K2 DEMANDS. . . : Tiptop Shape : The Burgess Brothers Will Need That, More to Scale Imposing Peak

For all their splendor, the world’s highest mountains are nothing but piles of dirt, rock, ice and snow. To some that happen to be piled higher than most, man has attached a mystique related to life’s successes and failures manifested in his attempts to ascend their summits.

As for the mountains, it’s hard to believe they are anything but cold, impersonal and totally indifferent to those who climb them, or die trying. Logic says mountains can’t feel. They can’t project pity or malevolence, save in man’s mind. They’re simply there . . . which, it has been said, is why people climb them.

So what keeps drawing Adrian Burgess back to K2? Certainly not the name, which is as romantic as a bingo card. Certainly not the locale, unless he’s hiding out from civilization.

Burgess is there now, leading the 1994 Reebok K2 Expedition with his twin brother, Alan, and four friends, waiting and preparing for the right time to go for the top.

K2 is the world’s second-highest mountain, reaching 28,250 feet. Everest, 800 miles distant, is 29,028. K2’s name, hardly worthy of its stature, was bestowed in 1851 by a singularly unimaginative officer of the British Survey of India, Capt. T.G. Montgomerie, who found it straddling the border between Pakistan and China. Actually, Montgomerie thought it was only the second-highest peak in the Karakoram range northwest of the Himalayas--hence, K2.

Some also know it as Mount Godwin Austen, for the English lieutenant who surveyed its height in 1861. But Montgomerie’s name is the one that has stuck, perhaps because it best represents the mountain’s character: stark, simple and straightforward.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a different kind of mountain, except for the top, and I haven’t been there,” Burgess said before leaving for Kathmandu, Nepal, in April.

In 1990 Greg Child and Steve Swenson of Seattle climbed K2 by the same, more difficult north ridge route that the Burgess group will try this summer. Ten other teams will try from the less demanding south side.

Child said, “As a climber, you’re drawn to architecture, and this is an amazing piece of natural architecture, like someone just took a block of rock and ice and chiseled a very sharp, knifelike ridge. It’s a lovely thing, and it goes straight to the top (in) a very direct line.”

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If K2 has a soul, it’s a nasty one.

“Some mountains have very nice personalities,” Child said. “Others are pretty damn mean. K2’s on the mean side. It’s killed a lot of people.”

Thirty-nine through last year alone, compared to the 90 who have reached its summit. Its best and worst year was 1986: 27 summits, 13 deaths. Everest’s ratio is far less grim: about one fatality for every 10 successes.

Ad Carter, editor of the American Alpine Journal, recounts ’86 on K2: “An avalanche killed a couple. Another one who was climbing solo fell into a crevasse. Eight or so got trapped high up in very bad weather, and a couple more slipped and fell. It was a perfectly awful year.”

Oddly, most of those victims had reached the top.

Child said, “On K2, coming down is the part that gets you. What nearly got us and killed several people before us, on K2 you get about four good days (of weather) in a row maximum, but you need about six good days to climb it and then get down safely. It’s almost inevitable that you get to the summit just as the weather is closing in, so you spend two days trying to get down in a white-out and a storm.”

In ‘86, eight climbers descending into a storm hunkered down in their tents to wait it out. Child pictured the scenario:

“Your bodies deteriorate, the tents collapse, you run out of (stove fuel) to melt water, you dehydrate and you just get further and further into a dream world.”

Five of those died.

Child said, “Adrian’s group will probably have a similar experience . . . get to the top and be battling the weather to get down.”

Burgess knows what to expect.

“I’ve been twice to K2--once in ‘86,” he said.

The team split, with each Burgess brother leading a group.

“The team was not strong enough to climb all the way to the top,” Adrian Burgess said. “Eventually, when I found myself at the front without a partner and my brother found himself at the front without a partner, we came together and realized there was no one else behind us, and we called off the climb.”

They regrouped for an attempt on the easier Abruzzi route but were thwarted by bad weather and had to start home with their porters. A companion, Alan Rouse, stayed on for one more try.

“Rouse went up and managed to climb it, but on the way back down. . . . “

Rouse didn’t make it down. Two years later Burgess returned as part of a four-man American team and ran into a small feudal war on the way to the mountain. Borders in the region are in constant dispute.

“We got hijacked in the middle of this squabble,” Burgess said. “They laid siege to the town and we got caught inside it.”

After a week’s delay, they proceeded to base camp.

“The weather came good almost immediately,” Burgess said. “We raced on up the mountain and after 10 days we were in position to try for it, although we weren’t really acclimatized (for high elevations).”

They descended for four days to regain their strength, but by the time they were ready the weather had worsened.

“If we’d been there a week earlier. . . . “ Burgess lamented.

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Burgess, 45, is English by birth but has lived in Utah for four years. This time he leads a hand-picked group that includes his brother, Americans Brad Johnson and Mark Wilford and Brits Paul Moores and Alan Hinkes.

“K2 is a climber’s mountain,” Burgess said. “Everest has become somewhat of a trophy mountain for less-experienced climbers. I’ve climbed Everest, and I enjoyed climbing it, but it will be a different experience on K2.”

Like Child and Swenson, Burgess’ team will use no oxygen, rather than exhaust their small party toting 20-pound bottles up and down to stash along the route. But there will come a time when they would pay dearly for one. K2 is much steeper than most mountains, including Everest.

“Instead of walking up a slope you’re pulling up with your hands,” Child said. “After 8,000 meters (26,000 feet) every 100 meters gets 10% harder. You take seven or 10 steps, then you lean on your ice ax and take a half-dozen very rapid breaths. You take another seven or 10 steps and do the same thing. Imagine two or three thousand feet of that.

“Your body’s telling you to go down, saying, ‘This is too much punishment.’ But when you really want it, your mind keeps you going . . . your mental toughness.”

Burgess’ most recent report was a fax via satellite May 17 from base camp at 12,600 feet, following a seven-day trek with 47 camels bearing food and supplies. Earlier, they passed through Urumqui, an oil and mining center farther from the sea than any city in the world.

They hope to climb the mountain between mid-June and mid-August. Meanwhile, they will wait for good weather and brew English beer from kits they brought.

“People think it’s just because we want to drink beer at base camp,” Burgess said. “There’s a psychological reason behind it. We’re away from home for a long time. Base camp has to be home. A beer is a way of showing it.”

Reebok also is lifting the team’s spirits by providing uncommon sponsorship to such an expedition, perhaps annoying the sport’s purists a bit.

Ad Carter said, “Everybody would much prefer if they didn’t have to, but it’s really quite a thing just to get to the northern side of K2. Money has to be provided.”

The Burgesses will wear prototype mountaineering boots made from material used in the Stealth bomber. Reebok understands the odds.

Dave Pompel, the company’s director of outdoors, said, “My preference, and Adrian knows this, is that he comes back, versus (reaching the) summit.”

Burgess said, “For a sponsor to understand that, as they do, is a healthy image. I think it’s a success if everyone comes back. Alive. If we reach the summit, that’s a double success. If everyone reaches the summit, it’s a tremendous success.”

Child gives them a good chance--depending on the weather:

“Determination, commitment and teamwork have to really be going harmoniously. They’re good. The Burgess twins are like hill-climbing machines. All they need is the weather and they’ll do it.”