K2

• 1. The Savage Mountain

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  K2 earned its grimmest reputation from one remark by George Bell, a climber on an American expedition to the mountain. "It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you," he said. K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth. It rises in the Karakoram range, partly in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and partly in the Xinjiang region of China. Its name is barely a name at all. It began life as a surveyor's label. This documentary asks how a peak with no widely used local name became a byword for danger. Why did it defeat climber after climber for so long? What did the first successful ascent leave unsaid for decades? And why is a mountain that stands below Everest judged harder and deadlier than Everest?

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• 2. A Name Without a Name

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  Thomas Montgomerie, a member of a British survey team, stood on Mount Haramukh in 1856 and sketched the two most prominent peaks in the far northern distance. Haramukh lay some 130 miles to the south. He labeled the peaks K1 and K2, with the K standing for Karakoram. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of British India preferred local names wherever it could find them. K1 turned out to be known locally as Masherbrum, but K2 seemed to have no name of its own.

  Remoteness may explain the gap. The mountain cannot be seen from Askole, one of the highest settlements on the road toward it, or from the nearest habitation to the north. It shows itself only fleetingly from the end of the Baltoro Glacier, and few local people would have gone beyond that point.

  The name Chogori, built from the Balti words for "big" and "mountain," has been proposed as a native name. Evidence that anyone widely used it is scant. It may have been invented by Western explorers, or it may have been a puzzled answer to the question "What's that called?" Chinese authorities nonetheless base their official name, Qogir, on it. Lamba Pahar, meaning "Tall Mountain" in Urdu, and Dapsang have also been suggested, but neither caught on.

  A different solution was to honour Henry Godwin-Austen, an early explorer of the area, with the name Mount Godwin-Austen. The Royal Geographical Society rejected it. Several maps used it anyway, and it still appears occasionally. In the end the surveyor's mark won, and the Balti language now renders it as Kechu or Ketu. The other numbered peaks were eventually renamed too. K1 became Masherbrum, while K3, K4 and K5 became Gasherbrum IV, Gasherbrum II and Gasherbrum I.

  The Italian climber Fosco Maraini, writing about Gasherbrum IV, thought the accident of the name was perfect. He called it "just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss." He added, "It makes no attempt to sound human." The mathematician André Weil even named K3 surfaces partly after the beauty of this mountain.

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• 3. Shape and Stone

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  It is possible to walk from K2 to Everest without dropping below 4594 metres, a low point reached at the Kora La on the border between Nepal and China. The two peaks belong to the same broad region of uplift, which includes the Karakoram, the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. Even so, K2 ranks only 22nd in topographic prominence, the measure of a mountain's independent stature. Many far lower peaks stand more alone. K2 is, however, the most prominent peak in the entire Karakoram.

  Maps give its height as 8611 metres, against 8849 for Everest. The surrounding landscape makes that figure feel larger. K2 stands more than 3000 metres above much of the glacial valley floor at its base. It is a steep pyramid that falls away quickly on almost every side. The north face is the steepest. It climbs over 3200 metres above the K2 or Qogir Glacier across just 3000 metres of horizontal distance. To the north lies the Tarim basin, and to the south the Lesser Himalayas. Meltwater from glaciers south and east of the peak feeds farms in the valleys and helps supply the region's fresh water.

  A 1986 expedition led by George Wallerstein produced a faulty measurement suggesting K2 was taller than Everest. A corrected figure followed in 1987. By then, news reports and reference works had already carried the claim that K2 was the tallest mountain in the world. In the summer of 2014, a Pakistani-Italian expedition called "K2 60 Years Later" set out partly to settle the question. It marked the 60th anniversary of the first ascent and measured the peak by satellite navigation. Its result was 8609.02 metres.

  The rock itself is old. K2 and nearby Broad Peak are made of K2 Gneiss, part of the Karakoram Metamorphic Complex. Dating shows the gneiss began as a granite formed 115 to 120 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. When the Asian and Indian plates collided, that granite was buried to about 20 km or more and deformed by heat and pressure during the Eocene Period. It was later pushed upward along major thrust faults after the Miocene. The whole K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum range is rising so quickly that erosion has not kept pace.

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• 4. Early Defeats

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  In 1892, Martin Conway led a British expedition to Concordia, the great meeting of glaciers on the Baltoro Glacier. Ten years later, the first serious attempt on K2 set out up the Northeast Ridge. Its members were Oscar Eckenstein, Aleister Crowley, Jules Jacot-Guillarmod, Heinrich Pfannl, Victor Wessely and Guy Knowles. There was no modern transport, and the journey took fourteen days just to reach the foot of the mountain. The team made five serious and costly attempts and reached 6525 metres. Crowley later remarked that "neither man nor beast was injured." He had been weakened by lingering malaria. Doubtful fitness, personality conflicts and bad weather also played a part. Of 68 days spent on the mountain, then a record for time at such altitude, only eight were clear.

