Reflections


IVAN DUSHARIN		ANDREI VOLKOV

Nanga Parbat

VOLKOV:

Today is June 13th, 1997. Ivan and three other expedition members are in Tashkent now, Luba will arrive there tomorrow and they will fly to Islamabad. I'll join them in a couple of weeks - I have some business in my office in Togliatti. We have a new project, the peak in Pakistani Karakoram, Nanga Parbat. Almost a year had passed after the K2 expedition. Actually the year has flown away so quickly while doing things and getting prepared for a new expedition. Here I have the papers Ivan gave to me before his departure. These are his thoughts about the K2 expedition. I too have to sum up, to convert my stream of thoughts (often memories) to something constructive that can be used later.

Discussing the ups and downs... I'll start with ups. The real success of our expedition was our team of 16 (then 17) different people. People who had done the task without quarreling in such an extraordinary expedition. Actually, having compared K2 (1996) and the Everest (1992) expeditions, I have to conclude that K2 is much cooler from any side: technical, organizational, resources and so on.

About our team. The 'Hamburg counting' we conducted while trekking back showed us the roles each group played in the expedition:

The group of Dusharin, "the pioneers". We went the first always. We were the first to break the trail and to explore the route. Perhaps, we were able to do it because of our experience;
The group of Udin, "the work-horses". They had done a huge amount of work. In fact, they laid themselves on the mountain as if they were the rails, letting the train of the expedition to go through them;
The group of Penzov, "the hunters for a chance". Perhaps it mostly relates to Sergei, the leader of the group. People who have such a strong motivation for the summit as Sergei has usually do less for an expedition then they are expected to do;
The group of Dosaev, "a good rear services". We looked on the youths from the standpoint of work they could do in the mountains. Now we look at their participation in the expedition as a unique experience.

Although there were some incidents, especially at the end of the expedition, we managed to keep the whole team. We had started the expedition being a team, and came back also as a team. It's hard to say whether it was advantage or disadvantage from the standpoint of organizing the expedition. We had spent a long time discussing with Carlos the differences in two styles of climbing. Carlos is a representative of a different climbing school, and his experience helped me much.

K2 peak

While trekking back home Carlos noticed the atmosphere of failure that prevailed in our team. He was surprised to know that we had planned that 6 or 8 members of the team would have to reach the summit. We worked in the traditional Soviet Union (and, maybe, Japan) big expedition style. To Carlos' mind, the amount of work made by the members of the expedition in the mountains leaves only a little chance to succeed. There are two alternatives to that style. The first is the 'alpine style' without setting intermediate camps. It lowers the amount of work to do, but the risk is higher. The other way is using Sherpas, but it is quite expensive.

That's why, again, it's hard to compare our work with the work of the international expedition. I agree with Ivan on some points. Our way of organizing the expedition to such a severe mountain as K2 via its North Ridge showed its advantages. But the question, 'How to plan our future expeditions?' is still not clear to me.

The big mistake was to start the expedition that late. We should have gone to Karakoram much earlier because of the rivers and seasons in the mountains.

Summing up, I'll try to compile a list of a successful expedition points on the basis of their priorities, according to my understanding:

The will of an organizer. Only if there is somebody able to keep, to draw together the mass of questions, events, people, and other things the expedition consists of, then the expedition can take place. In other cases everything dissolves naturally. Thank God, there is Ivan Dusharin in Togliatti. By the way, Ivan was very precise expressing his feeling about the expedition as a master's feeling. Each expedition must have its master;
The team. You can easily get other resources, but not that one. You have to create it working together for many years;
Money;
Time. There has to be just enough time (neither much nor little). Each process has its own inertia, at the same time you shouldn't delay. I had one American project which disappeared after a year and a half of preparations.
Experience.

Do we have all these things in our new expedition? Time will show. We had done everything we could. For the Nanga Parbat expedition we formed a team consisting of Ivan, me, Andrei Mariev, Sasha Dosaev and our permanent doctor Luba Shvedova, Carlos Buhler and my brother Slava, the leader of the Everest expedition. We'll try to make a different expedition, and let God help us!

We will do it!

Ivan Dusharin. Reflections

Expedition members

Summary of members' ascents

K2 slope profile