K2 Totally Explained

Everything about K2 totally explained

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth. It is located in the Karakoram segment of the Himalayan range, on the border between the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan and the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang, China. Other names include Mount Godwin-Austen (Urdu: ماؤنٹ گڈون آسٹن), Lamba Pahar ("Tall Mountain" in Urdu), Dapsang, Kechu or Ketu (Urdu: کے ٹو), the latter two of which are both derived from "K2").

Climbing history

The mountain was first surveyed by a European survey team in 1856. Thomas Montgomerie was the member of the team who designated it "K2" for being the second peak of the Karakoram range. The other peaks were originally named K1, K3, K4 and K5, but were eventually renamed Masherbrum, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and Gasherbrum I respectively.
   In 1892, Martin Conway led a British expedition that could only reach up to 'Concordia' point of the Baltoro Glacier. The first serious attempt to climb K2 was undertaken in 1902 by Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley via the Northeast Ridge, but after five serious and costly attempts, the team could only reach up to 6525 meters. The failures are attributed to a combination of questionable physical training, personality conflicts, and poor weather conditions — of 68 days spent on K2 (at the time, the record for longest time spent at such an altitude) only eight provided clear weather.
   The next expedition to K2 in 1909 was led by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi reached an elevation of around 6,250 m on the South East Spur, now known as the Abruzzi Spur (or Abruzzi Ridge). This would eventually become part of the standard route, but was abandoned at the time due to its steepness and difficulty. After trying and failing to find a feasible alternative route on the West Ridge or the North East Ridge, the Duke declared that K2 would never be climbed, and the team switched its attention to Chogolisa, where the Duke came within 150 m of the summit before being driven back by a storm.
   The next attempt on K2 wasn't made until 1938, when an American expedition led by Charles Houston made a reconnaissance of the mountain. They concluded that the Abruzzi Spur was the most practical route, and reached a height of around 8000 m before turning back due to diminishing supplies and the threat of bad weather. The following year an expedition led by Fritz Wiessner came within 200 m of the summit, but ended in disaster when four climbers disappeared high on the mountain. Charles Houston returned to K2 to lead the 1953 American expedition. The expedition failed due to a storm which pinned the team down for ten days at 7800 m, during which time Art Gilkey became critically ill. A desperate retreat followed, during which Pete Schoening saved almost the entire team during a mass fall, and Gilkey was killed, either in an avalanche or in a deliberate attempt to avoid burdening his companions. In spite of the failure and tragedy, the courage shown by the team has given the expedition iconic status in mountaineering history.
   An Italian expedition finally succeeded in ascending to the summit of K2 on July 31, 1954. The expedition was led by Ardito Desio, although the two climbers who actually reached the top were Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. The team included a Pakistani member, Colonel Muhammad Ata-ullah, who had been a part of the 1953 American expedition. Also on the expedition was the famous Italian climber Walter Bonatti, who proved vital to the expedition's success in that he carried vital oxygen to 26,600 feet for Lacedelli and Compagnoni. His dramatic bivouac in the open at that altitude wrote another chapter in the saga of Himalayan climbing.
   On August 9, 1977, 23 years after the Italian expedition, Ichiro Yoshizawa led the second successful ascent to the top; with Ashraf Aman as the first native Pakistani climber. The Japanese expedition ascended through the Abruzzi Spur route traced by the Italians, and used more than 1,500 porters to achieve the goal. The year 1978 saw the third ascent of K2, via a new route, the long, corniced Northeast Ridge. (The top of the route traversed left across the East Face to avoid a vertical headwall and joined the uppermost part of the Abruzzi route.) This ascent was made by an American team, led by noted mountaineer James Whittaker; the summit party were Louis Reichardt, James Wickwire, John Roskelley, and Rick Ridgeway. Wickwire endured an overnight bivouac about 150 m below the summit, one of the highest bivouacs in climbing history. This ascent was emotional for the American team, as they saw themselves as completing a task that had been begun by the 1938 team forty years earlier.
   Another notable Japanese ascent was that of the difficult North Ridge (see route information below), on the Chinese side of the peak, in 1982. A team from the Mountaineering Association of Japan led by Isao Shinkai and Masatsugo Konishi put three members, Naoe Sakashita, Hiroshi Yoshino, and Yukihiro Yanagisawa, on the summit on August 14. However Yanagisawa fell and died on the descent. Four other members of the team achieved the summit the next day.
   The first climber to summit K2 twice was a Czech climber Josef Rakoncaj. Josef was a member of the 1983 Italian expedition led by Francesco Santon, which made the second successful ascent of the North Ridge (7/31/1983). Three years later, on 7/5/1986, he summitted on the Abruzzi Spur (double with Broad Peak West Face solo) as a member of Agostino da Polenza's international expedition.
   The peak has now been climbed by almost all of its ridges. Although the summit of Everest is at a higher altitude, K2 is considered a more difficult climb, due in part to its terrible weather and comparatively greater height above surrounding terrain. The mountain is believed by many to be the world's most difficult and dangerous climb, hence its nickname "the Savage Mountain." As of November 2007, only 280 people have completed the ascent (External Link

