The story of Andrzej Bargiel, a Polish ski mountaineer who put down the first-ever ski descent of the Karakorum giant known as K2, is wild in itself. But add in a daring rescue of a another mountaineer who was stranded, this is the story of legends.
Action Sports Today was able to speak with that mountaineer, Rick Allen, who owes a life to Andrzej and his brother Bartek who brought about the rescue. The interview is long, but well worth the read. To watch K2: The Impossible Descent on Red Bull TV, check out the link here – https://www.redbull.com/int-en/films/k2-the-impossible-descent
AST: Can you tell us the story of what happened up on Broad Peak?
Allen: I was up in a group of four, who were up attempting a new route on Broad Peak, and the weather wasn’t great that season. There was a lot of snow early on, and you need to get acclimatized to deal with the route. We wanted to climb up in an ‘Alpine style’, which is a continuous push from base camp to the summit. So we needed to be really well acclimitased to do that, but the acclimatizing wasn’t as smooth as we wanted.
We were getting weather forecasts in to predict the weather over the next week to 10 days, but we couldn’t see a good enough weather front to give us the opportunity to do what we wanted to do. So we started to talk about climbing the mountain by the ordinary route, which was an option we had vaguely discussed but wasn’t what we’d really wanted to do – I hadn’t climbed the mountain before, so was different.
We got up to 7000m up to camp 3 in preparation for what tackling the new route on Broad Peak. I climbed up with my long time friend and climbing partner Sandy Allen, and we had a night up at camp 3 where it was pretty windy, but he wasn’t feeling well acclimatized so he decided to go back down the next day. I was feeling reasonably good, and I thought another night of acclimatizing would be fine before tackling the route. Kasper and Stanislav our two companions were also going up, but in the end it was just myself and Stanislav that were feeling good enough in terms of altitude to attempt to tackle the climb. There was a very short weather window in the forecast, potentially only a couple of days of good weather even though the wind was stronger than originally forecast. I thought I’d like to go for the summit, as due to the weather window it may be our only chance – it looked like we weren’t going to get the window to do our main objective, but Stanislav was keen to give it a try.
The weather was extraordinary and some of the highest winds I’ve ever experienced, and I had a contact in Poland who was modelling all the weather events and I called him on the Satellite Phone asking “this strong wind hasn’t been forecast, what’s going on?”. He said it was a minor disturbance in the upper atmosphere that would die down in half an hour – what I found pretty incredible, was that he was on his computer in Poland telling me this, and in exactly 30 minutes the wind died entirely. Completely flat! Which I thought was pretty incredible and gave me a lot of confidence that there was going to be low wind over the next couple of days, and the wind really did die down.
Stanislav and I set off at about 10PM which was probably a bit too late, and after about an hour Stanislav said he really wasn’t sure about taking on the peak, as he wanted to climb with his companion Kasper – at this point he turned around, and I had to decide whether or not to go solo. I was pretty sure that Broad Peak was within my capability, and there was only a narrow weather window, so I had to decide what to do – one of my climbing companions Andrew Lott from Australia had climbed it back in the late 90s solo, when I had to return home for work. So I knew from his account that it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to do, so I thought the weather’s good and the conditions were right – I’m going to go for it.
At that stage nobody had climbed the mountain yet that season – so there was a track into the col (where the west face meets the main ridge), but there were no tracks beyond that. So I made it to the col shortly after dawn, my aim was to get there at dawn at around 08.30 which was a little later than I would have wanted, but I was still feeling good so kept on going.
There were no tracks, ropes or anything in place, so my progress along the ridge was fairly slow. It goes over a false summit and then continues to the true summit of Broad Peak – it’s a long way along that ridge! I don’t reach the main summit until around 2:30PM, after which the clouds closed in. I got my photograph from the peak and then turned around, re-tracing my steps around the ridge, reaching the coll just as it’s getting dark. So I’m a little bit nervous, but I was thinking that I really wanted to get back to my tent to sleep – I was getting pretty tired at this stage, as I’d been going about 20 hours by now. Hadn’t drunk or eaten much, my water bottle was frozen in my bag and I’d only had around half of it which wasn’t great, and I’d had a couple of muesli bars throughout the day – so was beginning to run on empty!
