Climbing K2. Alan Arnett: Why K2 will never be the New Everest

The history of the conquest of K2 (Chogori)

(partially used article by Monika Rogozinskaya (Poland) and other sources)

The mountain got its name by chance. In 1856, T.G. Montgomery of the British Mapping Service in India first saw a series of peaks in the Karakorum mountains when he was making his measurements there, and rewrote them in the order in which he found them. He did not suspect then that K2 is the second highest peak on Earth. The summit did not have a local name among the people of Baltistan.The Chinese name for the mountain is Chogori, which means.

1861

The first European to reach the foot of the mountain from the South in 1861, from the side of the Baltoro Glacier, was Captain Henry Havesham Godwin Austin, a British photographer. One of the glaciers, along which he reached slope K2, bears his name. It was then that the height of the mountain was determined as 8611 m.

1892
The British, under the leadership of officer Martin Conway (W Martin Conway), conducted a research expedition to the Baltoro Glacier, and reached a point now called Concordia - from there 8 hours of travel to base camp under K2

1902

The Englishman Oscar Eckenstein, the inventor of the ice ax and crampons of modern design, was the first to attempt to reach the summit of K2 in 1902.The expedition reached a mark of 6525 m and became famous due to the fact that the great mystic of the twentieth century Aleister Crowley participated in it. (Although, there are some facts that the Italian Roberto Lerco climbed the Abruzzi Ridge during the exploration of the Baltoro glacier, which was in 1890)

1909

The mountain became truly famous when it attracted the attention of Ludwig Amadeus of Sabat, an aristocrat, Prince of Abruzzo (Luigi Amedeo di Savoia-Aosta). Mountaineering was his passion. In 1894 he climbed the Matterhorn with the then most famous climber, the Englishman Albert Frederick Mummery, who a year later tried to reach the 8000-meter Nanga Parbat, from where he did not return.
By the time the Prince of Abruzzi reached the foot of K2 in 1909, he had a successful expedition to Sant Elias, then considered the highest point North America, as well as an attempt to reach the North Pole. Among others, he invited guides and porters from Mont Blanc to this expedition. Since then, the K2 massif will bear names associated with this expedition - the Sella pass, the Savoia Glacier, and, of course, the most famous name since then - the rib of Abruzzi. 45 years later, pioneers from Italy, compatriots of Prince Abrutsky, reached the summit, climbing just along this ridge.

In 1902, having reached a height of 6250 m, the expedition lost hope of the possibility of conquering the summit. The prince said then: "If someone manages to do this, then it will not be climbers, but aviators." The mountain probably would not have excited the imagination so much if it were not for the photographs taken at that time by Vittorio Cell. Scholars and art historians hunted in advance for his photographs of the mountain, exhibited in galleries and museums. Sell ​​immortalized the beauty of the Karakorum in sepia photographs on 18x24cm glass plates. It is hard to imagine how they survived the transport of the months of hiking back through the mountains. Many consider them to be the most beautiful photographs of mountains ever taken.

1939

K2 has begun to reap its sad harvest. How bizarrely the story of the conquest of this peak has developed! The Americans had good chances to become pioneers. The expedition led by Fritz Hermann Weisner climbed the Abruzzi Ridge. Together with Sherpa Pasang Dawa, Weisner reached 8380 m, where Pasang, according to his signs, realized that it was impossible to go higher, and then he forced Weisner to stop climbing. He wrapped the rope attached to the hook around him and blocked the movement of his partner. They had only 230 m to the summit. The next day, however, was so warm and sunny that Weisner sunbathed naked in the upper camp. He persuaded Pasang to continue climbing. The ice stopped them. They didn't have cats that flew off with Pasang's backpack into the abyss. They began to descend.What a pity! The peak is near, the weather rang, and they walked without oxygen.

Dudley F. Wolfie was waiting for them at the camp at 7710m. For two days he was without hot food or drink, since then his companions left. Down they all went very tired, tied with a rope. Suddenly, Wolfie slipped and fell down, dragging the others with him. Weisner stopped his fall on a shelf at the edge of a precipice. They reached the next, lower camp already at dusk, but it turned out that there was no bivouac equipment there. They survived the night by covering themselves with a tattered awning and stuffing their feet into a single sleeping bag. Wolfie, who was very ill, decided to stay and wait for help. At that time, little was known about the effect of altitude on the body. They did not use bottled oxygen.
Weisner and Pasang descended to the base camp completely exhausted, and saw that everyone there was ready to go down. Someone told them that the climbers had died in an avalanche. There were two attempts to climb to Volfi. Eventually, four Sherpas came to him.

