Mike Farris’ original K2 team has now departed, leaving him on the mountain with a group reconstituted from several expeditions, he writes in a new post Saturday. They’re waiting for a suitable weather window to make an attempt on the mountain, which is several hundred feet shorter than Everest (or perhaps “less tall” we should say) but is much more technically difficult and unpredictable. That more than 70 climbers have died (including 11 last week) on K2 testifies to the severity of the challenge. That knowledge is even more sobering when you consider that on K2, there are not many wannabes, climbers who pay big bucks to have a guide usher them up to the top, as has become common on Everest. Generally speaking, those who have the guts to climb K2 have developed the mountaineering skills to make it seem feasible. When I interviewed Farris two years ago, I asked him the question that is probably most often put to high-altitude climbers. Why do it? His answer: “The British have an expression about the “rat in the belly” as a way to talk about why people climb. They say some people have a small rat that gets some food and is satisfied, while others have a rat that gets bigger and hungrier the more you feed it. When I am coming down from these trips I always think I’m never going to do it again. But after a while I start to remember the good experiences — which are hard to relay in words — and then there’s that rat in the belly, that challenge to try again. It looks suspiciously like addictive behavior, but I guess you can be obsessive about anything.” I think of that answer now, him sitting at the base of the mountain, waiting for another chance to climb. He’s been living there for most of the summer under trying conditions. He’s seen 11 people die, and still he’s waiting.  I don’t know if it’s heroic or foolish. But I know that I’m one of those people whose rat is more easily quieted, and I’m glad for it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 8:46 am and is filed under adventure, climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.