Wanderlust
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ghosts of K2; the savage mountain that tries to kill you
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krash
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This documentary has some major inaccuracies. I've posted about them before,
Blue Marlin
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this is somthing worth reading
Why K2 Brings Out the Best and Worst in Those Who Climb It
Mountaineers risk avalanches, storms, conflicts, and a curse when they attempt to summit the peak.
K2, shown here at dawn below the Godwin Austen Glacier, is “the epitome of a mountain,” says author Mick Conefrey.
photograph by Colin Monteath, Minden Pictures
By Simon Worrall, National Geographic
PUBLISHED December 13, 2015
K2 is “a savage mountain that tries to kill you,” according to American climber George Bell. Rising steeply above the Karakoram Range along the Pakistan-China border and battered by atrocious weather, this pyramid-shaped mountain has always been the ultimate challenge for the world’s best mountaineers—and the graveyard of many of their ambitions. In 2008, in the worst accident in its history, 11 climbers perished trying to climb K2.
While making a documentary for the BBC, Mick Conefrey was lucky enough to meet a number of the pioneers who attempted to conquer the mountain, first summited by Italian Ardito Desio’s team in 1954. Conefrey’s book, The Ghosts of K2: The Epic Saga of the First Ascent,draws on those interviews, as well as newly released diaries and letters, to take us inside the obsessions, feuds, and acts of heroism that K2 inspires in those who dare to climb it.
courtesy of Oneworld Publications
Talking from his home in London, Conefrey explains why K2 brings out the best and worst in climbers, what climber Charles Houston meant by the term “The Brotherhood of the Rope,” and how the first man to attempt K2 ended up on the album cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Most mountains have resonant, poetic names like the Matterhorn or Everest. K2 sounds like a mathematical formula. How did it get its name?
It was first surveyed as part of the British Survey of India in 1856, by T.G. Montgomery. The British wanted to work out in particular where the border was between Kashmir and China, as there was a fear the Russian Empire would extend southwards. It’s called K2 because it’s found in the Karakoram Range to the northeast of the Himalayas on the border of today’s Pakistan and China. When they were doing the original survey, they gave all of the mountains K numbers. The surveyor would get the altitude of a mountain, write that down as K1 and the next one would be K2, K3, and so forth. Later, they went back and asked local people, “What’s this mountain over here called?” Then they would give it a local name, like Gasherbrum or Kanjut Sar. But K2 is so remote even today – it’s 75 miles from the nearest village – that there wasn’t an agreed local name. So K2 stuck. I actually think it’s very poetic because it sums up a mountain that is very bare, very austere, a perfect pyramid. It’s the very epitome of a mountain.
Known as “666: The Beast,” Aleister Crowley, British magician and occultist, was the first Westerner to attempt to scale K2.
photograph by General Photographic Agency, Getty Images
After being stretchered off K2 with frostbitten feet, American climber George Bell famously wrote: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” Why is K2 such a deadly place?
It’s so deadly because of the combination of elements. It is about 800 feet lower than Everest, but the topography is much tougher. Climbing Everest you have stretches that are steep, then it flattens off. Very little of K2 ever flattens off. There’s a shoulder at about 24,000 feet when it flattens off briefly but that’s about the only respite. It’s also avalanche and rock fall-prone. It’s within the death zone, defined as above 25,000 feet. And the weather is terrible and unpredictable. There have been several years recently in which nobody managed to climb K2 because the weather was so bad.
The first attempt on K2 was surely the most bizarre. Tell us about 666, a.k.a “The Beast,” Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley is famous for being an occultist. Some people call him a Satanist but that isn’t quite correct. There is no doubt that he was fascinated by the occult and Eastern religion. But although he’s most famous for the sex, drugs, and poetry—and for getting his face onto the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—in his youth he was an ardent mountaineer. The kind of mountaineering he liked was the dangerous kind. He didn’t like climbing with guides. He liked climbing by himself or with his partner, Oscar Eckenstein. He wanted extreme experiences where he pushed himself to the limit.
Unlike Everest, K2 offers climbers almost no flat sections. Here, expedition members traverse the edge of K2’s North Ridge.
photograph by Ralf Dujmovits
Crowley and Eckenstein made the first attempt on K2 in 1902. In those days, nobody had a clue about what it was going to be like. They thought they would go to the Himalayas and knock off K2 in a couple of days. But as the expedition proceeded, it started falling apart. Eckenstein, the leader, had a bad respiratory infection. Crowley had malaria and spent most of the time in his tent with a high fever. At one point he got so delirious, he started waving his revolver at other members of the team. [Laughs]
American Charlie Houston is a legend in the history of K2 expeditions even though he, too, failed to summit. Why has his expedition retained a singular place in the K2 canon?
Charlie Houston went to K2 twice, first in 1938 to do a reconnaissance of the mountain when he almost succeeded in getting to the summit. But by a bizarre stroke of misfortune, when he reached his last camp, he discovered he didn’t have any matches left. That sounds like a trivial thing but if you’re at high altitudes and you can’t cook for yourself or melt water then life is very dangerous. He rummaged around in his pockets and found a few dog ends of matches. There’s this horrific scene where they’re striking them and they’re dying. He gets to the last one. Is it going to light? Eventually, they got a couple of matches to light but it was not the way to begin the ascent of the world’s hardest mountain.
Houston came back in 1953, a very different character, having been through WWII and become an expert on high altitude climbing. The expedition was built around democratic American ideals. He was the team leader but he wanted everybody to have a say. It epitomized the noble ideal of what Houston called “the Brotherhood of the Rope”: the idea that the people you climb with are dependent on you, and you are dependent on them.