They found him plunged into a deep apathy. The Sherpas went down to the previous camp to spend the night there. The next day, a snow storm began. A day later, three of them went up to Wolfy, only to take his written statement that he was voluntarily staying in Camp 7. Weisner made another unsuccessful attempt to save him. No one has seen the three Sherpas or Wolfie since then, but in the summer of 2002 something happened....

All responsibility for the death of the expedition members was blamed on Weisner. In the hospital where he was treated for frostbite, he had no way to defend himself against false accusations. The particular viciousness of the attacks was aggravated by the fact that Weissner was of German origin. Fritz Weissner's exclusion from the American Alpine Club was enthusiastically received by the vast majority. It took more than 25 years to correct this mistake. Weisner became an honorary member of the club in 1966.

1953

Charles S. Houston, physician and mountaineer, led an American expedition up the Abruzzo Ridge. Seven Americans and one Englishman did not take oxygen in cylinders, believing that the summit could be reached anyway. The climbing process went smoothly until the whole team was trapped for many days in the camp at 7700 due to a strong storm and sliding snow masses. Houston first noticed a venous clot on Jilky's leg. Helpless to do anything, they watched the beginning of his agony - a venous blockage of the lung soon followed. They did not want to go down, leaving the dying Jilky alone, so on the morning of August 10, wrapping him in sleeping bags, they began to transport him down. Late in the evening one of them slipped and dragged the others along with him. Three bundles, entangled in safety ropes, flew down. Peter Schoening managed to delay their fall from his belay station. Most of the climbers were injured and badly maimed. We secured the Djilki with a rope on the slope and stepped aside to cut a platform in the ice for a tent. When the bivouac was ready, they went back to the sick man. At the place where he was left, there was a trace from a huge avalanche. Djilki's death saved their lives. Before leaving the base camp, they erected a memorial stone in memory of the deceased, a symbolic monument on which subsequent expeditions will nail tablets with the names of those who remained on the slopes of K2 forever.

1954

The Italians at the foot of K2 were ready to try. Among the participants were scientists and eight professional alpine guides. Candidates for participation in the expedition went through a very tough selection: a rigorous medical examination and training camps in winter alpine camps. The leader of the expedition, 57-year-old Ardito Desio, a professor of geology, placed certain conditions on the participants and ordered them to follow a diet, since "illness of one or more participants, caused by overeating or drinking too much alcohol, can jeopardize all efforts." Each participant received an illustrated "K2 Guidebook" prepared by the expedition leader, so that they could all now prepare according to theory. Apart from Desio, who participated in the 1929 expedition to K2, organized by the Prince of Spoleto, cousin of Ludwig Amadeus of Sabat, no one has yet been to the Himalayas. In Italy, many doubted the significance of the expedition.

Already at the very beginning of the expedition, Mario Puchos, an alpine guide, died at Camp 2 from pulmonary edema. His body was lowered down and buried in a rocky crack next to Djilki's grave. The battle with the rib of Abrutsky lasted 8 weeks. Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedeli set up a tent at the last high camp at 8050m. Walter Bonatti and Hunza Mahdim went up to them to bring the 19 kg oxygen bottles needed for the summit. They did not manage to climb to the upper camp before dark, and they were forced to spend the night without a tent and sleeping bags. The night was stormy. The climbers didn't touch the oxygen they had on them, knowing that it could negate their chances of reaching the summit. Hunza paid for that night with severe frostbite and amputation of his fingers and toes. At dawn, they left the oxygen apparatus where they spent the night and began their descent.

The next day Compagnoni and Lacedelli found oxygen a few dozen meters below their camp. They took it and started to climb. They soon reached the spot where Weisner had sunbathed 15 years earlier. At 8400 they ran out of oxygen. They did not dare to leave the cylinders they no longer needed, and, loaded with heavy backpacks, reached the top. It was July 31st at 6pm.

