2008 K2 disaster - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The 2008 K2 disaster occurred on August 1, 2008, when eleven mountaineers

Mountaineering

Mountaineering or mountain climbing is the sport, hobby or profession of hiking, skiing, and climbing mountains. While mountaineering began as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed mountains it has branched into specialisations that address different aspects of the mountain and consists...

from international expeditions died on K2

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...

, the second-highest mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

on Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. Three others were seriously injured. It was the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering.

Expedition goal: K2

K2 is the second-highest mountain

Mountain

on Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

after Mount Everest

Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

. With a peak elevation of 8,611 metres (28,251 ft), K2 is part of the Karakoram

Karakoram

The Karakoram, or Karakorum , is a large mountain range spanning the borders between Pakistan, India and China, located in the regions of Gilgit-Baltistan , Ladakh , and Xinjiang region,...

range

Mountain range

A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...

, not far from the Himalayas, and is located on the border between the Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

i-controlled territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, in the disputed Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

region, and the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

's Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County

Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County

Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County is one of the counties of Kashgar Prefecture in western Xinjiang.- Geography :Tashkurgan County is located in the eastern part of the Pamir Plateau, where the Kunlun, Kara Kunlun, Hindukush and Tian Shan mountains come together, at the borders with Afghanistan ,...

of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. It is regarded by mountaineers as far more challenging to summit than Everest, and is generally looked upon as one of the most dangerous mountains in the world.

The climbing season at K2 lasts from June to August, but in 2008 adverse weather prevented any groups from summiting during June and July. At the end of July, ten different groups were awaiting the possibility to reach the summit, some of them having waited for almost two months. The months preceding the summit push were used for acclimatization

Acclimatization

Acclimatisation or acclimation is the process of an individual organism adjusting to a gradual change in its environment, allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions...

and preparing for the camps higher on the mountain, the highest of them, Camp IV, just a little short of 8000 m above sea level.

Events between the Camp IV and the summit

With the end of July approaching, weather forecasts indicated improving weather, and several groups had arrived at Camp IV on July 31 in preparation to try the summit as soon as weather would permit.

Friday, August 1

The Sherpa

Sherpa people

The Sherpa are an ethnic group from the most mountainous region of Nepal, high in the Himalayas. Sherpas migrated from the Kham region in eastern Tibet to Nepal within the last 300–400 years.The initial mountainous migration from Tibet was a search for beyul...

s and Pakistani high-altitude porters (HAPs) started to prepare fixed lines upwards before midnight. They were joined by Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

climber Alberto Zerain who had come up from camp III during the night and decided to continue his summit push rather than stay at camp IV. However, the most experienced HAP, Shaheen Baig (from the Serbian

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

team) who had summited K2 a year before, had to go back down with symptoms of high altitude sickness. His experience was missed and in the confusion, ropes may have been left behind or placed too far to the right side of the Bottleneck

Bottleneck (K2)

The Bottleneck is a location along the South-East Spur, known also as Abruzzi Spur - the most used route to the top of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world in the Karakoram on the Pakistan/China border....

.

When the groups started upward at 3 a.m., the Sherpas and HAPs had prepared lines from the shoulder, where they were not needed, up into the Bottleneck

Bottleneck (K2)

(a steep couloir

Couloir

A couloir is a narrow gully with a steep gradient in a mountainous terrain. A couloir may be a seam, scar, or fissure, or vertical crevasse in an otherwise solid mountain mass...

–a gully–leading to the summit slopes), and then had run out of rope for the traverse

Traverse (climbing)

A traverse is a lateral move or route when climbing; going mainly sideways rather than up or down. Traversing a climbing wall is a good warm-up exercise....

just above the bottleneck. This forced them to take rope from the lower portion of the route and use it to prepare the lines above the Bottleneck, causing an unplanned delay. At this point the American group decided to abort the attempt and return to the lower camp.

At 8 a.m. people were advancing through the Bottleneck. Dren Mandić decided to attend to his oxygen system and so unclipped the rope to let other climbers pass. Mandić lost his balance and fell, bumping into Cecilie Skog

Cecilie Skog

Cecilie Skog is a Norwegian adventurer from Ålesund. She studied and worked as a nurse, but since summiting Mount Everest in 2004, she has worked as a professional adventurer, guide and lecturer.In August 2008 she climbed K2...

