Go To MountainZone.com
CHINA TIME:
>> Home >> Dispatches >> Team Bios >> Images >> Maps >> Highlights



Dispatch: Rift Between Teams Heightens
Advanced Base Camp, China - Wednesday, July 12, 2000

DISPATCHES
previousnext
Heilprin
Heilprin


A rift over money, ethics and safety has grown between 18-person K2000 American North Ridge Expedition and four members of an international team of climbers to K2's North Ridge.

Meanwhile, the weather continues to impede climbing progress by bringing daily snowfall and clouds obscuring the upper half of the mountain.

The camps are within sight of each other, on the glacial moraine, at 5120-meter (16,800-foot) Advanced Base Camp. One is a village of American tents and, a couple hundred meters downhill, the other is a far smaller cluster belonging to four Mexican, Spanish and American climbers.

Yet the physical proximity belies a sense of remoteness that has sprung up between the two groups.

It stems from the international team's $4,000 unpaid debt to K2000 leader Jeff Alzner for the use of up to 5000 meters of fixed lines on the mountain. Less than half of the rope has been put up so far.

The team lacked the cash to pay up due to the unexpected expense of spending thousands of dollars to hire porters to carry equipment past a 10-kilometer, washed-out section of a remote Chinese road on the way in, said Hector Ponce de León of Mexico.

And while satellite phones and Internet access are available for a wire transfer, the transaction cannot be completed until bank information is exchanged.

The unpaid debt is a small fraction of the $250,000 budget that K2000's climbers scraped for three years to put together. But to many of the Americans here, paying it would symbolize a form of respect since they feel their ethics are stricter — they point to a growing trend of smaller Himalayan teams trying to take advantage of larger teams' resources on 8000-meter peaks. The Chinese expedition and the four-man Japanese team, both camped just downhill of Ponce de León's group, each brought to the mountain nearly 2000 meters of rope. This week the American team donated food to the Japanese team, which has dwindling supplies but reciprocated by offering the use of their porters. They also have cooperated extensively on the mountain.

In a four-hour interview at their cook tent, however, Ponce de León's team felt offended that their ethics and attention to safety were called into question.

"We're not coming in here without anything," said Marty Schmidt, the sole American member of that team. "Let that be stated for the record, too. We came with pickets, screws and pins. The rope was agreed upon already. Otherwise, we would have brought our own rope."

Despite the controversy, Schmidt insisted his international team is "not piggybacking on anybody" and their ethics are sound.

"I have rope for free because I have some equipment sponsors," added Araceli Segarra of Barcelona. "I've never found anybody coming to a route just wondering, 'Okay, who has the ropes?'"

Days earlier, Ponce de León's team had come to a meeting where they were asked about the money and their safety judgement in front of American television cameras and other news media.

At that meeting, they questioned the amount of money they had previously agreed to pay.

They also were put on the defensive for climbing to Camp 1, on Americans' fixed lines, during a prolonged break in what has turned into a two-week on-again, off-again, snowstorm.

"They wanted to belittle us," said Schmidt, a 40-year-old former Air Force pararescue jumper who tried to climb K2 in 1992 and Mount Everest in 1994, and guides clients on peaks ranging from Denali to Aconcagua.

Schmidt said he was safe even though an avalanche came within a few meters of him while he was on the fixed lines. He knew the slack in the rope would give him enough room to avoid being hit, he said.

"They didn't like us going up in a day when no one went up because they realized they could have," Ponce de León said. "That was just pure envy. The point is that they're not showing respect for our judgement. We have experience. I have never been caught in an avalanche."

But some American climbers felt it was disrespectful for the international team, which did not communicate its intentions beforehand, to take for granted the hard work that went into fixing the hundreds of meters of lines up to and beyond Camp 1.

Ponce de León and the others emphasized their extensive climbing resumés that they said qualified them to take on a route as difficult and strenuous as the North Ridge.

Ponce de León, who is 33, climbed to 8000 meters on K2's south side in 1992, and he has reached the summits of Everest, Shishapangma, Cho Oyu and Gasherbrum II. Based in Mexico City, he has been an international mountain guide for 11 years and most of his clients are Americans.

His fellow Mexican climbing guide, 30-year-old Andrés Delgado Calderon, has climbed Everest, Shishapangma, Cho Oyu (three times) and Cerro Torre.

Ponce de León and Calderon, each of whom has guided clients in the Himalayas, have been climbing together 15 years. The highlight so far has been their alpine-style ascent of the South Face of Shishapangma in 1998.

The fourth climber, Araceli Segarra Roca (her last name means "stone"), who is 30, is the first Spanish woman to climb Everest — an ascent featured in the IMAX Everest movie.

She reached the summit from the South side on May 23, 1996, one day before Ponce de León succeeded in making the first Mexican ascent from the north side. Calderon, who climbed Everest in 1997, made an earlier attempt on May 10, 1996 — the infamous summit storm day in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air.

Segarra works in television and radio. One of her three older brothers is helping manage the team's Base Camp.

Ponce de León said the American team is "not respecting the agreement. The agreement was we'll pay for our share of the rope and then we'll help with the fixing. And they're talking the complete opposite. I feel at times like just going up without paying them anything, and just climbing and downclimbing to prove my point."

But the initial agreement was to climb together to Camp 1, Alzner said, and the meeting was called because he was still waiting for the international team to confirm it would pay the money.

"They broke the agreement by going up to Camp 1 prematurely before the agreed upon day," said Alzner, who has climbed Broad Peak and did the third American ascent of Manaslu. "And instead of cooperating they are developing a negative attitude."

Until the money is paid, skepticism about each other's intentions will likely continue — though relations between some of the people in the separate camps, several of whom knew each other beforehand, remain cordial.

But the conflict has spread to the Internet, where the computer-equipped American and international teams each have written about their frustrations and attempts to cooperate.

In a July 8 dispatch to a Spanish web site, Segarra expressed her irritation with the Americans' "absurd" and heavy-handed approach to sharing the ropes. She hoped there would be no more interference once the money was paid.

During a recent group talk, K2000's Paul Teare dismissed the back-and-forth, web-posted comments.

"These people haven't shown any respect," said Teare, who climbed a new route on Everest's dangerous Kangshung Face in 1988 with a team of three and has been active in the Himalayas for 15 years. "For them to just come here without any ropes or anything, what were they thinking?"

"We shouldn't get upset about what people say about us on the Internet," he added. "It's just like hearsay; it's like us talking about them. What does it really mean? Nothing."

Heidi Howkins, another K2000 member skeptical about the international team's intentions, nevertheless emphasized her hope the differences can be worked out.

"I don't want a mudslinging fest. I wish them nothing but luck and success," said Howkins, who climbed Gasherbrum II and has led expeditions to K2 and Everest.

Fred Ziel, one of two K2000 expedition doctors, who has climbed to the 8000-meter summits of Broad Peak, Cho Oyu and Manaslu, said he hopes this does not "turn into a little rope war."

He does not want this issue to antagonize the Chinese/Tibetan host team that also made a pre-expedition agreement on how to share and finance the fixed ropes. That agreement, Ziel noted, has been working fine.

If and when the money is transferred, that may be enough to settle the dispute — and smooth over other differences so that the two teams can share more than ropes.

John Heilprin, MountainZone.com Correspondent

email to a friendEmail this story to a friend


[Climbing Home] [MountainZone.com Home]