K-2 the Killer Mountain Strikes Again

Mt. Everest is the world's highest mountain by over 200 meters but K-2 at 8611 meters is the one that strikes terror in the heart of the bravest climber. The ratio of deaths per attempt is far higher than for Everest.

According to a Reuters news report carried the DAWN datelined 2nd August, five foreign mountaineers are missing after being struck by an avalanche during their descent from the world's second highest peak, K-2, in Pakistan, an expedition operator said on Saturday. According to latest reports in the New York Times and the BBC nine climbers are feared dead.

The mountain climbers - which included two Koreans, two Norwegians and a Frenchman - were returning from the summit on Friday when the accident took place at an altitude of about 8,000 metres or 26,000 feet. One could only hope and pray for their safe descent because rescue helicopters cannot land or take off higher than 21,000 ft.

"Earlier we had reports of seven missing (climbers) but one Italian and one Korean (team members) returned to a rescue centre. There is no contact with the rest of them," Brig (retd) Mohammad Akram, vice-president of Pakistan's Adventure Foundation, said.

Last month an Italian climber was killed on the Nanga Parbat, one of the world's deadliest mountains, also in Pakistan. Two of his companions were rescued by Pakistani soldiers.

On several occasions, particularly in 1939 and 1953, K-2 decimated two American expeditions. The mountain was climbed in 1954 for the first time by an Italian expedition in a fitting tribute to the pioneering expedition of the Duke of Abruzzi in 1909.

In another expedition to K-2, the accomplished mountaineer Diemberger, who was the last companion of the legendary Herman Buhl, almost lost his life in 1986 during the descent from the summit, but his companion the beautiful swordswoman Julie Tullis died, along with others, in a shattering finale.

Mountaineers explain that K-2 is deadlier than Everest because it has steeper slopes and because there is hardly any place to pitch a tent along the mountain's sheer inclines. It becomes even more lethal if the monsoons manage to sneak past the Himalayan barrier into the Karakorams. That happens when there is an Arabian Sea monsoon in addition to the normal Southeast Asia monsoon.

Reportedly, the avalanche carried away the fixed ropes at the Bottleneck just below the summit, so climbers above the bottleneck are trapped in the so-called death zone, where climbers get pulmonary or cerebral oedema if they do not descend quickly.