. She was still clipped to the rope and was only knocked over. Mandić however, fell over 100 m down the bottleneck. Some climbers claimed that he was still moving after the fall. People in Camp IV saw the fall and sent a group to help recover his injured or dead body. Swede Fredrik Sträng

Fredrik Sträng

Fredrik Sträng, is a Swedish mountain climber, adventurer and documentary film maker.Sträng was born in Laxå in Örebro County and learned to climb in the Kilsbergen mountains...

stated he took command of the recovery operation.

When Sträng reached the body, Serbian climbers Predrag Zagorac and Iso Planic and their HAP Mohammed Hussein had already arrived. They had found no pulse and judging by the severity of his injuries, Mandić was pronounced dead. The Serbian climbers decided to lower the body down to camp IV and Sträng assisted them. They were joined by HAP Jehan Baig (from the French-led independent expedition). He had fulfilled his assisting duties and had been allowed to head down. Several people later indicated he may have been suffering from high altitude sickness, since he had displayed questionable behaviour in abseiling

Abseiling

Abseiling , rappelling in American English, is the controlled descent down a rock face using a rope; climbers use this technique when a cliff or slope is too steep and/or dangerous to descend without protection.- Slang terms :...

down the bottleneck. Sträng also noticed that he was incoherent, first offering to help in the rescue, later refusing to help, only to return moments later to assist them again. Jehan Baig lost his footing, bumping into Sträng who then urged him to let go of the rope attached to Mandić harness, before all four climbers would be dragged down. Baig finally let go of the rope, but to Sträng and the others' surprise, he did not try to stop his slide by using the self-arrest

Self-arrest

Self-arrest is a mountaineering related maneuver in which a climber who has fallen and is sliding down a snow or ice slope arrests the slide by himself or herself without recourse to a rope or other belay system....

technique. Jehan Baig fell to his death. It is unclear why he did not try to stop his slide. Sträng decided to descend without the body of Mandić. The Serbian group wrapped the body of Mandić in a flag and fastened him to the mountain before aborting and starting to descend.

These delays, together with the traffic jam in the Bottleneck, resulted in most people reaching the summit much later than planned, some as late as 8 p.m. (the typical time for summiting being between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.). All together, 18 people summited that day. On the descent, the Spaniard Alberto Zerain, who had topped out first and alone at 3 p.m., managed to pass through the Bottleneck without trouble. But at 8:30 p.m. when the Norwegian group — including Lars Flatø Nessa and Cecilie Skog

Cecilie Skog

who reached the summit two hours later than Zerain — had almost negotiated the traverse leading to the Bottleneck, a serac

Serac

A serac is a block or column of ice formed by intersecting crevasses on a glacier. Often house-sized or larger, they are dangerous to mountaineers since they may topple with little warning...

(a large block of ice

Ice

Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

) broke off from the ice field above. As it fell, it cut all the fixed lines and took with it Rolf Bae

Rolf Bae

Rolf Bae was a Norwegian Arctic adventurer and mountaineer. Bae operated an adventure company called Fram, specializing in Arctic and Antarctic travel and survival courses....

(Cecilie Skog's husband), who had abandoned the attempt only 100 m below the summit and was descending at the front of the group. Lars and Cecilie continued descending without the fixed lines and managed to reach Camp IV during the night.

As a result of the serac fall, the climb in the Bottleneck became steeper and more technical and chunks of ice lay scattered around the route, and the mountaineers above were stranded in the so-called death zone above 8000 meters. Since the climbers were counting on the fixed lines, they were not carrying additional ropes and fall protection devices, forcing the climbers to "free climb

Free climbing

Free climbing is a type of rock climbing in which the climber uses only hands, feet and other parts of the body to ascend, employing ropes and forms of climbing protection to prevent falls only....

" the descent through the notorious Bottleneck. There were still multiple climbers above the Bottleneck, and according to Dutch

Dutch people

The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...

mountaineer Wilco van Rooijen, panic broke out among them. Some tried to descend in the darkness, while others decided to bivouac

Bivouac shelter

A bivouac traditionally refers to a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire or such a site where a camp may be built. It is also commonly used to describe a variety of improvised camp sites such as those used in scouting and...

and wait until morning before descending.

Pemba Gyalje descended in the darkness without fixed ropes and reached the Camp IV before midnight. Sherpa Chhiring Dorje also free-climbed the Bottleneck with "little" Pasang Lama (who had been stranded without an ice axe) secured to his harness. "I can just about imagine how you might pull it off," writes Ed Viesturs

Ed Viesturs

Edmund Viesturs, known as Ed Viesturs is one of the world's premier high-altitude mountaineers. He is one of only 26 people and the only one from the United States to have climbed all eight-thousander peaks...

in K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain. "You kick each foot in solid, plant the axe, then tell the other guy to kick with his own feet and punch holds with his hands. Don't move until he's secure. Still, if Pasang had come off [i.e. 'fallen'], he probably would have taken Chhiring with him. Talk about selfless!"