I start down the upper part of the west face, and it’s too step to go down facing outwards, so I’m facing inwards kicking steps in, one foot after the other, going down backwards. Then it gets dark… I deviate away from the tracks, which was not a good move, but your decision-making powers are not always at their sharpest without much food and water! So I thought I was going to cut the corner and head straight down, and at this stage I lost the track I never regained it. As I was heading down I stepped off the edge of a huge boulder and my feet just dropped away from beneath me, my axe ripped and I fell. I Landed in a huge pile of snow and went unconscious.
I came around and it was pitch black, with blood everywhere – I was thinking I was in a really bad way and everything hurt… So I started moving one leg, then another leg, then an arm, moving another arm. Then I thought “hey, it’s okay. I can move everything. Where’s all this blood coming from?”. Then I realised – it was just a nosebleed! I was thinking I was in a desperate situation and in need of serious medical help, but it was just a nosebleed – so could have been worse! So what do I do now?
At that point, I should have just dug a hole and spent the night there and I might have done a bit better in the morning. I thought I knew roughly where I was, but looking back I must have still been disorientated. I thought it wouldn’t be far until camp 3, so I got my head torch out and was having real trouble keeping my hands warm. Every time I took my hands out of my mittens to put on my head torch my hands froze, and so it took my a whole hour to find and put on my head torch. Then I do a really silly thing – I put the head torch on over the hood of my down jacket. This material is slippery – I should have been heading in a more southerly direction, but as I’m moving the head torch makes it’s way up over the hood and then pops off and disappears down the slope – so there’s my light gone! But I can see this tiny gleaming thing hundreds of metres below me. I still think that’s the right way to go so I keep on heading down.
I keep on climbing through the night, but due to lack of food, water, and oxygen I start hallucinating. At one point I was convinced someone was saying to me “Just relax. Sit down. Take a break, take your rucksack off and relax”. So I took my rucksack off and suddenly that disappears too and I don’t have my bag any more; but my torch is still down there so I thought I’d head down there and get my head torch and reassess from there.
I keep on descending all night in and out of total consciousness; by dawn I finally reach my headtorch, and by some crazy luck, right beside it is my rucksack! They were both sitting very close to the edge of an ice cliff where they could stop sliding downhill, so again I was very lucky! By now I’ve been going for about 30 hours, so I traverse over to the right and I realise that I can’t get from where I am to camp 3 because there are huge crevasses and ice pillars and all sorts of things in the way. So the only thing I can do is re-climb this climb I’ve descended – so I had to go up where I’d just come from, and head across in order to get where I wanted to safely. So I’m really running out of energy now, moving really slowly and I’m falling asleep on my feet all the time – so it was 10 steps up, slump over and fall asleep where I’m immediately in a dreamworld and I’m convinced there’s a helicopter shuttle service operating on this slope, and someone keeps telling me all I need to do is check in! This goes on all morning as I make my way gradually up the climb.
Then at about 2pm, the drone appears way over my right shoulder – I’m thinking this is good news, as it means somebody knows I’m here and alive and maybe it’s got a microphone? So I start talking to it saying “I’m making my way to camp 3”, but of course there’s no microphone, but it is filming me. But down at Base Camp, Bartek has filmed me and immediately they tell my team at Broad Peak base camp that they’ve found Rick wondering about in the mountains.
So I carry on and keep going up, and in the late afternoon I go up and over a gentle ridge and can see it’s bringing me back to where I need to be, when the drone re-appears. I’m moving very slowly, but I was pleased as it meant they were keeping an eye on me – I got over the ridge and start to descend, but as I begin to descend I can see two figures who are coming up towards me. These were two guides for a commercial trip who had been alerted by the liason officers and the guys down at K2 basecamp that I was up there and had been asked to go up and help me. They started to gesticulate at me telling me not to head straight towards them, as I was blindsided and couldn’t see that there were a whole series of crevasses between us so they were shouting and waving to not take that route. They then left the fixed ropes and headed towards me where we met in the middle, where they gave me something to eat and drink – as soon as I drank something I started coughing violently as my throat was really dry – they got really worried but I had to convince them I Was fine but just completely out of it!
