Altitude: 8,611 m
For mountaineers, K2 is often called “the mountain of mountains”. Its isolation, its extreme weather, its altitude and the technical climbing it demands make it one of the most serious objectives on earth. The classic route follows the Abruzzi Spur, one of the six ridges that shape its almost perfect pyramid of rock and ice.
Other names: Mount Godwin-Austen, Chogori or Dapsang
Altitude: 8,611 m
Location: Pakistan / China
First ascent: 31 July 1954, by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli (Italian expedition), via the Abruzzi Spur
First ascent without oxygen: 6 September 1978, by Louis Reichardt (American expedition)
First winter ascent: 16 January 2021, by a team of 10 Nepali climbers led by Nirmal Purja and Mingma Gyalje Sherpa
K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Everest. It rises in the Karakoram range, right on the border between Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan and the Xinjiang region of China. It is one of the 14 peaks over 8,000 metres, which you can discover in our article “The 14 peaks over 8,000 metres”.
The Chinese side is remote and much harder to reach, so the vast majority of expeditions climb K2 from Pakistan.
Climbers call it the Savage Mountain, and for good reason. For decades it had the second-highest death rate among the 8,000 m peaks, just behind Annapurna: before the year 2000, roughly one climber died for every three or four who reached the summit. It was also the very last 8,000 m peak to be climbed in winter, 67 years after its first ascent.
[Image: map of the K2 routes, credit to be added]
Today almost every ridge of K2 has been climbed. Everest is higher, but K2 is a far more difficult and dangerous mountain, with more violent weather and a much steeper rise from base to summit. The mountain has now seen more than 800 successful ascents, against over 12,000 on Everest. Its darkest season remains 1986, when 13 climbers from several expeditions died on the mountain, five of them in a single storm.
On 1 August 2008, a serac collapsed above the Bottleneck, the narrow couloir below the summit, sweeping away the fixed ropes. Four climbers were rescued, but 11 lost their lives, among them Gerard McDonnell, the first Irishman to have reached the summit. Two years later, on 6 August 2010, the Swedish skier Fredrik Ericsson, who planned to ski down from the summit, fell around 1,000 metres while climbing alongside Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner. She turned back. She came back the following year and reached the summit without oxygen, completing her 14 peaks over 8,000 m.
[Image: the main routes on the south side of K2, credit to be added]
The main routes on the south side of the mountain:
- A: West Ridge
- B: West Face
- C: Southwest Pillar
- D: South Face
- E: South-southeast Spur
- F: Abruzzi Spur
On the opposite side of the mountain from the Abruzzi Spur, the North Ridge climbs K2 from China. It sees very few climbers, partly because getting there means crossing the Shaksgam River, a dangerous undertaking in itself. While the Abruzzi base camp is crowded with climbers and trekkers, rarely more than two teams camp below the North Ridge. The route is more technical than the Abruzzi: a long, steep, mostly rock ridge leads to Camp IV, the “Eagle's Nest” at around 7,900 m. From there, a traverse to the left crosses a hanging glacier prone to avalanches, before a snow couloir leads to the summit.
The North Ridge was first climbed by a Japanese expedition in 1982. In 1990, Greg Child, Greg Mortimer and Steve Swenson made a notable ascent of it in alpine style above their second camp, although they used some fixed ropes left by a Japanese team.
For most of its history, K2 was climbed by small, light teams, usually without bottled oxygen. That has completely changed. Since the 2000s, and even more since the first winter ascent in 2021, commercial expeditions fix ropes all the way to the summit and most of their clients use oxygen. In 2022, around 200 climbers reached the summit in a single season, about 145 of them on the same day. As a result, the ratio of deaths to summits has fallen sharply, but K2 remains one of the deadliest mountains in the world.
Whatever the style, acclimatisation is essential, and even more so for those who climb without oxygen. The summit of K2 lies well above 8,000 m, inside the death zone, where high-altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE) and cerebral oedema (HACE) are a constant threat.