The Best American Sports Writing 2014(106)

“The purist thing doesn’t exist,” Steck said. “You have to find a way to live. You’re not living from eating the dirt. But you have to keep it as climbing.” Steck pays for his trips himself. He is sponsored, but the expeditions are not. He doesn’t want to have to factor the sponsors’ interests into the calculus of risk assessment. “If someone else pays, they decide what you have to do.” By the time he’s on the mountain, Steck is climbing for himself and himself alone.





A climber’s reputation rests not just on first ascents or flashy routes but on how he conducts himself when things go to pieces. Steck may be renowned as much for his abandoned expeditions as for the flawless ones. In May 2007, he attempted to put a new route up the south face of Annapurna, a perilous ice and rock face on the world’s most lethal peak. On his first try, he got 700 feet up, and a falling rock hit him on the head, knocked him out, and off the face. He fell all the way to the bottom and regained consciousness. He was barely hurt.

Two weeks later, he met with Simon Anthamatten, an elite alpinist from Zermatt, and they agreed to give Annapurna a try. “I grew up in the guide tradition,” Anthamatten told me. “You don’t go alone in the mountains.” The following spring, they went to Nepal. For an acclimatization climb, they achieved a first ascent of the north face of Tengkampoche, via a very technical route, which earned them a Piolet d’Or, the world’s top climbing prize. Then they went back to Annapurna. They tried twice to get up the south face but were turned back each time by weather. There were two other expeditions on the mountain: a group of Russians, who had butchered a yak to eat, and whom the Swiss thought it best to avoid, and a mixed group consisting of a Russian, a Romanian, and a Basque named Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, who were attempting the east ridge. One day, as Anthamatten and Steck returned to their base camp, exhausted after a third abortive attempt, they received a call on their satellite phone from Ochoa de Olza’s girlfriend at base camp, who was in touch with the Romanian climber via radio. There was a medical problem. Ochoa de Olza, stranded at 24,000 feet, was suffering, and the Russian had gone missing. They’d lost their medicine.

It was 9:00 P.M. Steck and Anthamatten had been climbing all day, and had left their high-altitude gear at the base of their route up the south face. They didn’t even know the way on the east ridge. Base camp sent two Sherpas up to help them, but one was drunk and the other exhausted after a 20-mile hike up from his village. So Steck and Anthamatten turned on their headlamps and set out into the night alone, in their light climbing gear. They reached Camp 2, almost 20,000 feet above sea level, at 8:00 A.M. By now it was snowing hard, and they couldn’t make out the other climbers’ tracks. They came upon an avalanche-prone slope, and decided to wait until morning to cross it. The Romanian called frequently, through Ochoa de Olza’s girlfriend, reporting that Ochoa de Olza’s condition was getting worse. When they reached Camp 3, at noon the next day, the weather was deteriorating. The Russian had returned. He’d been on the summit and spent the night just below it. Steck and Anthamatten sent the Russian down, after Steck had swapped boots with him, and Steck proceeded up alone. In between Camp 3 and Camp 4, Steck and the Romanian met up. Steck gave him medicine and the last of his food and sent him to meet Anthamatten, who helped him down. Steck proceeded to Camp 4, at 24,000 feet, and came upon Ochoa de Olza, unconscious in a tent. Another night passed. Steck remained with Ochoa de Olza, who by the next morning was in the throes of death—unconscious, vomiting, coughing up blood. Pulmonary edema. At noon, he stopped breathing. After a while, Steck determined that he was dead. He spent the rest of the afternoon in the tent with the corpse and then decided, as night fell and the storm raged, to put the body outside. A weather report came from base camp that the next morning would be his best chance of getting off the mountain alive. Steck lay awake through the night. He was sure he heard something outside, like a man moaning. He began to wonder if Ochoa de Olza was alive. He stepped outside to see. Still dead. In the morning, Steck left the body behind, headed down, and at Camp 3 stumbled upon three rescuers, with whom he descended to base.

He and Anthamatten were hailed as heroes for abandoning their climb and risking their lives to save others. They were awarded a Prix Courage. Steck downplayed the rescue, because Ochoa de Olza had died in the end. And they’d failed to achieve what they’d come to do. “I’m done with Annapurna,” he said afterward. “It gives me a funny feeling.”