A combination of almost vertical inclines, atrocious weather and obstacles like this crevasse make K2 the ultimate challenge.
photograph by Dianne Roberts, Jim Whittaker
K2 seems to bring out the best—and the worst—in people. Expeditions are full of acrimonious fallings out and grievances nursed for a lifetime. Tell us about Fritz Wiessner and the psychopathology of this mountain.
Fritz Wiessner was a brilliant German climber, who had gone to America in the 1930’s and revolutionized American climbing by introducing European techniques. But as soon as the expedition set off in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War Two, everything went wrong.
He had to put together a scratch team because the climbers he wanted weren’t available. Even before he arrived at base camp, one of his lead climbers fell terribly ill. Fritz forced himself on but the group of novices he had been obliged to take with him started falling away. By the end you had Fritz at the top and the rest of his team at the bottom of the mountain, desperate to leave. Tragedy was inevitable.
He almost reached the summit. But on his way down, Wiessner found that the rest of his team had stripped the mountain of the sleeping bags, collapsed the tents, and got rid of the supplies he’d been relying on. Worse still, one of his colleagues, Dudley Wolfe, remained stranded high up the mountain. They made three attempts to bring Wolfe down but he died on K2. Three Sherpas also perished.
Legend has it that K2 has a curse on female climbers. Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban, posing here on Nangat Parbat, proved it groundless by summiting K2 and every other “Eight Thousander.”
photograph by AFP, Getty
When he came back to America, Fritz was interrogated. Why did you leave Dudley Wolfe on the mountain? Why did the Sherpas die? This was in the context of the war, which had just broken out. So you had this polarized controversy where Fritz’s German nationality became a key question. And the controversy still rumbles on.
Even the successful 1954 Italian expedition was dogged by bitter infighting. Though they made it to the top, the team members spent years arguing and even suing each other. It’s an extreme mountain that makes extreme demands on all the climbers who attempt it. Because of that, when things don’t go according to plan, you get these terrible, rancorous arguments.
You write, “Every year the mountain gives up some of its victims.” You made a particularly memorable discovery yourself, didn’t you?
We were taking shots of these striking ice sculptures in the glacier between K2 Base Camp and Camp One. Suddenly, my climbing safety person pointed and said, “There’s a rib cage.” It was lying ten feet away. You could hardly see it because the bones had become bleached and were partly embedded in the snow. There was nothing around it that could identify from whom it came; no clothing or belongings. So we thought it best to leave it where it was, rather than disturb it. It was a chilling reminder of just how dangerous the mountain is.
Tell us a bit about the women who have climbed K2 and the “curse” that surrounds them.
For a long time there was this strange fact that women who did manage to get to the top either died on the descent or died a few years later . The first to summit was Wanda Rutkiewicz. She got there just ahead of French climber Liliane Barrard, then died on Kanchenjunga six years later. In 1986, Barrard climbed with her husband Maurice Barrard, and they died on the descent. Similarly, British climber Julie Tullis got to the summit then died on the way down. Same with Alison Hargreaves. This gave rise to the idea that there was a curse on K2 for women climbers. Of course, that has been disproved. There have been women who have climbed K2, among them the legendary Spanish climber, Edurne Pasaban, who was the first woman to climb every “Eight Thousander.”
Almost 20 percent of all those who try to climb K2 die in the attempt, making it the second deadliest mountain after Kangchenjunga.
photograph by Ralf Dujmovits
You interviewed many of the survivors of K2 expeditions for your BBC film. What moved – and surprised – you about them?
The thing that always surprises me when I meet these climbers from the golden age is that they either live for an incredibly long time, or they die young, climbing. Ardito Desio lived to 101; Charlie Houston lived to his 90’s; Fritz Wiessner lived to his late 80’s. These guys are so tough they simply kept on going.
When I talked to Charlie Houston about the 1953 expedition, I could tell everything was still so vivid in his mind. When I talked to the Italians Compagnoni and Lacedelli about getting to the summit, there was still this incredible sense of wonder in their voices, “Did I really do that?” Because climbing K2 is so hard and there are so many odds stacked against you, if you succeed, you’re left with this sense of wonder. If you fail, you are left with a feeling of intense disappointment because you’ve had to put so much into it. You’ve had to lay your life on the line. And that marks you forever.
There are not that many happy stories around K2. There are many more unhappy stories because it’s so difficult and dangerous. Close to base camp at K2 there’s a memorial to Art Gilkey, who died during Houston’s expedition. Every year more and more little plates are put up, recording people who have died on K2. These little plates jingle in the wind, which gives them a strange, unworldly quality. It goes back to K2 not having a name. It’s not like an ordinary mountain. There’s something different about it. It’s just that much more dangerous.
Simon Worrall curates Book Talk. Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com.
Why K2 Brings Out the Best and Worst in Those Who Climb It
Why K2 Brings Out the Best and Worst in Those Who Climb It
Mountaineers risk avalanches, storms, conflicts, and a curse when they attempt to summit the peak.
K2, shown here at dawn below the Godwin Austen Glacier, is “the epitome of a mountain,” says author Mick Conefrey.
photograph by Colin Monteath, Minden Pictures
By Simon Worrall, National Geographic
PUBLISHED December 13, 2015
K2 is “a savage mountain that tries to kill you,” according to American climber George Bell. Rising steeply above the Karakoram Range along the Pakistan-China border and battered by atrocious weather, this pyramid-shaped mountain has always been the ultimate challenge for the world’s best mountaineers—and the graveyard of many of their ambitions. In 2008, in the worst accident in its history, 11 climbers perished trying to climb K2.
