Let the Weakest Lead

In 2012, Hayden Kennedy, Kyle Dempster, and Josh Wharton took on one of the world’s most formidable mountains: Baintha Brakk (23,901 feet), AKA The Ogre. This infamy was initially earned in 1977 when Chris Bonington and Doug Scott completed the first ascent of the craggy, steep mountain situated in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range. Things went awry for the Britons on the descent when Scott shattered both of his ankles in a rappelling accident. “A quick examination revealed head and trunk OK, femurs and knees OK but—Oh! Oh!—my ankles cracked whenever I moved them,” wrote Scott in his seminal essay “A Crawl Down the Ogre.” With Bonington’s help, Scott spent the next seven days literally crawling down the mountain on his knees through driving storms. The climbers ran out of food and resorted to eating rice scraps excavated from cigarette-laden garbage. Bonington contracted pneumonia. Then he had his own rappelling incident in […]
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About The Author

Andrew Bisharat

Andrew Bisharat is a writer and climber based in western Colorado. He is the publisher of Evening Sends and the co-host of The RunOut podcast.

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