), compared with about 2,600 individuals who have ascended the more popular target of Everest. At least 66 people have died attempting the climb; 13 climbers from several expeditions died in 1986 in the K2 Tragedy during a severe storm.
Legend once had it that K2 carried a "curse on women." The first woman to reach the summit was Wanda Rutkiewicz, of Poland, in 1986. The next five women to reach the summit are all deceased — three of them died on the way down, among them fêted British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves in 1995. Rutkiewicz herself died on Kangchenjunga in 1992. However, the "curse" was broken in 2004 when Edurne Pasaban summitted and descended successfully, and again in 2006 when Nives Meroi of Italy and Yuka Komatsu of Japan became, respectively, the seventh and eighth women to summit K2, both descending successfully.
For most of its climbing history, K2 wasn't usually climbed with bottled oxygen, and small, relatively lightweight teams were the norm. However the 2004 season saw a great increase in the use of oxygen: 28 of 47 summitters used oxygen in that year.

Climbing routes and difficulties

There are a number of routes on K2, of somewhat different character, but they all share some key difficulties: First is the extreme high altitude and resulting lack of oxygen: in fact there's only one third as much oxygen available to a climber on the summit of K2 as there's at sea level. Second is the propensity of the mountain to experience extreme storms of several days' duration, which have resulted in many of the deaths on the peak. Third is the steep, exposed, and committing nature of all routes on the mountain, which makes retreat more difficult, especially during a storm. Despite many tries there has been no successful ascent during the winter.

Abruzzi Spur

The standard route of ascent, used far more than any other route, is the Abruzzi Spur. In contrast to the crowds of climbers and trekkers at the Abruzzi basecamp, usually at most two teams are encamped below the North Ridge. This route, more technically difficult than the Abruzzi, ascends a long, steep, primarily rock ridge to high on the mountain (Camp IV, the "Eagle's Nest", 7,900 m), and then crosses a dangerously slide-prone hanging glacier by a leftward climbing traverse, to reach a snow couloir which accesses the summit.
Besides the original Japanese ascent (see the History section), a notable ascent of the North Ridge was the one in 1990 by Greg Child, Greg Mortimer, and Steve Swenson, which was done alpine style (though using some fixed ropes already put in place by previous teams).

Northwest Face, 1990.

Northwest Ridge (finishing on North Ridge), first ascent 1991.

South-southeast spur or "Cesen route" (finishing on Abruzzi route; a possibly safer alternative to the Abruzzi), 1994.

West Face (technical difficulty at high altitude), 2007.

Topographic characteristics

K2 is only ranked 22nd by topographic prominence, a measure of a mountain's independent stature, because it's part of the same extended area of uplift (including the Karakoram, the Tibetan Plateau, and the Himalaya) as Mount Everest, in that it's possible to follow a path from K2 to Everest that goes no lower than 4,594 m (at Mustang Lo). Many other peaks which are far lower than K2 are more independent in this sense.
However, K2 is notable for its local relief as well as its total height. It stands over 3,000 m (9,840 ft) above much of the glacial valley bottoms at its base. More extraordinary is the fact that it's a consistently steep pyramid, dropping quickly in almost all directions. The north side is the steepest: there it rises over 3,200 m (10,500 ft) above the K2 (Qogir) Glacier in only 3 km (1.8 mi) of horizontal distance. In most directions, it achieves over 2,800 m (9,200 ft) of vertical relief in less than 4 km (2.4 mi). This degree of steepness, at this vertical scale, in so many different directions, is unmatched in the world.

In the media

Books

Ascent of K2 Second Highest Peak in the World by Ardito Desio. 1955

In the Throne of the Mountain Gods by Galen Rowell, ISBN 0-87156-764-4, 1986

K2, Mountain of Mountains by R. Messner and A. Gogna, ISBN 0195202538. 1982

K2, Triumph and Tragedy by Jim Curran, ISBN 0-395-48590-8. 1987

The Endless Knot: K2, Mountain of Dreams and Destiny by Kurt Diemberger, ISBN 0-89886-300-7. 1991

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer ISBN 0-385-48818-1. 1997

The Last Step: The American Ascent of K2 by Rick Ridgeway, ISBN 0-89886-632-4. 1999

K2, The Story of the Savage Mountain by Jim Curran, ISBN 0-89886-683-9. 2000

K2, The Savage Mountain by Charles Houston, ISBN 1-885283-01-6. 2000

The Mountains of My Life by Walter Bonatti, ISBN 0-375-75640-X. 2001

K2, Quest of the Gods: The Great Pyramid in the Himalaya by Ralph Ellis, ISBN 0-932813-99-2. 2001

K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit by Heidi Howkins, ISBN 0-7922-7996-4. 2001 (Paperback by National Geographic Society, ISBN 978-0792264248, 2002)

K2 Kahani by Mustansar Hussain Tarrad, in Urdu. ISBN 9693505239. 2002

Savage Summit : The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2 by Jennifer Jordan, ISBN 0-06-058715-6. 2005

Zvezdnate noči (Starry Nights) by Dušan Jelinčič, EAN / ISBN 961-6387-75-8. 2006

No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs. ISBN 0767924711. 2007

Films

Vertical Limit, 2000

K2, 1992

Karakoram & Himalayas, 2007Further Information

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