While making a documentary for the BBC, Mick Conefrey was lucky enough to meet a number of the pioneers who attempted to conquer the mountain, first summited by Italian Ardito Desio’s team in 1954. Conefrey’s book, The Ghosts of K2: The Epic Saga of the First Ascent,draws on those interviews, as well as newly released diaries and letters, to take us inside the obsessions, feuds, and acts of heroism that K2 inspires in those who dare to climb it.
courtesy of Oneworld Publications
Talking from his home in London, Conefrey explains why K2 brings out the best and worst in climbers, what climber Charles Houston meant by the term “The Brotherhood of the Rope,” and how the first man to attempt K2 ended up on the album cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Most mountains have resonant, poetic names like the Matterhorn or Everest. K2 sounds like a mathematical formula. How did it get its name?
It was first surveyed as part of the British Survey of India in 1856, by T.G. Montgomery. The British wanted to work out in particular where the border was between Kashmir and China, as there was a fear the Russian Empire would extend southwards. It’s called K2 because it’s found in the Karakoram Range to the northeast of the Himalayas on the border of today’s Pakistan and China. When they were doing the original survey, they gave all of the mountains K numbers. The surveyor would get the altitude of a mountain, write that down as K1 and the next one would be K2, K3, and so forth. Later, they went back and asked local people, “What’s this mountain over here called?” Then they would give it a local name, like Gasherbrum or Kanjut Sar. But K2 is so remote even today – it’s 75 miles from the nearest village – that there wasn’t an agreed local name. So K2 stuck. I actually think it’s very poetic because it sums up a mountain that is very bare, very austere, a perfect pyramid. It’s the very epitome of a mountain.
Known as “666: The Beast,” Aleister Crowley, British magician and occultist, was the first Westerner to attempt to scale K2.
photograph by General Photographic Agency, Getty Images
After being stretchered off K2 with frostbitten feet, American climber George Bell famously wrote: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” Why is K2 such a deadly place?
It’s so deadly because of the combination of elements. It is about 800 feet lower than Everest, but the topography is much tougher. Climbing Everest you have stretches that are steep, then it flattens off. Very little of K2 ever flattens off. There’s a shoulder at about 24,000 feet when it flattens off briefly but that’s about the only respite. It’s also avalanche and rock fall-prone. It’s within the death zone, defined as above 25,000 feet. And the weather is terrible and unpredictable. There have been several years recently in which nobody managed to climb K2 because the weather was so bad.
The first attempt on K2 was surely the most bizarre. Tell us about 666, a.k.a “The Beast,” Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley is famous for being an occultist. Some people call him a Satanist but that isn’t quite correct. There is no doubt that he was fascinated by the occult and Eastern religion. But although he’s most famous for the sex, drugs, and poetry—and for getting his face onto the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—in his youth he was an ardent mountaineer. The kind of mountaineering he liked was the dangerous kind. He didn’t like climbing with guides. He liked climbing by himself or with his partner, Oscar Eckenstein. He wanted extreme experiences where he pushed himself to the limit.
Unlike Everest, K2 offers climbers almost no flat sections. Here, expedition members traverse the edge of K2’s North Ridge.
photograph by Ralf Dujmovits
Crowley and Eckenstein made the first attempt on K2 in 1902. In those days, nobody had a clue about what it was going to be like. They thought they would go to the Himalayas and knock off K2 in a couple of days. But as the expedition proceeded, it started falling apart. Eckenstein, the leader, had a bad respiratory infection. Crowley had malaria and spent most of the time in his tent with a high fever. At one point he got so delirious, he started waving his revolver at other members of the team. [Laughs]
American Charlie Houston is a legend in the history of K2 expeditions even though he, too, failed to summit. Why has his expedition retained a singular place in the K2 canon?
Charlie Houston went to K2 twice, first in 1938 to do a reconnaissance of the mountain when he almost succeeded in getting to the summit. But by a bizarre stroke of misfortune, when he reached his last camp, he discovered he didn’t have any matches left. That sounds like a trivial thing but if you’re at high altitudes and you can’t cook for yourself or melt water then life is very dangerous. He rummaged around in his pockets and found a few dog ends of matches. There’s this horrific scene where they’re striking them and they’re dying. He gets to the last one. Is it going to light? Eventually, they got a couple of matches to light but it was not the way to begin the ascent of the world’s hardest mountain.
Houston came back in 1953, a very different character, having been through WWII and become an expert on high altitude climbing. The expedition was built around democratic American ideals. He was the team leader but he wanted everybody to have a say. It epitomized the noble ideal of what Houston called “the Brotherhood of the Rope”: the idea that the people you climb with are dependent on you, and you are dependent on them.
A combination of almost vertical inclines, atrocious weather and obstacles like this crevasse make K2 the ultimate challenge.
photograph by Dianne Roberts, Jim Whittaker
K2 seems to bring out the best—and the worst—in people. Expeditions are full of acrimonious fallings out and grievances nursed for a lifetime. Tell us about Fritz Wiessner and the psychopathology of this mountain.
Fritz Wiessner was a brilliant German climber, who had gone to America in the 1930’s and revolutionized American climbing by introducing European techniques. But as soon as the expedition set off in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War Two, everything went wrong.
He had to put together a scratch team because the climbers he wanted weren’t available. Even before he arrived at base camp, one of his lead climbers fell terribly ill. Fritz forced himself on but the group of novices he had been obliged to take with him started falling away. By the end you had Fritz at the top and the rest of his team at the bottom of the mountain, desperate to leave. Tragedy was inevitable.
He almost reached the summit. But on his way down, Wiessner found that the rest of his team had stripped the mountain of the sleeping bags, collapsed the tents, and got rid of the supplies he’d been relying on. Worse still, one of his colleagues, Dudley Wolfe, remained stranded high up the mountain. They made three attempts to bring Wolfe down but he died on K2. Three Sherpas also perished.