They helped me down to camp 3 where I spent the night in my tent there, then I joined Dan Missour’s commercial expedition who were heading down and I descended to Broad Peak basecamp with them.
In total I was out on my own for… too long! About a day and a half, a day and three quarters where I’d been pretty much moving all the time and running on nothing at all. What was so amazing about the drone was that it gave me so much encouragement, as they knew where I was and it gave me hope that I was going to get down okay.
AST: How in danger did you feel after your fall and before seeing the drone?
Allen: My real low point was when I came round after my fall and there was blood everywhere, in the dark after having fallen. I thought it was a disaster as nobody knew where I was, I thought I was seriously injured, and I was in a whole world of trouble. I only gradually realized that I was okay! Then I made things worse for myself by losing my head torch and rucksack and going down the mountain too far in the wrong direction and having to re-gain all that height which took up a lot of my energy.
From the point where I sorted out my nosebleed and got myself on my feet, it was a huge battle – I was completely running on empty. The other scary part was how much I was hallucinating, because of the combination of altitude, tiredness, dehydration and lack of food were all contributing to my hallucinations. My biggest fear at that point was if I fell asleep completely and fell off the mountain, or just do something ridiculous while I was dreaming! Exactly as I did when I took my rucksack off – that was as real as broad daylight, someone telling me to relax, sit down and take my bag off. It was real enough for me to do it! When the drone arrived there was a point where I considered ignoring it as I thought it might not be real.
AST: What was the last contact you had with your team before you saw the drone?
Allen: I didn’t have the satellite phone with me, I left it in my tent because I thought it would be more useful to the rest of the team trying to get weather forecasts. So I had no means of communicating with anyone, so I was very much on my own!
AST: At what point did you realize that the drone was communicating with the rescue crew?
Allen: I realized they would have been filming me, and when it came back the second time I knew it wasn’t an accident as they knew where to look for me and find me which was a huge relief.
AST: How did you find out about the role Andrzej and his team played in the rescue?
Allen: We’d met them at K2 basecamp and had found out about their mission to ski K2, but once I got back down I had the chance to meet them and talk it through to them which was amazing. They went on to succeed which was great!
AST: You’ve mentioned in the past that you were originally not a huge fan of drones. Has your perception of them changed, and how do you feel about their role in mountain rescues going forward?
Allen: When I’m out in the wilderness and people are flying drones around, it really annoys me! They’re a racket, I used to think people should take these things away! But I now have an appreciation of how valuable they can be, and they’re used a fair bit in mountain rescue scenarios. I know a few mountain rescue teams use them up in Scotland, because they can cover so much ground in advance of a foot team making it, and I can readily see how valuable they are. Plus they’re a lot cheaper than a helicopter!
AST: What advice would you give to climbers / mountaineers who get into danger, following your own experiences?
Allen: Obviously you think you’ve got the strength or the stamina, it can just be a case of accidentally going off track and as it so often is in the mountains – the dangers are so often on the way down in terms of direction finding rather than the way up!
What is so deceptive is the ease with which I was slipping into dreamworld and hallucinating. I had the physical wherewithal to keep going, but I was hallucinating so much that it was impacting my decision-making, which can be a trap for the unwary when you get into the extreme combination of sleeplessness, exhaustion and dehydration. To be able to keep going physically is not enough, you have to keep your mental state with you – it’s very easy to make poor decisions when you’re struggling with all those issues. That’s what makes soloing so dangerous – I’ve been with similar situations with a companion, but your companion will pull you out of it which is the main differences. Even if it’s not technically difficult ground, and the two of you will make wiser decisions than one person on their own.
AST: Had you experienced that level of hallucination when climbing before?
Allen: Once or twice; altitude can give you some very very vivid dreams, they’re just so real! Sometimes you’re out for so long that you can just fall asleep on your feet, but the experience on Broad Peak was the most prolonged and extreme experience I’ve ever had with that.