Amir Mehdi was born in 1913 within the Hunza Valley excessive within the Karakoram Vary of Pakistan. Beginning as a humble porter, he grew to become the preeminent Pakistani climber of his technology and performed important roles in two of essentially the most important climbs of the period, the primary ascents of Nanga Parbat in 1953 and K2 the next yr.
Mehdi was Hunza, a member of a gaggle of individuals famend for his or her high-altitude prowess. He naturally attracts comparability along with his up to date Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa climber who appeared alongside mountaineering’s European elite at important junctures within the historical past of Himalayan climbing, most notably the 1953 first ascent of Everest with New Zealander Edmund Hillary. However whereas Norgay was celebrated on the time as a important, if not absolutely equal, accomplice within the conquest of Everest, Mehdi was denied a summit probability throughout the 1954 Italian K2 expedition, betrayed and left to die by members of his personal expedition.
Mehdi, also called Hunza Mehdi (generally spelled Mahdi), distinguished himself carrying masses for the large European expeditions that besieged the excessive peaks of the Karakoram within the early 1950s. In 1953 he joined a German-Austrian expedition to Nanga Parbat as a high-altitude porter. The ninth-highest mountain on this planet had already earned the sobriquet the “Killer Mountain” for the unusually steep toll it had exacted on earlier expeditions—31 lifeless, together with 10 and 16, respectively, within the German expeditions of 1934 and 1937. That 15 of these 26 had been high-altitude porters is grim testomony to the hazards these males shared with the Europeans they climbed with and supported.
The climb is finest remembered for Austrian Hermann Buhl’s legendary summit push, which he completed alone and with out supplementary oxygen in a 41-hour interval over July three and four, 1953. Buhl had left the tent early, breaking path and anticipating his climbing accomplice Otto Kempter to catch up. When he didn’t, Buhl climbed the ultimate 1,300 meters alone, reaching the summit on the perilously late hour of seven p.m. Buhl had taken two methamphetamine tablets—not too long ago developed to assist Luftwaffe pilots keep their edge—throughout the ascent, and left his ice axe on the summit with a Pakistani flag affixed to it. Down-climbing at midnight, he misplaced one in every of his crampons and survived a bivouac of kinds on an icy ledge too small to lie down on, and even to take a seat.
K2 is the world’s second-highest mountain (28,251 ft / eight,611 meters).
Happily the evening was unusually calm and Buhl survived, leaning in opposition to the icy slope and dozing intermittently. Within the morning he continued down the mountain, popped three extra methamphetamine tablets and staggered into Camp Vwell after sundown. Although in remarkably good situation given his ordeal, Buhl might barely transfer beneath his personal energy. Mehdi and one other porter, Haji Baig, took turns carrying the Austrian on their backs. It was a good distance down.
The expedition had chosen to method from the north, which required an prolonged provide prepare on a particularly lengthy and complicated route, protecting a distance of some 11 miles and an elevation acquire of greater than 15,000 ft. The official expedition report is filled with references to “shortages” of porters, a lot of whom turned up sick. Studying between the strains, it will need to have been a tough expedition for the Hunza load-carriers, short-handed and sick on a troublesome path. Mehdi climbed as excessive as Camp IV, however didn’t cross the Rakhiot Face with the advance group of 4 Europeans and three porters as a result of there have been no crampons giant sufficient to suit his boots. It wouldn’t be the final time Mehdi’s huge ft introduced him grief.
The following yr, 1954, Mehdi joined a big Italian group decided to say the primary ascent of K2. The expedition was huge information in Italy, which 9 years after the tip of World Warfare II remained an impoverished, bombed-out shell of nation. The expedition took a military-style brute-force method to the world’s second-highest mountain and arguably its most formidable. Writing within the Impartial, Stephen Goodwin described it as “a grossly nationalistic affair.”
The expedition included 13 of Italy’s finest climbers and employed 600 porters to maneuver 65 tons of provides up-valley. The whole operation fell beneath the autocratic rule of Ardito Desio, who despatched each day orders up the mountain on neatly typed squares of paper. The climbers referred to as him Il Ducetto, Little Mussolini.
The 1945 Italian Karakoram expedition included the cream of Italian mountaineering. Mehdi is sadly not pictured. Wikimedia Commons.