Legend has it that K2 has a curse on female climbers. Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban, posing here on Nangat Parbat, proved it groundless by summiting K2 and every other “Eight Thousander.”
photograph by AFP, Getty
When he came back to America, Fritz was interrogated. Why did you leave Dudley Wolfe on the mountain? Why did the Sherpas die? This was in the context of the war, which had just broken out. So you had this polarized controversy where Fritz’s German nationality became a key question. And the controversy still rumbles on.
Even the successful 1954 Italian expedition was dogged by bitter infighting. Though they made it to the top, the team members spent years arguing and even suing each other. It’s an extreme mountain that makes extreme demands on all the climbers who attempt it. Because of that, when things don’t go according to plan, you get these terrible, rancorous arguments.
You write, “Every year the mountain gives up some of its victims.” You made a particularly memorable discovery yourself, didn’t you?
We were taking shots of these striking ice sculptures in the glacier between K2 Base Camp and Camp One. Suddenly, my climbing safety person pointed and said, “There’s a rib cage.” It was lying ten feet away. You could hardly see it because the bones had become bleached and were partly embedded in the snow. There was nothing around it that could identify from whom it came; no clothing or belongings. So we thought it best to leave it where it was, rather than disturb it. It was a chilling reminder of just how dangerous the mountain is.
Tell us a bit about the women who have climbed K2 and the “curse” that surrounds them.
For a long time there was this strange fact that women who did manage to get to the top either died on the descent or died a few years later . The first to summit was Wanda Rutkiewicz. She got there just ahead of French climber Liliane Barrard, then died on Kanchenjunga six years later. In 1986, Barrard climbed with her husband Maurice Barrard, and they died on the descent. Similarly, British climber Julie Tullis got to the summit then died on the way down. Same with Alison Hargreaves. This gave rise to the idea that there was a curse on K2 for women climbers. Of course, that has been disproved. There have been women who have climbed K2, among them the legendary Spanish climber, Edurne Pasaban, who was the first woman to climb every “Eight Thousander.”
Almost 20 percent of all those who try to climb K2 die in the attempt, making it the second deadliest mountain after Kangchenjunga.
photograph by Ralf Dujmovits
You interviewed many of the survivors of K2 expeditions for your BBC film. What moved – and surprised – you about them?
The thing that always surprises me when I meet these climbers from the golden age is that they either live for an incredibly long time, or they die young, climbing. Ardito Desio lived to 101; Charlie Houston lived to his 90’s; Fritz Wiessner lived to his late 80’s. These guys are so tough they simply kept on going.
When I talked to Charlie Houston about the 1953 expedition, I could tell everything was still so vivid in his mind. When I talked to the Italians Compagnoni and Lacedelli about getting to the summit, there was still this incredible sense of wonder in their voices, “Did I really do that?” Because climbing K2 is so hard and there are so many odds stacked against you, if you succeed, you’re left with this sense of wonder. If you fail, you are left with a feeling of intense disappointment because you’ve had to put so much into it. You’ve had to lay your life on the line. And that marks you forever.
There are not that many happy stories around K2. There are many more unhappy stories because it’s so difficult and dangerous. Close to base camp at K2 there’s a memorial to Art Gilkey, who died during Houston’s expedition. Every year more and more little plates are put up, recording people who have died on K2. These little plates jingle in the wind, which gives them a strange, unworldly quality. It goes back to K2 not having a name. It’s not like an ordinary mountain. There’s something different about it. It’s just that much more dangerous.
Simon Worrall curates Book Talk. Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com.
Why K2 Brings Out the Best and Worst in Those Who Climb It
Wanderlust
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you are a mountaineer ?
krash
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Yup, an amateur one.
Wanderlust
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woah thats pretty cool.
krash
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Haha, thank you!
Wanderlust
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were you reported in news or any article that you wrote?
got a facebook page or twitter to follow maybe?
Providence
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K2 is much more tough than Everest. !!
Blue Marlin
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to climb everest is $50000 and stupidity.
to climb k2 you need to be sucicidal and in the middel of a mid-life crisis
baqai
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do watch Storyville K2 The Killer Summit ... one has to have respect for that mountain, one of these days Insha Allah i plan to go to the base camp, one of my friend's have been there and he says even reaching the base camp for a city boy was like very hard but best thing he ever did in his life, the first look at the magestic mountain just mesemerize
krash
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were you reported in news or any article that you wrote?
got a facebook page or twitter to follow maybe?
I've been featured in a Balti newspaper twice, does that count?
The first time they just had to report on the retards from Lahore who had come to attempt a +5800 meter peak in the winters.But apart from that I keep my climbing mostly to myself. I have shared some of the photos I took over the years here and there on this forum though.
Let's huddle up gentlemen. You have struck my favourite cord, now you will suffer my lengthy post. Pakistan is the land of the most difficult mountains in the world and K2 is its crown jewel.
K2 is the most difficult mountain to climb period. Reinhold Messner (The most accomplished mountaineer and arguably the best to have ever lived. The guy with the first of the only two summits on Nanga Parbat's Rupal Face) termed it "The Mountain of mountains", his book on K2 is titled that too. K2 over the years has gathered quite a few nicknames such as The Savage Mountain or The Widow Maker or the Killing Peak. There's a saying in mountaineering circles that "Real men go climb K2, Annapurna and Nanga Parbat", to which someone jokingly added "pu**ies go to Everest"
. This is a mountain which when discovered was claimed to be un-climbable. This reputation has been well earned.K2 brings all the challenges that a mountain can bring in one single package. It rises to 8611 meters which means that you have to spend roughly a day in the death zone (8000 meters). The death zone is named as such because above 8,000m your muscles and organs start to metabolize; essentially your body starts eating itself. Due to its size K2 generates its own weather and it is monstrous. You'd be sitting at the base camp enjoying a perfect sunny day watching a harmless fluffy little cloud just kissing and skimming off K2's summit. That cloud would in fact be a raging storm picking up huge boulders from one face of the mountain and smashing them on the other.