  In 1909, Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, reached about 6250 metres on the South East Spur. That ridge, now called the Abruzzi Spur, later became the standard route. The Duke judged it too steep and abandoned it. After failing to find a workable alternative on the West Ridge or the North East Ridge, he declared that K2 would never be climbed. His team turned to Chogolisa instead, where a storm drove him back about 150 metres from the summit.

  Charles Houston led the First American Karakoram expedition in 1938. He concluded that the Abruzzi Spur was the most practical line. His team reached about 8000 metres before dwindling supplies and threatening weather turned them around. The next year, Fritz Wiessner's American party came within 200 metres of the top. It ended in catastrophe when Dudley Wolfe, Pasang Kikuli, Pasang Kitar and Pintso disappeared high on the mountain.

  Houston came back in 1953. A storm pinned his team down for 10 days at 7800 metres, and the climber Art Gilkey fell critically ill. During the desperate retreat, a mass fall began. Pete Schoening held the rope and saved almost the entire team, an act now known simply as The Belay. Gilkey died, either swept away by an avalanche or by deliberately removing himself to spare his companions. The expedition failed, yet it has since gained iconic status in mountaineering history, and the Gilkey Memorial stands at the foot of the mountain. One member of that team, the Pakistani officer Colonel Muhammad Ata-ullah, would return the following year.

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• 5. A Contested Summit

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  On the 31st of July 1954, Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni stood on top of K2, the first people ever to do so. They were part of an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio, and they climbed the Abruzzi Spur. Two others made that moment possible. Walter Bonatti and the Hunza porter Amir Mehdi carried oxygen tanks up to 8100 metres for the summit pair.

  The triumph carried a secret. Lacedelli and Compagnoni pitched their camp higher than the position they had agreed on with Mehdi and Bonatti. By the time the two porters arrived, it was too dark to climb up or go down. They left the tanks as requested and spent the night in the open above 8,000 metres, without shelter. Both survived. Mehdi spent months in hospital and lost his toes to frostbite.

  In the 1950s, efforts were made to bury these facts and protect the reputations of Lacedelli and Compagnoni as Italian national heroes. Bonatti took the blame for Mehdi's hospitalisation. The truth surfaced later. Moving the camp had been deliberate, apparently because Compagnoni feared being outshone by the younger Bonatti. The story of the first ascent is therefore also a story of how long such a secret can be kept. Twenty-three years would pass before anyone else reached the summit.

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• 6. The Second Wave

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  More than 1,500 porters supported the Japanese expedition led by Ichiro Yoshizawa, which made the second ascent of K2 on the 9th of August 1977. The team used the Abruzzi Spur, and Ashraf Aman became the first native Pakistani climber to reach the summit.

  An American team under James Whittaker made the third ascent in 1978 by a new line, the long and corniced Northeast Ridge. Near the top, the route crossed left over the East Face to avoid a vertical headwall and joined the upper part of the Abruzzi route. The summit party was Louis Reichardt, Jim Wickwire, John Roskelley and Rick Ridgeway. Wickwire spent a night about 150 metres below the summit, one of the highest bivouacs in history. For the Americans it was an emotional success, since they felt they were finishing what the 1938 team had begun forty years before.

  In 1982, a Japanese team led by Isao Shinkai tackled the hard North Ridge on the Chinese side. Naoe Sakashita, Hiroshi Yoshino and Yukihiro Yanagisawa reached the summit on the 14th of August. Yanagisawa fell and died on the way down. Four more members of the team summited the next day.

  The Czech climber Josef Rakoncaj reached the top in 1983, on an Italian expedition led by Francesco Santon, via the North Ridge. On the 5th of July 1986 he returned by the Abruzzi Spur, becoming the first person to summit K2 twice.

  That summer of 1986 produced both milestones and tragedy. On the 23rd of June, the Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first woman to reach the summit. Liliane and Maurice Barrard summited later the same day, then fell during the descent. Liliane Barrard's body was found at the foot of the south face on the 19th of July. Two Polish expeditions also summited by new routes. On one of them, Jerzy Kukuczka and Tadeusz Piotrowski climbed the south face, and Piotrowski fell to his death on the way down. Thirteen climbers from several expeditions died in what became known as the 1986 K2 disaster. Another six died in 1995, and the hardest day of all still lay ahead.

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• 7. Routes and Dangers

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  At the summit of K2, a climber has only about one-third of the oxygen available at sea level. Extreme storms lasting several days are the second common hazard, and they have caused many of the deaths on the peak. All the routes are steep and exposed, so retreat in bad weather is particularly hard. The mountain sits farther north than Everest, where inclement weather is more common. Before 2021, roughly one person had died for every four who reached the summit, making K2 the deadliest of the five highest mountains. Since then, more successful attempts have changed the balance. An estimated 800 people have summited, and 96 have died trying. Above 8000 metres lies the so-called death zone, and climbers risk high-altitude pulmonary and cerebral edema. K2 carries the nicknames "The King of Mountains" and "The Mountaineers' Mountain." Reinhold Messner popularized a third, "The Mountain of Mountains," in his book on K2.

