Diemberger - The endless knot: k2 mountain of dreams and destiny

A real book needs more than just a good writer. It needs a deep conviction, a promise to yourself, to others. I could never have finished this book without thinking all the time of Julie and her wish, to pass on to others what we were living for, to have them participate and writing down our experiences made it real. It was a way of continuing our team, a conviction that grew during my lonely descent on the Abruzzi after the fatal blizzard. It was a promise. Thus, the mountain and our thoughts will be within these pages.

Anything is possible, Julie used to say. She had a very strong will, was positive, determined and active. However, at times she would just sit still, listen to the sounds of nature, let her mind glide away into the space between the leaves of a tree, between the shimmering walls of ice towers, or up to the clouds beyond them. It was not only Julie herself who made our great days, those years and with them, this book possible. You almost never find that your achievements, your dreams, become real without the actions, influence or help of others. Besides herself, it was Julies understanding husband Terry, her early climbing partner, Dennis Kemp, and perhaps in the most significant way her martial arts teacher David, who opened up the world for her very special, uncommon personality. Julie has dedicated several chapters of her beautiful book Clouds From Both Sides to them.

When I wrote this book I considered also how much it might mean to her friends. Our time in the Himalayas were her last years, bringing her the greatest fulfilment as a creative person, not only with the summit of K2, our dream mountain. It was a way of ascent to yet another realisation. Then it all ended abruptly in the blizzard at 8,000 metres.

To write about the events up there was hard, sometimes a real struggle, but it had to be. Ill never be able to accept what happened, but at least it should never be repeated. It took me almost two years to complete the book, and I want to thank Teresa, my wife, for her incredible patience, as well as Audrey Salkeld, who translated the book, for hers. Many people helped: Choi Chang Deok, a priest, was sent to me, perhaps by providence, to clear up the mystery of this tragedy, hidden in illegible Korean hieroglyphs; Charlie Clarke and Franz Berghold, high altitude illness specialists; Xavier Eguskitza, the indefatigable chronicler, John Boothe, Peter Gillman, Judith Kendra, and Dee Molenaar even my daughters Hildegard and Karen have contributed to this work!

And I must not forget those who made it possible for me to start writing at all: Gerhard Flora in Innsbruck and Hildegunde Piza in Vienna, who treated my frostbite; the Pembury Hospital in Sussex which saved me from a sudden lung-embolism in the aftermath of K2; Enzo Raise in Bologna, who recognised at the last minute my totally unexpected malaria, probably caught on my way home in the aeroplane I almost died from it. While I slowly recovered, Mrs Susie Kermauner in Salzburg took me to her rusty typewriter in that two-hundred-year-old house and I started the first chapter. Several months later, in Bologna, my little son Ceci interfered with tradition: he taught me how to use the computer! Oh, finally, Dad he said.