Then on top of all this, the monster is one of the three most challenging mountains on the technicality scale. The others are Baintha Brakk or The Ogre (only summited thrice with a gap of a quarter century between the first two) and Gasherbrum IV (vertical on all faces, reaching almost the 8000m mark). All three of these peaks have no easy route to the summit but while the Ogre only rises to 7,285 meters K2 keeps on going for another 1,326 which exponentially increases the unpredictability and severity of the weather and the physical effects from it. The G IV on the other hand shares K2's weather (being almost right besides it) and is in fact a little more technical but is also 686m shorter which falls short from the death zone just by spitting distance at 7,925m. Every route on K2 has to face vertical segments after vertical segments. The most infamous of these is "The Bottle Neck". The Bottle Neck (at 8,211m) is a very narrow vertical segment (like the neck of a bottle or a laundry shoot) making it only possible for one person to climb at a time. On top of the Bottle Neck hangs a huge serac (ice jutting straight out of the mountain side) which does break every now and then and comes rolling down at break neck speeds with the Bottle Neck acting as a funnel for it. This segment, reportedly, has the highest concentration of deaths on any segment of any other mountain. On a fateful day in 2008 a piece of the serac broke off which led to certain events that resulted in 11 deaths within a single day. You can see the huge serac hanging over in the pic below,
Overall, at 26.5% K2 has the second highest death rate following Annapurna at 32% (due to its massive avalanche hazard) and leading Nanga Parbat at 20.3% (which until the 90s had the highest death rate at 77%). The death rate on Annapuran has been skewed due to the number of attempts on it during the early years of mountaineering (read a lot less mature a sport) while there were none on K2. The death rate since 1990 on both K2 and Annapurna has been 19.7% which is the joint highest. On K2, for every four people that have reached the summit one has died. For comparison, Everest's overall death rate is 3.9%. Some of the most famous and best mountaineers have died on K2 resulting in the saying "the best come to this mountain to die". K2 and Nanga Parbat are the only two +8,000m peaks which have never been summited in the winter season. Until 2010, none of Pakistan's eight-thousanders had been summited during the winters.
K2 is the only +8,000m peak which still regularly gives summitless years. For two years straight (2009 and 2010) no one could summit it. Then in 2013 a record number of people summited the mountain. This was touted as proof that mountaineering had come a long way from before and had changed forever. The credit was given to modern gear and equipment. It was even claimed that never again would mountaineering be such a difficult and dangerous sport. Analysts and equipment companies claimed that the successive years would only see these records being broken and K2's notoriety would decrease. And then the very next year, the mighty K2, as if purposefully, laughing at us, mocking the arrogance of man, ridiculing the audacity of those claims, squashing the hubris of us mortals decided to not allow a single foot to step atop it. And thus for a year after the record breaking year no one got to summit K2.
As far as the comparison with Everest is concerned "Everest and K2 aren't even the same sport" - Chris Szymiec. "Having begun your ascent on Everest you'd be sipping beer and cracking jokes with your Sherpas for about a day. On K2, the moment you reach the base camp would be the moment you'd know what fear is" - Reinhold Messner. "Compared to K2, Everest is a steep walk" - another famous mountaineer who's name I'm forgetting.
Page 2 of K2: The Killing Peak - MensJournal.com
In the year 2013 alone (the year when there were zero summits on K2) there were 658 confirmed summits on Everest, while on K2 there have been a total of 302 confirmed summits to this day. Especially since its commercialization Everest has become a joke. Below are actual traffic jams on Everest,
K2 is the mountain for anyone and everyone who know's anything about mountains. This is the one which commands the most respect and no other comes anywhere close. In the words of the American climbing legend Ed Viesturs, K2 is "the holy grail of mountaineering." I can actually go on about this mountain for days but think its time to spare you guys.
ps: The mid-life crisis guys go to Everest. Only the best and the most serious dare attempt K2.
First you ride a jeep from Skardu to Askole on what is the most dangerous and the most scary road in the world. Then you begin your trek from there eastwards onto the Baltoro glacier which is the largest glacier in the world outside the poles. Under the shadow of dozens of super famous peaks, you trek for 7-9 days on the glacier through some of the most spectacular scenery this world has to offer. On the 7th-9th day you walk towards three +8000m peaks in the distance. At the end of the day as you approach Concordia, you see a white shoulder creeping out from behind Marble Peak on its right (on your left). You are tired to the bones but you hasten up your pace, you just can't wait. You keep stumbling, keep stubbing your toe against big rocks, you completely forget about the bottomless crevasses laying in ambush. Your eyes are now just fixated on the white silhouette as it slides out more into view inch by inch with every step from behind Marble Peak. Then you reach Concordia, the sight that you've been thirsting for is right there in your face; The King, standing alone in the distance above the world in "The Throne Room of Mountain Gods". Ah....one really can't describe the feeling.
It takes you around half a day more from there to get to the base camp which is basically a constant party at 5000m. The route back is even more dangerous and difficult since you go south climbing over Gondogoro La into the Hushe valley, from where you hire vehicles back to Skardu. While standing on top of Gondogoro La you see K2, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum IV all lined up. This is the last time you see K2 before you decide to come again.
