by Grey Satterfield
artwork by James Adams
photos from the Dee Molenaar Collection
It happens every day, in every climbing gym across the country: the belay check. It can swell up a wave of anxiety for new climbers or a wave of frustration for more experienced ones, but no matter where you are in your climbing journey, you’ve done it. Everyone has demonstrated their ability to stop a falling climber. But what about stopping two climbers? What about stopping five? And what about stopping five without the convenience of a Gri-Gri, in a raging storm at 8,000 meters, hanging off the side of the second highest mountain in the world?
Pete Schoening checks all those boxes, and his miracle belay during an early attempt of K2 is one of the most famous in all of climbing history. It’s an awesome reminder that in climbing, much like in life, a lot of things change, but a lot of things don’t.
In 1953, during the third American expedition to K2, eight climbers funded by the American Alpine Club built their high camp at nearly 7,700m. The team consisted of Pete Schoening, Charles Houston, Robert Bates, George Bell, Robert Craig, Art Gilkey, Dee Molenaar, and Tony Streather.
On the seventh day of the ascent, climbing without oxygen, Schoening and his partners were within reach of the summit. With the first ascent of the long-sought peak tantalizingly close, the weather turned, trapping the climbers for10 days at nearly 8,000m. The storm raged on, destroying tents and dwindling supplies. Then Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis—a life-threatening condition of blood clots brought on by high altitude. If these clots made it into his lungs, he’d die. The team had no choice but to descend. Without hesitation, they abandoned the summit attempt and put themselves to work getting Gilkey to safety. With an 80mph blizzard compounding their effort, the climbing team bundled their injured comrade in a sleeping bag and a tent and, belayed by Schoening, began to lower him down the perilous walls of rock and ice.
After an exhausting day of descending, they had made it only 300m but were in sight of Camp VII, which was perched on a ledge another 180m further across the icy slope. Craig was the first to reach the site and began building camp. Then the real disaster struck.
As Bell was working his way across the steep face, he slipped and began to rocket down the side of the mountain. Bell was tied to Streather, who was also pulled off his feet and down the slope. The rope between the two climbers then became entangled with those connecting the team of Bates, Houston, and Molenaar, pulling them off in turn. The five climbers, along with the tethered Gilkey, began careening down the near vertical face, rag-dolling down the mountain over 100m and speeding towards the edge: a 2,000m fall to the glacier below.
At the last second—as the weight of six climbers slammed into him— Schoening thrust his ice axe into the snow behind a boulder and, with a hip belay, brought the climbers to a stop. The nylon rope (a relatively new piece of climbing gear at the time) went taught and shrank to half its diameter, but it did not snap. The hickory axe held the strain. Schoening, rope wrapped tightly around his shoulders, had performed what is considered one of the greatest saves in mountaineering history—known now and forever known as “The Belay.”
“When you get into something like mountain climbing,” Schoening said afterwards, “I’m sure you do things automatically. It’s a mechanical func- tion. You do it when necessary without giving it a thought of how or why.”
However, the incident was not without tragedy. As the team recovered from the fall and established a forced bivy, they discovered that Gilkey, bundled in sleeping bag and tent, had vanished. There is speculation that he cut himself free in order to save the lives of his friends above.
Schoening, always humble about the feat, was later awarded the David A. Sowles Memorial Award for his heroics by the American Alpine Club in 1981 as a “mountaineer who has distinguished himself, with unselfish devotion at personal risk or sacrifice of a major objective, in going to the assistance of fellow climbers imperiled in the mountains.”
Fifty-three years later, in 2006, 28 descendants of the surviving team gathered, calling themselves “The Children of ‘The Belay.’” All owed their lives to Schoening—and his ice axe—high on K2. The axe, which some have called the holy grail of mountaineering artifacts, is on permanent display at the American Mountaineering Museum in Golden, Colorado.
Much has changed in the world of climbing over the past 70 years. When Schoening headed up K2 in 1953, assisted-braking belay devices were yet to be invented. The AAC provided no rescue services as a benefit of membership. Nobody owned an InReach or a satellite phone. To survive in the mountains in that era was to rely solely on your team—on the trust that comes with tying in together and the knowledge that a friend is watching your back.
So we would do well to remember Pete Schoening and his belay—to hold the other end of the rope is a serious affair. The next time you go out climbing, don’t forget to give your belayer a high-five and a hug.
Grey Satterfield is the digital marketing manager for the AAC. He has a decade of experience managing climbing gyms and loves to share his passion for climbing with anyone who will listen, be it through writing, photography, or swapping stories around the campfire.