Two members of the Korean expedition, Kim Jae-soo and Go Mi-Young

Go Mi-Young

Go Mi-Young, was a South Korean female mountaineer.Together with Kim Jae-Soo, she became one of the first climbers to summit three 8,000-meter peaks in a single season when they climbed Makalu, Kangchenjunga, and Dhaulagiri in six weeks.On July 12, 2009, after reaching the top of Nanga Parbat, she...

, also managed to navigate the bottleneck in the dark, although the latter had to be helped by two Sherpas from the Korean B team — who were supposed to summit the next morning — Chhiring Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote. The men had climbed up around midnight with food and oxygen and found Go Mi-Young stranded somewhere in the Bottleneck, unsure of which route she had to take. They guided her down safely.

Meanwhile, Dutchman Cas van de Gevel and Frenchman Hugues D’Aubarede had also decided to manoeuvre the bottleneck in the dark. As he reached the bottom of the Bottleneck, Cas van de Gevel witnessed a climber falling to his death, a story corroborated by the two Sherpas Chhiring Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote, who also had witnessed one or two objects falling from the mountain. This climber was likely Hugues D'Aubarede, whom van de Gevel had passed just above the Bottleneck in the dark on the way down. D'Aubarede had run out of bottled oxygen hours before, and when van de Gevel had passed him, he had looked tired and insisted van de Gevel descend before him.

Marco Confortola, Wilco van Rooijen and Gerard McDonnell bivouacked above the traverse, as they could not find the fixed ropes leading across the traverse. Confortola claimed that during the bivouac, he heard screams and saw headlights disappear below him after a roaring sound came from the serac field. At that point, 8 people were still above the Bottleneck, stranded in the death zone.

Saturday, August 2

The rescue efforts started in the base camp as a group was sent upwards with ropes to help those still stuck in the Bottleneck. The group included Tsering Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote, who had previously helped Go Mi-Young down the Bottleneck and now went to search for their relative Jumik Bhote. Jumik was left stranded with the remaining climbers of the Korean expedition somewhere above the Bottleneck.

Early in the morning above the traverse, van Rooijen gave up the search for the fixed ropes and descended alone. His vision was deteriorating and he feared he was going snow blind

Photokeratitis

Photokeratitis or ultraviolet keratitis is a painful eye condition caused by exposure of insufficiently protected eyes to the ultraviolet rays from either natural or artificial sources. Photokeratitis is akin to a sunburn of the cornea and conjunctiva, and is not usually noticed until several...

. He needed to get off the mountain fast. Marco Confortola and Gerard McDonnell did not follow him immediately. Later, van Rooijen reached two Korean climbers (Confortola claims one of the two was Kyeong-Hyo Park) and guide Jumik Bhote. The three men were tangled in several ropes and had clearly been hanging there, some upside down and bloodied, for quite a while. But they were all alive. It is unclear what had happened to the third Korean climber. It is believed the four men were the victims of a second serac fall, an avalanche or perhaps a regular fall, that might have sent one of the Koreans down the mountain, leaving the other three men tangled in the ropes. It could be that this was the event Confortola had witnessed during the bivouac the previous night. It could also be that this was the second object Tsering Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote saw falling off the mountain. There is however, little evidence to support both claims. Wilco van Rooijen handed Jumik Bhote his gloves, but was unable to help them any more. He claims Jumik Bhote informed him a rescue mission was under way from camp IV. van Rooijen decided to descend farther.

Marco Confortola and Gerard McDonell reached the three men somewhere in the morning. They worked for several hours trying to free them. It is unclear what happened next. Confortola claims McDonell, after working with Confortola for at least 1,5 hours, suddenly climbed back up the mountain, leaving him with the three stranded men. Confortola assumed McDonell had succumbed to high altitude sickness and was growing delusional, believing he had to climb back up. Left alone, Confortola did all he could for Jumik Bhote, giving him his own equipment. They had managed to get the Koreans back into at least a comfortable position. Confortola says he was able to radio with Tsering Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote who were on their way up to rescue the men. Confortola had spent at least three hours with the entangled men and was exhausted. He continued down.