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Blue Marlin
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i can tell you enjoyed doing the writeup. but huddleing? i'll pass on that. i will keep my feet at 615ft not 25000+
i know k2 is called the "savage mountain" and narga parbat is called the "man killer"
K2 is the most difficult mountain to climb period. Reinhold Messner (The most accomplished mountaineer and arguably the best to have ever lived. The guy with the first of the only two summits on Nanga Parbat's Rupal Face) termed it "The Mountain of mountains", his book on K2 is titled that too. K2 over the years has gathered quite a few nicknames such as The Savage Mountain or The Widow Maker or the Killing Peak. There's a saying in mountaineering circles that "Real men go climb K2, Annapurna and Nanga Parbat", to which someone jokingly added "pu**ies go to Everest"
K2 brings all the challenges that a mountain can bring in one single package. It rises to 8611 meters which means that you have to spend roughly a day in the death zone (8000 meters). The death zone is named as such because above 8,000m your muscles and organs start to metabolize; essentially your body starts eating itself. Due to its size K2 generates its own weather and it is monstrous. You'd be sitting at the base camp enjoying a perfect sunny day watching a harmless fluffy little cloud just kissing and skimming off K2's summit. That cloud would in fact be a raging storm picking up huge boulders from one face of the mountain and smashing them on the other.
i am aware that k2 is notorious for being the one of the most difficult mountain to climb. and that its death rate is second to that of annapurna.
the bottel neck is the most dangerous part of the climb in my view anyway. and its doing back down thats worse than going up.
whats the ogre and Baintha Brakk? name of the mountain please.
i have done quiet a bit of reading on mountains and i know most of the stats and famous quotes.Overall, at 26.5% K2 has the second highest death rate following Annapurna at 32% (due to its massive avalanche hazard) and leading Nanga Parbat at 20.3% (which until the 90s had the highest death rate at 77%). The death rate on Annapuran has been skewed due to the number of attempts on it during the early years of mountaineering (read a lot less mature a sport) while there were none on K2. The death rate since 1990 on both K2 and Annapurna has been 19.7% which is the joint highest. On K2, for every four people that have reached the summit one has died. For comparison, Everest's overall death rate is 3.9%. Some of the most famous and best mountaineers have died on K2 resulting in the saying "the best come to this mountain to die". K2 and Nanga Parbat are the only two +8,000m peaks which have never been summited in the winter season. Until 2010, none of Pakistan's eight-thousanders had been summited during the winters.
K2 is the only +8,000m peak which still regularly gives summitless years. For two years straight (2009 and 2010) no one could summit it. Then in 2013 a record number of people summited the mountain. This was touted as proof that mountaineering had come a long way from before and had changed forever. The credit was given to modern gear and equipment. It was even claimed that never again would mountaineering be such a difficult and dangerous sport. Analysts and equipment companies claimed that the successive years would only see these records being broken and K2's notoriety would decrease. And then the very next year, the mighty K2, as if purposefully, laughing at us, mocking the arrogance of man, ridiculing the audacity of those claims, squashing the hubris of us mortals decided to not allow a single foot to step atop it. And thus for a year after the record breaking year no one got to summit K2.
As far as the comparison with Everest is concerned "Everest and K2 aren't even the same sport" - Chris Szymiec. "Having begun your ascent on Everest you'd be sipping beer and cracking jokes with your Sherpas for about a day. On K2, the moment you reach the base camp would be the moment you'd know what fear is" - Reinhold Messner. "Compared to K2, Everest is a steep walk" - another famous mountaineer who's name I'm forgetting.
Page 2 of K2: The Killing Peak - MensJournal.com
In the year 2013 alone (the year when there were zero summits on K2) there were 658 confirmed summits on Everest, while on K2 there have been a total of 302 confirmed summits to this day. Especially since its commercialization Everest has become a joke. Below are actual traffic jams on Everest,
K2 is the mountain for anyone and everyone who know's anything about mountains. This is the one which commands the most respect and no other comes anywhere close. In the words of the American climbing legend Ed Viesturs, K2 is "the holy grail of mountaineering." I can actually go on about this mountain for days but think its time to spare you guys.
ps: The mid-life crisis guys go to Everest. Only the best and the most serious dare attempt K2.
i like how k2 is seen as a monster and it is written as if its a person, not an object
have you read this
Climbing: Is K2 the new Everest?
With one death for every four successful ascents, K2 has always been considered the preserve of the most elite professional climbers. Now though, two commercial operators are offering pioneering guided trips, with a $55,000 price tag
K2’s summit, at 8,611m, is 237m lower than Everest’s
In September 1953, as he was being stretchered off an aircraft suffering from severe frostbite, the American climber George Bell was asked how he felt about the peak he had just attempted to climb — K2, the world’s second-highest peak. His reply was succinct: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.”
For decades, it was seen as the world’s toughest and most dangerous mountain, with one death for every four successful ascents. While Everest grew crowded with relative novices who paid commercial guiding companies to help them reach the top — to the extent that the Nepalese government last week announced plans to ban those without sufficient experience — it was always assumed K2 would remain the preserve of the elite.
This year, however, Himalayan Experience and Madison Mountaineering, two of the biggest companies in the climbing business, offered guided ascents, for a fee of about $55,000 per person. So could K2 become the next Everest?
Bell’s “savage mountain” lies on Pakistan’s border with China in the Karakoram mountains. It was first measured in 1856 by TG Montgomerie, a British surveyor, and given the temporary designation “K2”, for Karakoram 2, until the team could find out the local name for it. But K2 was so remote that no name could be found and the abbreviation soon became official: an austere name for an austere mountain.
Though K2 is 237m shorter than Everest, it is a much harder climb. The first ascent was made by an Italian team in 1954. Both summiteers, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, were professional mountain guides, and their support team included Walter Bonatti, who would be acclaimed as the greatest mountaineer of the 20th century.
“It’s the gold medal,” says Alan Hinkes, the first British mountaineer to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, “the first prize in mountaineering.” He made it to the top in 1995 after “donating” three years of his life to the mountain, but is wary of returning to guide clients. “You wouldn’t get me going there, even if a rich client offered me £150,000,” he says. “I did it for me, not for money, so why go back and get killed?”
