Reglas de alpinismo:
- The rule is that you should drink 6 litres of liquid a day at altitude,
- medicines should only be taken at altitude if there is no other alternative, and above all, only for getting down, not up.
- Acclimatization is of supreme importance. This takes at least three weeks for an eight-thousander.
- from 7,000 to 7,500 metres onwards (the latter being the height at which the so-called Death Zone starts) the number of days given to climbing and descending should be kept as low as possible. The actual height at which you make the transition will vary a little from person to person.
- After a push to 8,000 metres, you need at least a week in Base Camp to recover before you can begin to think of another summit attempt.
- you may need from eight to ten to fourteen hours even to reach the summit of K2: the extraordinary variation depending on snow conditions, your own physical condition, the degree of acclimatization you have achieved, the weight of your load, the possibility of sharing the chore of trail-breaking, the quality of sleep the night before the summit, how much time you’ve already spent at 8,000 metres, the existence of or the necessary application of fixed belay points (and in critical places of fixed ropes as well), on whether it is an ‘oxygen-free’ ascent or you’re climbing with the help of mask and respirators. Heat, cold and storm will also be major influences.
- An old bivouac rule says, the longer you prepare the bivouac, the shorter you need to spend in it.
- For Pakistan rules for expeditions say that a team has to have at least four persons,
Tipos de alpinismo:
- Mountain sprinter: There is no other way for such speed records: the ‘mountain sprinter’ can obviously carry hardly anything. Trailbreaking, high camps and back-up in the case of weather breakdown – all these are in the hands of the collaborating team ahead of him.
- different styles – whether to climb with or without oxygen, to go on big or small expeditions, take or reject high-altitude porters
- Normally, an ascent using supplementary oxygen cannot be carried out, or does not make sense, without high-
altitude porters.
- Hanns-Schell technique, where the person in the lead makes use of the group’s only oxygen apparatus, handing over the set when he hands over the lead. That way supplementary oxygen goes only to the person breaking trail.
- West alpine style: climbing without oxygen and without porters – in the West Alpine style of Hermann Buhl – everything that is going to be needed should be transported up and cached in depots or high camps before the top is stormed.
- Modern alpine-style (en una tacada): the modern alpine-style mountaineer often tries to omit this phase (the pure West Alpine-style without fixed camps, as used on Chogolisa and Skilbrum in 1957, is referred to as alpine-style today) and so he sometimes arrives at great altitude insufficiently acclimatized. If a route is planned to be done in pure alpine-style, then you need to prepare yourself, train and practise on another route or another mountain beforehand.
Medicinas y sus efectos:
we all regularly took Vitamin B12 for a fast increase of red blood cells, important for the transport of oxygen around the body; but now this has been discontinued because the blood becomes too thick, the haematocrit rises, and with it the danger of frostbite. Nowadays, the view is that it is better to give Vitamin E. Dilution of the blood, which about ten years ago was thought to be the key for better eight-thousander climbing, is no longer taken seriously by anyone: a French doctor once assured me that it was much too dangerous and would need a hospital on site to make sure it was done safely. And as for wonder drugs like Diamox, designed to speed up acclimatization and guard against mountain sickness, there was almost unanimous agreement at a recent medical congress in London that it would be unwise to take it if you had already had any degree of acclimatization. For then you would be likely to fall sick and become subject to a kind of over-acclimatization. The mountain doctor, Urs Wiget, told me that in case of a wrong diagnosis of oedema, taking a diuretic (which is what this is) could rob the body of precious liquid, already seriously diminished at altitude. This could so easily prove fatal to someone whose blood was already thicker than normal.
Mal de altura:
difficulties in adapting to the decreasing amount of oxygen which can be absorbed through respiration as one goes higher. In extreme cases a person may develop the very serious high-altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE) or high-altitude cerebral oedema (HACE).
- HAPE: Pulmonary oedema occurs most frequently between 3,500 and 5,000 metres, fluid from the tissues seeps into the lungs, from which a characteristic gurgling sound can be noticed; at the same time, the victim is desperately gasping for air, has difficulty remaining upright and becomes increasingly confused and unable to understand conversation. Swift transport to a lower altitude usually produces dramatic improvement.
- HACE: Cerebral oedema, on the other hand, is usually met at very extreme altitude. It is characterized by dullness or lethargy, impaired co-ordination, confusion and ultimately unconsciousness. Unfortunately, even a rapid descent to lower altitude may not lead to improvement. This condition occurs less frequently than high-altitude pulmonary oedema, but is more likely to prove fatal.