Several people dispute Confortola's version of the events. Wilco van Rooijen, who had seen Confortola and McDonell helping the stranded Koreans and their guide from below, believes McDonell did not climb back up the mountain. Gerard McDonell must have climbed up to the highest anchor supporting the three stranded men to try to transfer the load. He then may have returned to the three men and spent another several hours alone helping free the men from the ropes. In his book "Surviving K2", van Rooijen provides some photographic evidence for these claims.

Confortola has claimed that some time after he left the three men, an avalanche struck just feet away from him. In the rubble of this avalanche, he spotted the remains of one climber. After investigating them, he suggests these were the remains of McDonnell.

Just after noon, Tsering Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote had reached the bottom of the Bottleneck. There they found Marco Confortola crawling on his hands and feet. The two Sherpas radioed Pemba Gyalje and Cas van de Gevel to come up for Confortola so that they could continue the search for their relative Jumik Bhote and the Koreans.
"Big" Pasang Bhote later radioed Pemba Gyalje with more news. He had met Jumik Bhote and the two Koreans just above the bottleneck. Apparently they were freed after all. He also radioed in bad news. A fourth climber, climbing behind the two Koreans and the two Sherpa's on the lower parts of the traverse, had been swept away by a serac fall and was dead. The description of the climber matched Gerard McDonnell's red-and-black down suit. This would suggest Confortola was mistaken in identifying the remains in the avalanche as McDonnell's and supports the theory that McDonnell freed the two Koreans and Jumic Bhote before perishing in a different serac fall. Tsering Bhote, from his position at the base of the Bottleneck, has also claimed to have seen a serac fall strike the rescue party as they were descending near the top of the bottleneck.

Here, another mystery of the 2008 K2 disaster reveals itself. There was one other climber still unaccounted for : Hugues D’Aubarede's Pakistani HAP Meherban Karim. He was last seen returning from the summit with D’Aubarede in the later hours of August 1. He and D’Aubarede must have gotten separated in the dark, as Cas van de Gevel encountered only D’Aubarede above the Bottleneck. Wilco van Rooijen, in his book "Surviving K2", supports the theory that Meherban Karim bivouacked even higher on the mountain than van Rooijen, Confortola and McDonell. Again he provides photographic evidence: What looks like a climber can be seen above the serac field on the morning of August 2. In a later photo, the figure looks to have disappeared with a trail leading down the seracs. Wilco van Rooijen and others, such as McDonnell's partner Annie Starkey, believe this figure to be Karim. Disorientated from spending the night at such high altitudes without an oxygen mask, he must have gotten lost and stumbled onto the serac field, where he fell or got swept away by an avalanche or part of the serac breaking. He might have actually caused one of the serac falls. Hence, it apparently was Karim's remains Confortola had found earlier in the avalanche rubble.

Graham Bowley in his book "No Way Down", is unable to refute the evidence presented by van Rooijen, but still finds the photos to be inconclusive at best. He is joined in his analysis by writer Michael Kodas. Both men edge towards the testimony of the only living eyewitness : Marco Confortola. In the photos taken by Pemba Gyalje, individual climbers can not be made out. In fact, some of the figures assumed to be climbers could very well be rock. Marks that look like trails are everywhere on the mountain.

Another possible explanation to the mystery is an error in "Big" Pasang Bhote's observations about the colour of the down suit, meaning the last climber could have been Meherban Karim, who was wearing a pure red down suit. If so, Confortola had indeed identified McDonell's remains in the avalanche earlier. This is of course speculation.

Minutes after "big" Pasang Bhote had radioed in the news that he had found his relative Jumik Bhote and two Koreans, another avalanche or serac fall struck. It swept away the four men. Tsering Bhote, who had climbed more slowly than fellow rescuer "big" Pasang Bhote, had not yet reached the top of the Bottleneck. He miraculously survived the avalanche, as did Pemba Gyalje and Marco Confortola at the bottom of the Bottleneck. The death toll had now risen to eleven casualties.

Meanwhile van Rooijen was making his way down the mountain alone. He had climbed down a new route to the left of the Cesan route, bypassing Camp IV. Van de Gevel and Sherpa Gyalje descended from Camp IV to Camp III after they had heard van Rooijen was still somewhere on the mountain. van Rooijen had managed several satellite phone calls that may have helped pinpoint his location. He would have to spend a second bivouac out on the mountain.

Sunday, August 3

Van de Gevel and sherpa Gyalje made contact with van Rooijen on the Cesan route early in the morning; the three managed to get down to the base camp at 10 p.m.