  Oxygen use has shifted over time. For most of K2's history climbers did not usually use supplemental oxygen, and small, light teams were the norm. In 2004, however, 28 of the 47 summiteers used it.

  The Abruzzi Spur is the standard route, used by 75% of climbers. The spur proper begins at 5400 metres, where Advanced Base Camp is usually placed. Climbers work up rock ribs and snow and ice fields, with technical climbing on two famous features called House's Chimney and the Black Pyramid. Above these comes the Shoulder. The last major obstacle is a narrow gully called the Bottleneck, which passes under a wall of seracs, the ice cliffs east of the summit. Around 2001, one of these seracs collapsed, and partly for that reason nobody reached the summit in 2002 or 2003. On the 1st and the 2nd of August 2008, a series of accidents including icefalls in the Bottleneck killed 11 climbers. A falling block of ice swept away fixed ropes on part of the route. The dead included Meherban Karim of Pakistan and Ger McDonnell, the first Irish person to reach the summit.

  On the Chinese side, the North Ridge lies almost opposite the Abruzzi Spur and is rarely climbed. Reaching it means crossing the hazardous Shaksgam River. Where the Abruzzi base camp is crowded, usually at most two teams camp below the North Ridge. The route climbs a long, steep, rocky ridge to Camp IV, the Eagle's Nest, at 7900 metres. It then crosses a slide-prone hanging glacier. In 1990, Greg Child, Greg Mortimer and Steve Swenson climbed it alpine style above Camp 2, though they used some fixed ropes left by a Japanese team. In 2007, Denis Urubko and Serguey Samoilov aimed for the unclimbed North Face but gave up as avalanche danger grew. They joined the North Ridge and summited on the 2nd of October 2007, the latest summer-season ascent in the peak's history.

  Some other routes are almost never repeated. The Southwest Pillar, called the Magic Line, was first climbed in 1986 by the Polish-Slovak trio of Piasecki, Wroz and Bozik. Only Jordi Corominas of Spain has succeeded on it since, in 2004. The South Face, or Polish Line, is extremely exposed. It includes a gully known as the Hockey Stick. Messner called it a suicidal route, and nobody has repeated the 1986 climb. The West Face was first climbed by a Russian team in 2007. In 2024, the Japanese climbers Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima were lost while attempting a new line there.

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• 8. Crowds and Winter

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  In 2012, a record 28 climbers stood on the summit in a single day, bringing that year's total to 30. The record did not last. In 2018 the season total reached 62. On the 22nd of July 2022, 145 summits were recorded in a day, and the 2022 season reached 200. In 2023, an estimated 112 climbers summited on the 27th of July, the only viable weather window of the season.

  Individual records piled up alongside the crowds. In 2004, the Spanish climber Carlos Soria Fontan became the oldest person to summit, at the age of 65. In 2011, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to complete all 14 eight-thousanders without supplemental oxygen. On the 26th of July 2014, six Pakistani and three Italian climbers from the commemorative expedition became the first all-Pakistani team to reach the top. Until then Pakistanis had summited only individually, as part of international expeditions. That same season Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, Maya Sherpa and Dawa Yangzum Sherpa became the first Nepali women to climb the mountain. In 2017, Vanessa O'Brien became the first British and American woman to summit and the eldest woman at 52. She paid tribute to Julie Tullis and Alison Hargreaves, two British women who summited in 1986 and 1995 and died on the descent. In 2018, Andrzej Bargiel became the first person to ski from the summit to base camp. In 2022, Adriana Brownlee became the youngest woman to climb it, at 21. In 2023, Kristin Harila and her guide Tenjen Sherpa completed the fastest ascent of all 14 eight-thousanders, in 92 days. On the 28th of July 2024, Tommaso Lamantia, aged 42, climbed alone and without supplementary oxygen.

  Winter was far harder. A Polish-Canadian-British expedition led by Andrzej Zawada in 1987-88 included 13 Poles, 7 Canadians and 4 Britons. Hurricane winds and frostbite forced it back. In the winter of 2002-03, Krzysztof Wielicki led 14 climbers up the North Ridge. A destroyed tent at Camp IV and Marcin Kaczkan's cerebral edema ended the final push. In 2011-12 a Russian team reached 7,200 metres, but Vitaly Gorelik developed frostbite and died of pneumonia and cardiac arrest after a helicopter could not reach him. In 2017-18 a Polish national expedition tried both the Cesen route and the Abruzzi Spur.

  The first winter summit came on the 16th of January 2021. Ten climbers summited together, all Nepalese, led by Nirmal Purja and Mingma Gyalje Sherpa. Purja alone climbed without supplemental oxygen. The same day, the Spanish climber Sergi Mingote died on the descent from Camp III. Four more climbers died that season: Atanas Skatov, Ali Sadpara, John Snorri and Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto. Even now, with hundreds standing on the top in recent summers, the East Face has never been climbed. The snow and ice formations on that side are simply too unstable.

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