Against all laws of nature – MK Kazakhstan

“Of course, I have an incredible story,” Gia answered without a second’s delay. I remember how we met. In the early 1990s, expeditions in the Tien Shan diminished, and travel companies offering services in the field of commercial mountaineering survived. Climbers from all over the CIS flocked to international camps to breathe in the mountains in order to feel alive. Georgian climbers worked in the Kyrgyz International Mountaineering Center, which stood opposite the Kazakh camps on the South Inylchek glacier. We had to overcome the path through ice rivers and cracks, and one day, having reactivated their base, the Georgians crossed the glacier to invite us to their place for the opening of the season. This is how we met Gia Tortladze, and the next time we met him in a quarter of a century, although he had been on expeditions with the Kazakh team more than once and I wrote about him.

Or is it hereditary?

In 1977, Gia Tortladze entered the university and, together with a friend, decided to go to the student alpiniad. The future archaeologists were released for 15 days and decided: if the event does not interest them, they will return to Tbilisi and will not go to lectures for two weeks. The guys were late for the alpiniad, but they had the opportunity to join the doctors, and the adventure nevertheless took place.

“Your father is a mountaineer, my parents were mountaineers,” reasoned 17-year-old Gia. – What if it is inherited?

Gia’s friend no longer returned to the mountains, but for him it became almost the main occupation in life. He went to alpine camps, made sports ascents, was a first-class member of the team of the Transcaucasian Military District, participated in the championships of the Armed Forces, and was a member of many international expeditions.

“Then we understood that the time had come for high-altitude ascents, and the Himalayas would not open today or tomorrow,” Gia began. – We went to the Pamir seven-thousanders – the peaks of Lenin, Korzhenevskaya, Communism, climbed the most beautiful peak of the Tien Shan Khan-Tengri. We were preparing for the Himalayas, and in 1989 I ended up in Nepal.

In 1995, Gia Tortladze organized the first Georgian expedition to Dhaulagiri and in Kathmandu met a Kazakhstani Anatoly Bukreev, who paid for his participation and made a high-speed ascent to this eight-thousander.

– Bukreev and I were friends, but I often heard talk that he was a little strange. It seems to me that those people who did not like Tolya were simply jealous of him. He was a very strong and very healthy man, he had a peculiar sense of humor, but I understood him. He participated in an expedition organized by the Russian Bashkirov, which included outstanding climbers Vinogradsky, Pershin and others, and this was the first time in the CIS when we managed to climb two eight-thousanders Cho-Oyu and Shishapangma in one season.

It turns out that healthy people perceived Bukreev as very healthy. And few people knew that he ran for many kilometers to ventilate his lungs, because he suffered from bronchial asthma. He kept his shape and physical health thanks to his strong-willed qualities, accustoming the body to stress. As physiologists say, if a person’s muscles work, which make up almost 60 percent of the cells of the body, then the internal organs also work.

My intuition takes care of me

Gia Tortladze went to Kilimanjaro and in Africa met a Korean who had several eight-thousanders under his belt.

Gia decided to join Mr. Pak’s winter expedition to Manslu and arrived in Kathmandu, and the flight that the Koreans flew to the capital of Nepal was delayed for three days. Elizabeth Hawley, a journalist who chronicled Himalayan ascents in Nepal for many decades, told him that Anatoly Boukreev and Simone Moro should arrive any day now.

– Having learned about this, I hurried to the hotel where Tolya usually stayed, and left a note for him. The next morning, the Koreans arrived, Mr. Park took my documents and money for a permit. The Koreans left for the Ministry of Tourism, followed by Boukreev and Moro,” says Gia.

— Where are you going? Go with us! – Tolya began to convince. – I know this Pak well, now I’ll catch up with him and take your passport!

Manaslu and Annapurna are in the same area. In the winter of 1997, terrible snowfalls took place there, helicopters flew endlessly, and frostbitten people were filmed from all the trekking passes.

“We spent nine days in the village, then went up to the place of the base camp, which turned out to be buried under a three-meter layer of snow,” Gia said. – We curtailed the expedition, and Boukreev and Moro continued theirs. And it happened. Either a collapse, or an avalanche.

Then, in December 1997, Gia could have ended up on the Annapurna slope along with Almaty residents Anatoly Bukreev and Dmitry Sobolev, who died under tons of snow.

