“You use our spits,” one of the Italians said — as if Italy had the sole patent for using and installing bolts.
“No, actually, those are ours,” I said, pointing to a half-drilled quarter-incher. Jonny again tried to make small talk, but to no avail. The Italians pretended we weren’t even there. I went over and introduced myself to Raju, a Hindi man from central India with bright eyes, a big smile, and a missing front tooth. He quickly reassured me that he didn’t care what we climbed so long as we asked the Italians first . . . thus sidestepping the conflict altogether.
Classic, I thought later, as I looked up from the door of our two-pole, Boy Scout-style tent, which also doubled as a sleeping tent for Purtemba and our assistant cook, Depess. With square mile after square mile of good camping in the area, the Italians decided to set up their two massive cook tents and nine sleeping tents fewer than 50 feet from us. I asked Jonny what he thought.

“We should head up and avoid any other conflicts,” later.” I agreed, so we collapsed the tent, packed our bags, and started up the 3,000-foot talus cone to the glacier and base of the wall. If we went for it and missed, we knew that the Italians, with seven climbers and untold spools of fixing rope, might summit before we did.
“I love Italians,” I said cynically, huffing with exertion while I schlepped my 35-pound pack up the talus. “I love Italian food, Italian cars, Italian shoes, and Italian women.”
“Me, too, and I’m glad they’re here,” said Jonny, sincerely enough. “It just spotlights the ol’ style debate. Anyway, I think we’ll all be friends soon, and I’m sure they’ve got some good Italian meat and cheese down there. We can share our rum.”

Then it hit me: our new goal was not only to make the first ascent of this walled mountain but to share food and drink with the Italians and resolve our issues. “Now that would be proud,” I told Jonny. We laughed at this. The Italians wanted us arrested and taken to some godforsaken Kashmiri jail, to be banished from climbing forever. But Jonny and I kept pouring on the love for all things Italian — in order to face the mountain safely, we needed to rid ourselves of the bad energy that had driven us up the hill. For the rest of the evening, “I love the Italians” became our mantra.

“Tent or sleeping bag?” asked Jonny, as we dangled 1,500 feet above the Lang Lang Glacier.
“Tent’s fine,” I replied. Careful not to crush the one-by-two-foot, chiseled ledge of ice that would be his bivy for the night, Jonny reached gingerly into our single 40-liter pack, to hand me the tent shell. I pulled it down to my equally meager stance and wrapped it around me. We were 12 pitches up the Shafat Fortress, our first night on the wall and only 20 hours after leaving the Italian-occupied basecamp. Our route followed a continuous and obvious dihedral system — a line that shot out of the glacier like an arrow. For the most part, it seemed to be the only obvious crack system, though one section — a gaping offwidth three-quarters of the way up — concerned us.