climber, refused, ultimately joining another expedition of Mexican, Swedish and New Zealand climbers nearby.

Fischer and Viesturs decided to rely solely on each other to reach the top. They climbed to Camp Three in a single day, leaving the other climbers far behind. They reached Camp Four the next day and later were joined by Mace. Together, at 26,000 feet, they defied conventional medical and climbing wisdom by waiting three days for foul weather to clear.

All other expedition members except two New Zealanders retreated in the face of a storm. One Mexican climber died on the descent. Fischer, Viesturs and Mace waited, then gambled.

"We left on the third night (Aug. 16) at 1:30 a.m. and summited at noon," Fischer said. "We did it in 10 1/2 hours, and the whole time, we were right at the top of the clouds. They followed us up, and we could see it snowing below. We felt we were really, really pushing our luck, because we knew we still had to get back down."

On the summit, there were quick congratulations, tempered by haunting memories of other recent expeditions. They started down in treacherous weather. They returned to Camp Four to find the two New Zealanders, who had vainly attempted to follow the Seattle climbers to the top, weak and ill from the altitude, despite the use of oxygen tanks. They spent the next three days helping the two stricken climbers down in blizzard conditions, with nighttime temperatures dipping to 40 below zero. Two more saved.

Back in Seattle, Viesturs plots a 1993 solo climb of Everest and Fischer organizes commercial trips to 7,000-meter peaks. You write the check, he'll lead the climb.

Fischer's feeling are mixed about this. "It's a Catch-22," he says. The growing commercialization of climbing puts many people - perhaps some of those Fischer helped save on K2 - in places they never should be. "Money means a lot these days," he says. "You can get on an expedition not because you're one of the best climbers in America, but because you can foot the bill. We're going to see more of that.

"On the other hand," he says, "it's my livelihood. I guess my goal will be to teach people proper use of the mountains."

Fischer, who used to climb for the thrill of "getting scared," has a wife and two children to temper his daring these days. Still, his failure to summit Everest continues to gnaw at him. Don't be surprised to see him try it again. Viesturs won't.

At a recent K2 slide show for climbing buddies, Viesturs, the cautious one, admitted to being nervous on the K2 climb, of wondering whether they should continue the ascent. Afterward, in private, he sidled up to Fischer and asked: What would he have said if Viesturs had wanted to pack it in?

Fischer didn't hesitate. "I would have said, `Ed, we've got to go to the top!' "

At that, the pair shook hands and Fischer smiled.

"That's why we're good climbing partners," he said.