Monday, August 4

Van de Gevel and van Rooijen were evacuated from base camp by helicopter to Skardu. Confortola reached Camp II, the advanced base camp. Pakistani authorities released a list of names of those killed and injured.

After K2

Gerard McDonnell's family established a charity to sponsor the children of four high-altitude porters who died on K2.

Wilco Van Rooijen authored a book in Dutch and English entitled Surviving K2. Publisher: National Geographic. See: www.survivingk2.com

Marco Confortola authored a book in Italian entitled Days of Ice. http://news.marcoconfortola.it/?p=250

Chhiring Dorje Sherpa and Pasang Lama are working on a forthcoming book, Buried in the Sky, about the climb from the perspective of indigenous mountaineers. http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/tmayer/

Rescue operation

The Pakistani military started a rescue operation early on August 4, 2008, using two helicopters. They rescued two injured and frostbitten Dutch climbers from the base camp, located approximately 5,000 metres (16,400 ft) above sea level. Four climbers, including an Italian, were making their own way down the mountain. The four were flown to Skardu

Skardu

Skardu , is the main town of the region Baltistan and the capital of Skardu District, one of the districts making up Pakistan's Gilgit Baltistan....

for treatment. Van Rooijen was found using GPS

Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...

coordinates sent out by his Thuraya

Thuraya

Thuraya , the Arabic name of the Pleiades, is a regional satellite phone provider. Its coverage area is most of Europe, the Middle East, North, Central and East Africa, Asia and Australia....

satellite phone

Satellite phone

A satellite telephone, satellite phone, or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to orbiting satellites instead of terrestrial cell sites...

when he used it to call his brother.

List of fatalities

Name	Location of death	Cause of death
Dren Mandić	Below the Bottleneck Bottleneck (K2) The Bottleneck is a location along the South-East Spur, known also as Abruzzi Spur - the most used route to the top of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world in the Karakoram on the Pakistan/China border....	Fell during the ascent
Jehan Baig		Fell while trying to recover Dren Mandić's corpse
Rolf Bae Rolf Bae Rolf Bae was a Norwegian Arctic adventurer and mountaineer. Bae operated an adventure company called Fram, specializing in Arctic and Antarctic travel and survival courses....	Bottleneck	The first serac fall
	Above the Bottleneck	Fell in descent during the night
Meherban Karim		Either the second serac fall or the third serac fall.
Gerard McDonnell^†		After helping the injured Koreans, he was hit by either the second or third serac fall.
Kyeong-Hyo Park	Above the Bottleneck	The fourth serac fall
Hyo-Gyeong Kim
Dong-Jin Hwang
Jumic Bhote
Pasang Bhote
List of Fatalities from 2008 K2 and Broad Peak Dispatch. ^†McDonnell was the first Irish person to reach the summit.

One of the Korean climbers went missing during the night, probably after a serac fall sent him off the mountain and dragged down and entangled the other three climbers in the ropes.

Climbing on K2 since the disaster

The summit of K2 was not reached again until August 23, 2011, when Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is an Austrian mountaineer. In August 2011, she became the second woman to climb the fourteen eight-thousanders, and the first woman to do so without the use of supplementary oxygen....

(Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, 14th eight-thousander

Eight-thousander

The eight-thousanders are the fourteen independent mountains on Earth that are more than high above sea level. They are all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia....

), Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov (Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

, both 14th eight-thousander

Eight-thousander

The eight-thousanders are the fourteen independent mountains on Earth that are more than high above sea level. They are all located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia....

) and Darek Zaluski (Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

) topped out K2 via the North Pillar. There were no summits in 2009 and 2010, during which season renowned skier Fredrik Ericsson

Fredrik Ericsson

Fredrik Ericsson was a Swedish mountaineer and extreme skier.He grew up in Umeå in the northern part of Sweden, but spent most of his time in Chamonix, in the French Alps.-History:...

fell to his death in the bottleneck. According to AdventureStats, the last 17 fatalities on K2 have all occurred in, around or above the bottleneck, once again proving the deadly nature of K2's upper slopes.

External links

Death zone – Blog entry in Watershed News including the picture of the Bottleneck and a line of climbers. The picture was taken August 1, 2008 by Nicholas Rice.
Mountain at 10am Aug 2 – Photo from Explorersweb.com of the situation around the bottleneck in the morning of Aug 2. Photo taken by Sherpa Pemba Gyalje.
Expedition photographs from the Dutch Norit K2 team.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.