Alan Arnette, the American climber who now runs one of the most influential mountaineering blogs, agrees that K2 is in a different league from Everest. “Everest’s big challenge”, he says, “is its altitude. On K2 it’s the altitude plus the weather plus the climbing itself. Getting to the top requires hard rock-climbing at an extremely high altitude. The constant threat of avalanche and rockfall makes it even more dangerous.”
Despite this, commercial climbing has now arrived on the mountain. Garrett Madison, the Seattle-based mountain guide who runs Madison Mountaineering, took the first fully supported commercial expedition in 2014 and went again this summer. “I always wanted to climb it myself,” he says, “and I thought it could be guided.”
Russel Brice, founder of Himalayan Experience, says his decision to mount an expedition this year was driven by his clients. “I have many clients who have climbed many 8,000m peaks, and they were always asking me when I would go to K2,” he says.
Madison’s 2014 expedition went well, with two out of his three clients reaching the summit. In 2015 bad weather put paid to both companies’ attempts, but things were worse on Everest. The 2014 season there came to an abrupt halt when an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas. This year, Nepal was devastated by an earthquake that killed more than 9,000 and wrought widespread havoc; unsurprisingly, there were no ascents of Everest from the Nepalese side.
Brice expects fewer expeditions on Everest next year, and a growing focus on K2 as a result. “I see that there is a big downturn of business in Nepal, so part of the reason to go again to K2 next year is also to offer more employment to my Sherpa staff,” he says. He also recognises the benefits to Pakistan: “Local porters and operators are pleading for more expeditions to come to help with the economy. I feel that my last trip helped a lot of people and so maybe it is good to continue.”
There are major hurdles, however, for the large-scale development of K2. “It is so much more challenging [for a guiding company],” says Madison, “everything from getting permits and visas to the trek in to base camp, which is twice as long as it is for Everest.” While Nepal has a well-developed climbing and trekking industry, with equipment, helicopters and support staff readily available and dozens of tea-houses lining the route to base camp, there’s nothing comparable on the way in to K2. Add to this the unpredictability and severity of the weather, and the odds of business moving wholesale from Everest to K2 look longer. In four of the past seven years there have been no ascents of K2 at all. “It doesn’t take much for conditions to become unacceptable,” says Madison, “and it’s tough for clients who have taken the time off and spent the money when I have to say to them that it is not safe to go up.”
Nevertheless, both Himalayan Experience and Madison Mountaineering will return to K2 in 2016. Even if only a small number of clients are willing to take the risks involved, it is still possible to run K2 expeditions as a niche business. The savage mountain may not have been tamed but it looks as if growing numbers of climbers will be drawn to attempt it.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8b04bd2-65d5-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html
do you think they can commercialise k2?
Wanderlust
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I've been featured in a Balti newspaper twice, does that count?
But apart from that I keep my climbing mostly to myself. I have shared some of the photos I took over the years here and there on this forum though.
YUP that counts ofcourse.. but I would suggest you to open up to public.. you said you are from lahore so that is something, look at moeen ali khan. not commercial but helping build up good name for the country.. that you too can do.. why so shy like snow leopard?
krash
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Hahaha
Baintha Brakk is the name of the mountain, it's also known as The Ogre. It's this little old hill,
A mountain whose name still inspires awe – BAINTHA BRAKK aka The Ogre | Xtremesport
Baintha Brakk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
i have done quiet a bit of reading on mountains and i know most of the stats and famous quotes.
i like how k2 is seen as a monster and it is written as if its a person, not an object
have you read this
Climbing: Is K2 the new Everest?
With one death for every four successful ascents, K2 has always been considered the preserve of the most elite professional climbers. Now though, two commercial operators are offering pioneering guided trips, with a $55,000 price tag
K2’s summit, at 8,611m, is 237m lower than Everest’s
In September 1953, as he was being stretchered off an aircraft suffering from severe frostbite, the American climber George Bell was asked how he felt about the peak he had just attempted to climb — K2, the world’s second-highest peak. His reply was succinct: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.”
For decades, it was seen as the world’s toughest and most dangerous mountain, with one death for every four successful ascents. While Everest grew crowded with relative novices who paid commercial guiding companies to help them reach the top — to the extent that the Nepalese government last week announced plans to ban those without sufficient experience — it was always assumed K2 would remain the preserve of the elite.
This year, however, Himalayan Experience and Madison Mountaineering, two of the biggest companies in the climbing business, offered guided ascents, for a fee of about $55,000 per person. So could K2 become the next Everest?
Bell’s “savage mountain” lies on Pakistan’s border with China in the Karakoram mountains. It was first measured in 1856 by TG Montgomerie, a British surveyor, and given the temporary designation “K2”, for Karakoram 2, until the team could find out the local name for it. But K2 was so remote that no name could be found and the abbreviation soon became official: an austere name for an austere mountain.
Though K2 is 237m shorter than Everest, it is a much harder climb. The first ascent was made by an Italian team in 1954. Both summiteers, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, were professional mountain guides, and their support team included Walter Bonatti, who would be acclaimed as the greatest mountaineer of the 20th century.
“It’s the gold medal,” says Alan Hinkes, the first British mountaineer to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, “the first prize in mountaineering.” He made it to the top in 1995 after “donating” three years of his life to the mountain, but is wary of returning to guide clients. “You wouldn’t get me going there, even if a rich client offered me £150,000,” he says. “I did it for me, not for money, so why go back and get killed?”
Alan Arnette, the American climber who now runs one of the most influential mountaineering blogs, agrees that K2 is in a different league from Everest. “Everest’s big challenge”, he says, “is its altitude. On K2 it’s the altitude plus the weather plus the climbing itself. Getting to the top requires hard rock-climbing at an extremely high altitude. The constant threat of avalanche and rockfall makes it even more dangerous.”