Deshidratación: Principal problema
inevitable and enormous loss of fluid from the body during high-altitude climbing, which poses a significantly greater threat than the lack of oxygen itself. By perspiration and, above all, by respiration, the body loses several litres of liquid per day; the consequence is an increasing thickening of the blood which can lead in turn to a series of extremely dangerous effects. I will list only the most frequent: strokes, pulmonary embolism/thrombosis, acute heart failure. At altitude, deaths from these causes occur more frequently than those from the better-known HAPE or HACE. [...] High-altitude deterioration, the slow ‘dying’ of the body at altitude, also probably derives primarily from an increased loss of fluid, [...] at extreme high altitude, the main cause of severe and fatal disturbances to health stem from the loss of liquid from the body.
vicious circle: the increasing density of the blood due to fluid-loss slows down the delivery of oxygen to the body’s cells. The lack of oxygen, already felt as a result of altitude, is made thereby worse. Yet oxygen is absolutely essential to all performance. [...] Lack of oxygen coupled with increasing density of the blood results more than anything in a dangerous decrease in efficiency.
Pensamiento difuso:
at extreme heights the brain – in comparison to the muscles – is relatively poorly supplied with oxygen. This could explain why high altitude climbers often perform irrational acts, make wildly inaccurate estimates, and take alpinistic decisions that, lower down, would cause any mountaineer to shake his head.
Problemas menos graves:
harmless disturbances that can be experienced at great height: peripheral oedema (fluid retention, causing swelling of an arm, a leg or the face, usually noticed on waking), retinal haemorrhage, disturbed breathing patterns during sleep. ‘Harmless’ in this context means ‘not posing an immediate threat’. Such symptoms should at any rate be considered a warning that the sufferer is having difficulties adapting to high altitude. You cannot die from sub-cutaneous oedema, nor from disturbed breathing at night, however dramatic they may appear, nor do retinal haemorrhages presage blindness but people affected by these conditions should watch out that they do not later run into far more serious problems such as outlined above.
Sobre el factor muerte en el alpinismo:
- On the one hand, you know that in the mountains, risk to life is ever-present. While on the other, the death of a person – how shall I put it? – shatters the dream with which you set out.
- Climbers know that reaching a summit always involves risk, but they do try to keep that risk to a minimum. If a certain danger is known, you can usually avoid it. But that still leaves the less definable hazards – some more or less so than others – and a certain residual risk has always to be accepted or no one would ever climb a mountain at all. I do not believe that those who have survived on big mountains are simply better than those who have died. Luck, certainly, comes into it. But errors committed do have their weight, as do caution and experience.
- There are some situations where you cannot avoid the Russian roulette element – as for instance every step you take on the moving Khumbu Icefall on Everest – but they are, thank God, the exception rather than the rule.
- no logician has yet come up with a satisfactory explanation for the enigma of life and death.
- the good or bad outcome of a venture is all that is normally taken into account. Causality is so often ignored, the actual connections rarely being exposed. On the outcome alone – success or failure – a gambler might be made into a hero ... and another man branded as a fantasist, as having overreached himself.
14 ochomiles:
- Everest: 8.848, 1953
- K2 (Chogori): 8.614, 1954
- Kangchenjunga: 8.586, 1955
- Lhotse: 8.516, 1956
- Makalu: 8.485, 1955
- Cho Oyu: 8.188, 1954
- Dhaulagiri I: 8.167, 1960
- Manaslu: 8.163, 1956
- Nanga Parbat: 8.125, 1953
- Annapurna I: 8.091, 1950
- Gasherbrum I (Hidden Peak): 8.080, 1958
- Broad Peak: 8.051, 1957
- Gasherbrum II: 8.035, 1956
- Shishapangma: 8.027, 1964
Aparte
Nombre del K2: The Chinese call it Qogir, a variation of the local name Chogori, which means, simply, ‘big mountain’. [...] K2’ employed by Montgomerie in 1856 when he numbered the peaks for identification (‘K’ signifying Karakoram).
Endless Knot: One of the eight sacred emblems of Buddhism is the intricately interwoven ‘Endless Knot’, symbolising the unity of all things and the illusory nature of time.
Windhorse: prayer flags flapping in the wind at monasteries and on mountain passes at all the sacred places are the lung ta – the wind horses,
Diferentes porteadores según el país: Why didn’t we have porters? The answer is simple: there aren’t any in Sinkiang. Nepal has its Sherpas, Pakistan its Hunzas and Baltis, Tibet its Tibetans, but in Sinkiang the locals will go only as far as their pack animals.
Historia Sherpas y Hunzas: the men from the East (Shar = East, pa = people) who until the fifteenth century lived in Kham in eastern Tibet, from where after decades of migration – 2,000 kilometres across the high plateau – they came over the Himalayas to settle in the high valleys of Nepal and Sikkim; or for the wild Hunzas from the high valley of the same name in northwestern Pakistan, who defended their independence so fiercely and successfully for so long and were notorious until the end of the nineteenth century for making surprise raids on camel caravans crossing the Karakoram Pass.
Buena expresión: who pays more than lip-service to the principles of safety
out of kilter (out of harmony or balance): fuera de mi elemento
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