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Infobox Mountain | Name = K2 | Photo = K2-big.jpg | Caption =K2 in summer: view of the South Face from Concordia. The upper portion of the Abruzzi Spur is the right skyline. | Elevation = 8,611 metres (28,251 feet) Ranked 2nd (1st in Pakistan) | Location = Pakistan administered Northern Areas, Pakistan; Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, Xinjiang, China; disputed region of Kashmir The Chinese authorities officially refer to K2 as Qogir; Chinese: 乔戈里峰, Pinyin: Qiáogēlǐ Fēng; other names include Mount Godwin-Austen, Lambha Pahar ("Tall Mountain" in Urdu), Qaumi Pahar ("National Mountain" in Pakistani Kashmir) Dapsang, Kechu, and Chogori, which means "The King of the Mountains."
Climbing history The mountain was first surveyed by a European survey team in 1856 headed by Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen. 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. The first serious attempt to climb K2 was organized and undertaken in 1902 by Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley, but after five serious and costly attempts, no member of the team actually reached the summit, possibly due to a combination of questionable physical training, personality conflicts, and poor weather conditions — of 68 days spent on K2 (the then-record for longest time spent at such an altitude) only eight provided clear weather.•; 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. 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 was not usually climbed with bottled oxygen, and small, relatively lightweight teams were the norm. 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 is only one third as much oxygen available to a climber on the summit of K2 as there is at sea level. Second is the propensity of the mountain to 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. Abruzzi Spur The standard route of ascent, used far more than any other route, is the Abruzzi Spur, first attempted by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi in 1909 (see the history above). This is the southeast ridge of the peak, rising above the Godwin Austen Glacier. The spur proper begins at an altitude of 5,400 m, where Advanced Base Camp is usually placed. The route follows an alternating series of rock ribs, snow/ice fields, and some technical rock climbing on two famous features, "House's Chimney" and the "Black Pyramid." Above the Black Pyramid, dangerously exposed and difficult to navigate slopes lead to the easily visible "Shoulder," and thence to the summit. The last major obstacle is a narrow couloir known as the "Bottleneck," which places climbers dangerously close to a wall of seracs which form an ice cliff to the east of the summit. (It was partly due to the collapse of one of these seracs around 2001 that no climbers summited the peak in 2002 and 2003.) North Ridge Almost opposite from the Abruzzi Spur is the North Ridge, which ascends the Chinese side of the peak. It is rarely climbed, partly due to very difficult access, involving crossing the Shaksgam River, which is a hazardous undertaking. Other routes Prominence K2 is only ranked 22nd by topographic prominence because it is part of the same extended mountain chain as Mount Everest, in that it is possible to follow a path from K2 to Everest that goes no lower than 4,594 m (at Mustang Lo). See also Books about K2 The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2by Jennifer Jordan, ISBN 0-06-058715-6 Movies about K2 | ||||||||
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