Despite this, commercial climbing has now arrived on the mountain. Garrett Madison, the Seattle-based mountain guide who runs Madison Mountaineering, took the first fully supported commercial expedition in 2014 and went again this summer. “I always wanted to climb it myself,” he says, “and I thought it could be guided.”
Russel Brice, founder of Himalayan Experience, says his decision to mount an expedition this year was driven by his clients. “I have many clients who have climbed many 8,000m peaks, and they were always asking me when I would go to K2,” he says.
Madison’s 2014 expedition went well, with two out of his three clients reaching the summit. In 2015 bad weather put paid to both companies’ attempts, but things were worse on Everest. The 2014 season there came to an abrupt halt when an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas. This year, Nepal was devastated by an earthquake that killed more than 9,000 and wrought widespread havoc; unsurprisingly, there were no ascents of Everest from the Nepalese side.
Brice expects fewer expeditions on Everest next year, and a growing focus on K2 as a result. “I see that there is a big downturn of business in Nepal, so part of the reason to go again to K2 next year is also to offer more employment to my Sherpa staff,” he says. He also recognises the benefits to Pakistan: “Local porters and operators are pleading for more expeditions to come to help with the economy. I feel that my last trip helped a lot of people and so maybe it is good to continue.”
There are major hurdles, however, for the large-scale development of K2. “It is so much more challenging [for a guiding company],” says Madison, “everything from getting permits and visas to the trek in to base camp, which is twice as long as it is for Everest.” While Nepal has a well-developed climbing and trekking industry, with equipment, helicopters and support staff readily available and dozens of tea-houses lining the route to base camp, there’s nothing comparable on the way in to K2. Add to this the unpredictability and severity of the weather, and the odds of business moving wholesale from Everest to K2 look longer. In four of the past seven years there have been no ascents of K2 at all. “It doesn’t take much for conditions to become unacceptable,” says Madison, “and it’s tough for clients who have taken the time off and spent the money when I have to say to them that it is not safe to go up.”
Nevertheless, both Himalayan Experience and Madison Mountaineering will return to K2 in 2016. Even if only a small number of clients are willing to take the risks involved, it is still possible to run K2 expeditions as a niche business. The savage mountain may not have been tamed but it looks as if growing numbers of climbers will be drawn to attempt it.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8b04bd2-65d5-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html
do you think they can commercialise k2?
Anywhere close to the extent of Everest? I seriously doubt it. I've had this debate too many times. The thing which led to Everest's commercialization to this degree was its non-technical climb. The most popular route follows a ridge-line which doesn't present any serious gradient and ropes are only really necessary ona couple hundred meters. On the other hand you have to be permanently tethered while on K2, starting from the Abruzzi spur all the way to the summit except for the little portion on the shoulder.
Let's look at it this way, imagine you have all the fixed ropes and ladders on K2(which people have tried to no avail), with porters selling O on camp 1, 2 and 3, like it is on Everest. Would a person without proper climbing experience still be able to summit K2? All this help will still leave you alone against all the technicalities of the climb and the physical burdens, resulting from it and the volatile weather conditions. A guide can't help you through the Black Pyramid, the Bottle Neck, the Hockey Stick Gully or even the Abruzzi Spur. That is when you need to know how to climb and how to climb good. So right there and then amateur climbers go right out the window, leaving a fraction of the climbers we see on Everest. You and I can take an Aventador to its top speed on the Autobahn without a hitch, but to run it through the Monaco Circuit we will need a professional in the driver's seat.
Besides, guys like Fabrizio Zangrilli have been running commercial set-ups on K2 and its adjacent peaks for quite a few years and even now their clients remain experienced climbers. 99% of a commercial set-up in mountaineering is to make the logistical aspect of the climb easy, they can't carry you to the top, not even on Everest. Couple that with the fact that one can't take novices to a place where a small mistake, more often than not, equals death instead of a return to base camp, like it is on Everest, you suddenly find your clientele shrunk exponentially. Even the commercial examples mentioned in the article took climbers "who have climbed many 8,000m peaks".
Then K2 is in a far less accessible area than Everest, the only route to it is the world's largest glacier outside the poles. You can't build "tea houses" or any permanent structures on moving ice, you can't hire mules and ponies to transport provisions through that terrain, it's inaccessible most of the year, life on the base camp itself is treacherous, etc, etc. Even though helicopter services from the army are readily available to the climbers there (contrary to what the article claims), it's just not feasible and in some cases impossible to even sustain a commercial set-up such as those on Everest.
YUP that counts ofcourse.. but I would suggest you to open up to public.. you said you are from lahore so that is something, look at moeen ali khan. not commercial but helping build up good name for the country.. that you too can do.. why so shy like snow leopard?
Oh trust me, half of my former classmates are still ready to come to Pakistan ever since I told them my stories, I'm a walking talking brochure of mountains, especially of Pakistan
But seriously speaking, what Moeen is doing is a full time endeavour for which I've never had the time. Plus it's always been a very personal affair for me, it's like visiting home. The knowledge of being cut off from the world, just you, rock and God. Knowing that what you are witnessing and experiencing is a privilege 99% of the world will never witness or understand. It's all part of it for me. Posting all those pictures on a public website which the whole world can see with just a click would feel like diluting those experiences, making them common and not special and personal anymore. Maybe I'm just being stupid, I don't know. But it's not like I actively hide them or deliberately not share my stories amd pictures or anything.
Besides, I'm not a huge fan of this tourism bandwagon with every tom, dick and harry visiting those places. It will ruin them. I believe that you don't deserve to see them unless you truly respect them and look after them. I know, that might sound a little selfish
Btw have you checked out The Throne Room of Mountain Gods. In it I've tried to present a short detail of Concordia and its adjacent mountains as much as I could with pictures and descriptions. I think you might like it.
ps: You know, for all these years, I still haven't seen a snow leopard? They're like ghosts, man.
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