GASHER-REFLECTIONS (Part 1 and 2)

(We apologize to iranian team, to always use the term "iranian members", but we don't know their names. Not all members were involved in the subjects mentioned in the following text, and also the last post)

(The picture attached is refered to the last post. Arian and Michel, from Altitude Junkies , in C1, with one of the bags of garbage left by some iranians in a crevasse)

GASHER-REFLECTIONS

23-07

I'm sitting in my base camp tent looking at the clouds that prevent the rescue helicopter to come. My feelings are mixed, sadness, anger, melancoly...I wonder if the title of this post is the right one. It crossed my mind "8000 - the egoism number", "8000 fever", "8000 lies"...

The GASHERDREAMS is now something that belongs to the past, that stays in my heart as a memory of an unfinished reality, a reality that can never come true in a mountain with more than 8000m, and a "normal route", a climbing route that for some, is the route of selfishness.

On the 21 of July me and Paulo crossed again the glaciar separating base camp from C1. The rumors of a good weather window coming on the 24 and 25, made us believe that we still had a chance.

This time we were heading for the "normal route" of GII. We gave up the idea to climb the "French Spur" because the snow has accumulated on GII in such a way, that we don't think it's possible for 2 persons to break trail on the upper, less steep, part of this route.

After our attempt on GVI, this one also looks as a remote possibilitie. So, the only thing we felt we had left, although it was not our aim, was to go for the "normal route" on GII.

At about 11:00 a.m. We arrived inC1 feeling good, decided to give GII a try. The night before, I could barely sleep, the anxiaty keept me awake. While arriving, we recognized a lot of climbers were descending from C3.

The word was that the day before, some iranian climbers had summited GII in a day of strong winds at altitude. Beside the iranians, up there was also a polish climber, Jacek Teler, and a spanish, Luis Barbero, this one a friend of ours. Luis dream was to summit GII, no matter how, and it was his second year attempting to climb it.

As time went by in the afternoon, the members of iranian team started to arrive to C1, some of them happy for getting the summit (later we knew that they were close to it, but never made it).

After maybe one hour, curious and worried, me and Paulo decided to ask to some iranian members if they knew something about Jacek and Luis. We were worried about Luis, because we knew the "8000 fever" was consuming him since the beginning.

About Jacek, iranians said he was coming down. About Luis... Luis was missing since the "summit day". We found it strange that until we asked, nobody made any coment about Luis, that he disapeared. As our questions about what happened started to pop up, the members of the iranian team to whom we were talking, started to talk about what happened in the day before.

Tomorrow (25-07) we'll go to C1 to pick up all our gear. After all that happened, we are feeling sad, and we don't have any motivation to climb GII.

If we fell ok, and if weather helps, maybe we'll give another try to GVI, this time from the face that stands right in front of base camp (south face)

Daniela/Paulo

Arian and Michael with one of the garbage bags.