New age met in the mountains

– The year 2000 was met under the eight-thousander Makalu in the Polish expedition led by Krzysztow Wielicki. By that time no one had climbed Makalu in winter. The Poles have chosen one of the most difficult winter routes along the Southern Ridge. My partner and I reached a height of 6400, when we were informed from below that the rest did not want to go. Then we went to the Japanese route. The three of us climbed to a height of 7200, but even then the rest refused to go. Then we went to the classics and set up camps: base, top base, first and second. Christoph Liszewski and I went first, followed by Krzysztov with Yurek and Darek. There was no tent in the first camp – the top awning was blown away, and the frost was over 40. We sat out the night in overalls in a through-breathed liner and did not close our eyes, and in the morning we set off towards the second camp. They arrived at the place already at dusk, and there was no tent at all! She was blown away by the wind, and we had no time to eat or drink, just to be saved.

The rest was canceled again, as, indeed, the entire expedition was canceled. We turned back and went down to the first one late at night, but there the remains of the tent were torn to shreds, which were ruthlessly rinsed by the wind. I had to keep going down. My throat was dry, the thermos was empty for a long time, and I was terribly thirsty. High in the mountains and in the summer there is no water at night, because after sunset it turns into ice, and what can we say about the Himalayan winter ?! This is the Arctic plus sky-high heights. Yet miracles do happen.

There is no water in the Himalayas in winter!

“In the area of ​​the upper base camp, at an altitude of 5700, there was a frozen lake, and we were already chopping ice for soup and tea at 4200. In winter it is so cold there that there is no water, and it is clear that it simply cannot be higher,” continued story by Gia Tortladze.

The climbers have been walking through the hurricane for more than 20 hours. Their tongues were swollen from dehydration and they could hardly stand on their feet. In one place they argued: Gia offered to keep to the right, and his partner insisted that he should go to the left. This option seemed to Gia more dangerous because of the pile of boulders where one could get injured. The wind muffled the voices that rasped out of parched throats. Everyone went their own way, because both options were acceptable, but the descent chosen by Gia seemed easier to him.

– My partner and I walked for a very long time without seeing each other, because there was a rocky ridge between us. At the bottom of the lake, which must be bypassed, and even lower we are waiting for three guys. I walked and repeated to myself, like a spell: “Lord, give me a drink, give me a drink,” but I knew that this was impossible, because there were only megatons of ice around.

The headlamp was no longer shining, the battery was cold and dead, and Gia turned it off. He went down to the frozen lake, threw off his backpack from his weary shoulders and sat down on it in exhaustion, repeating his prayer. Without counting on anything, for some reason he turned on the lantern …

A weak ray of light scattered across the mirror of ice. And suddenly, literally 20 centimeters from the edge of the lake, Gia saw a stream. Water flowed over the ice, but on a winter night, in the Himalayas, at temperatures below 40 degrees, this simply could not be!

“I’m too tired,” Gia thought, “I have visions, hallucinations, haze…

It was against all the laws of physics, against the laws of logic, against the laws of nature, but a stream was flowing over the surface of the ice! At the risk of freezing his fingers, Gia pulled off his mitten and… touched the water. He bent down, crouched down by the stream and began to drink greedily. Icy moisture burned the throat, filled the stomach, ran through the blood vessels and revived the de-energized cells. Gia took an empty metal thermos from his backpack, put the flask on ice and filled the vessel to the brim. He saw luminous dots below – lanterns were beacing from the camp.

Tortladze went down first. Lisevski then forgot to take the radio, and there was no communication with him, and Gia climbed into the tent, said that the high-altitude camps had been destroyed by the hurricane and the expedition could be considered completed. The guys drowned chopped ice in a saucepan.

“Be patient, there will be water in five minutes,” said one.

“I got drunk on the lake,” Gia replied wearily, and the Poles looked at each other.

“Hallucination, hallucination,” they said to each other.

“I don’t have hallucinations, I really got drunk there.

“Alright, alright, have another drink…”

Then Gia took a thermos out of his backpack, unscrewed the lid and poured water into the pot. The Poles looked at this and did not believe their eyes, because this could not be.

The next day they went down, but there was no water, of course. The climbers broke the ice and habitually put it into a container on a gas burner, and Gia now knew for sure that God exists. Higher powers helped him this time too. And even if it was a hot spring, as skeptics will immediately notice, it emerged from under the ice in Gia’s path only because he prayed fervently.

PS Tortladze descended to Karkara from the South Inylchek glacier in a few days, since the ascent to Khan Tengri did not take place. He was already walking with a backpack to the bus to leave for Bishkek, when I suddenly received a message from the daughter of Russian climber Sergei Sokolov. We do not know each other, but she wrote that she reads my posts and hopes for help in collecting information about her father, who disappeared on the slope of K2 in 2004. Vladimir Suviga from Almaty was the last to speak to him on the radio. But Tortladze also participated in that expedition – I realized it and ran after Gia. He said a few kind words about Sergei Sokolov. K2 did not let him in, and then he himself retreated, but he knew about a large avalanche, which, most likely, covered Sokolov. I sent this short interview to the daughter of the deceased climber.