Desio assigned the summit to his protégé Achille Compagnoni, along with Lino Lacedelli. They had been good climbers, however not the strongest on the mountain that season. The strongest had been 26-year-old Walter Bonatti and Mehdi. Desio assigned them the duty of carrying oxygen canisters to the summit group. In accordance with Mehdi’s son Sultan Ali, the Italians supplied a tantalizing prize in change for his labor—an opportunity to hitch the summit group.
“Different excessive altitude porters refused. My father agreed to the mission as a result of he was supplied an opportunity to get to the highest,” Ali informed the BBC’s Shahzeb Jillani in a 2014 interview. Fetching the oxygen was an arduous job, involving a descent from Camp VIII at 7,627 meters—the place all 4 males had spent the evening of July 30—right down to Camp VII to get the bottles, then carry all of them the best way as much as Camp IX, a single tent that Compagnoni and Lacedelli had been to pitch on a snowy shoulder at about 7,950 meters.
All informed, Mehdi and Bonatti would down-climb greater than 200 meters, then flip round and climb 700 meters, whereas carrying 42 kilos of bottled oxygen. The pair climbed all day, approaching the agreed website of Camp IX as darkness fell. However the tent was not there. They climbed greater, Bonatti shouting into the evening for Compagnoni and Lacedelli, time and again.
Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli reached K2’s summit on July 31, 1954. Fifty years later Lacedelli would confess to transferring the tent on Compagnoni’s orders. Wikimedia Commons.
“Achille! Lino! Why don’t you reply?”
Lastly they noticed a flash of sunshine 100 or extra meters up the mountain, and an answering voice.
“Do you might have the oxygen with you?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Depart it there and go down!”
“I can’t. Mehdi can’t do it.”
At this juncture, Bonatti was in higher form than Mehdi, however neither man was in a situation to descend at midnight. In addition to their bodily exhaustion, Mehdi had no flashlight and Bonatti’s batteries had been spent. The difficult traverse to the tent was additionally out of the query.
Silence.
“Achille! Lino! Assist us, rattling you!”
Now Mehdi started to shout “like a madman,” Bonatti would later write.
“Not good, Compagnoni sahib! Not good Lacedelli sahib!”
Mehdi was a employed man, constrained by the norms of the time to indicate deference to the European climbers. However right here on the mountain he was the equal of the Italians in all that mattered. He will need to have been livid at their betrayal, the incomprehensible depth of their venality and cowardice, which went in opposition to all the pieces it means to be a climber, whether or not within the Alps or the Karakoram.
As Mehdi shouted, Bonatti quietly started to stage out a patch of snow. Nobody had ever tried a bivouac at eight,100 meters earlier than. Given their lack of substances and their bodily situation, it was tantamount to a demise sentence, however they’d no alternative. Bonatti and Mehdi huddled collectively, sucking on caramels and ready for demise or morning, whichever got here first.
The evening was chilly however windless, because it had been for Hermann Buhl a yr earlier on Nanga Parbat. Each Mehdi and Bonatti survived the ordeal, although Mehdi, who lacked correct mountaineering boots, would lose all of his toes and a few fingers to frostbite. In accordance with some sources, his Military boots had been two sizes too small.
At first mild, Bonatti and Mehdi left the cache of oxygen bottles and began down the mountain. Mehdi would spend eight months within the hospital. He by no means climbed once more and based on his son struggled to seek out work and assist his household.
Compagnoni and Lacedelli retrieved the oxygen bottles and reached the summit late that afternoon. They had been hailed as heroes in Italy and in alpine circles. Within the battle of competing narratives, Bonatti was outgunned and Mehdi utterly unarmed. Desio and Compagnoni, with the silent complicity of Lacedelli, spun an internet of lies that held collectively for 50 years. They claimed that Bonatti had tried to steal the summit, that he and Mehdi had used many of the oxygen throughout their bivouac, and different slanders, giant and small. The home of playing cards lastly got here down in 2004, when Lacedelli revealed a e book admitting he and Compagnoni had moved the camp for the best motive—to keep away from sharing the glory of the summit.
Expedition chief Ardito Desio at base camp. Wikimedia Commons
Mehdi in later years.
Mehdi with decorations, together with the Cavaliere d’Italia. Wikimedia Commons.