They spent half an hour on the summit and left their oxygen tanks there. The descent was dramatic. A drink prepared with the addition of cognac relaxed them. Exhausted, they descended at night, poisoned by alcohol and lack of oxygen. They were terribly lucky when they fell from the upper edge of a crack that crossed a steep slope - they flew over the crack and landed on its other edge. They lost their ice axes. Soon Compagnoni fell down along with the snow ledge and lingered on the snow a dozen meters below. Lacedeli, also descending without an ice ax, also fell onto the ice.

They went down to the camp, where their friends were waiting for them. The next day, after leaving the camp, Compagnoni again flew 200 m on the ice slope. He again landed successfully in a snowdrift. They reached the base camp. The following message was sent: "Victory July 31, we are all together at the base camp. Professor Desio." The names of the conquerors of the summit were not named. Desio wanted to announce them upon his return to Italy.

After returning home, Compagnoni lost almost all of his frostbitten fingers. Lacedeli also lost a few. The expedition ended in the courtroom. Compagnoni filed a lawsuit against the Italian Alpine Club, which was the organizer of the expedition, hoping to somehow compensate for the damage received as a result of the amputation of the fingers and toes. Walter Bonatti, shocked by the official report of the expedition, which did not even mention his contribution to the success of the expedition, demanded an apology from the organizer. He received it 40 years later. The next year he tried to find money for new expedition on K2 to make a solo climb using equipment left on the slope. But the money could not be found.

1975

The Poles gathered on K2 in 1975, led by Janusz Kurchaba. This was the ninth expedition in the history of conquering the mountain, and the first without the support of high-altitude porters. 19 climbers participated in it.

The goal was to try the route along the northeast ridge, the same one used by the Eckenstein expedition in 1902. But dramatic events took place. The fall of Wojtek Kurtuka with a cornice in a difficult place of the rib ended with a leg injury. Andrzej Czok fell into an ice crack. Kazimir Glazek has earned snow blindness. It took three days to escort him to the base camp. At an altitude of 7670 m, Glazek felt atypical symptoms of altitude sickness - paralysis of the arms and legs along with impaired speech and memory. In other participants, the doctor diagnosed venous thrombosis - a disease that eventually became known as typical for the K2 climate. The camps were covered with a 2-meter layer of snow and partially destroyed. Despite everything, Eugeniusz Chrobak and Wojciech Wrotz reached 8400 m. They were only 200 m away when they ran out of oxygen. Then it was not yet clear whether a person could climb at such a height without oxygen. Chrobak and Wrotz decided to turn back. Perhaps this decision saved their lives. They descended, accompanied by a storm and a snowstorm. Already at night they reached the tents where their friends were waiting for them. K2 became an obsession with Wojtek Wrotz. He returned there in 1982 as a member of Janusz Kurchaba's next expedition. On the new route, along the northeast ridge, where the Pakistan-China border runs, they had only 400m to reach the summit. On the third attempt, he reached the summit on a difficult route that others had not been able to complete. He paid for it with his life.

1977
Second ascent of K2. The Japanese, led by Ichiro Yoshizawa, climbed the Abruzzo Ridge. It was a gigantic expedition - 1500 high-altitude porters helped 52 members of the expedition along the route.

1978

Successful expeditions often took into account the experience of previous unsuccessful ones. The Polish route of 1975 was completed by the Americans two years later. This was already the fifth American expedition, organized 40 years after the first. It is again led by James Whittaker. The climbers simply bypassed the difficult rocky belt, climbing the Abrutsky Ridge in a simpler way than the first climbers. James Wickwire started using oxygen from 8100m. 200m above Lewis Reinhard also wanted to use oxygen but couldn't. However, he decided to continue climbing. September 6, at 5-20 pm, both of them climbed to the top. Reinhard - the first climber to reach the summit of K2 without oxygen - began to descend faster, fearing oxygen deprivation. Wickwire lingered at the top, changing the film in the movie camera. He started his descent when it was getting dark. He didn't have a headlamp. He spent the night 150 m below the summit, wrapped in a tent. The next day, the other two climbed to the summit, also without supplemental oxygen. All four descended to the base camp. Wickwire suffered several frostbites, pneumonia and venous thrombosis. He was evacuated by an American military helicopter.

1981.
Japanese route on the Southwest Ridge, then a long traverse on the Southwest Face to the top of the Magic line route. First climbed by Nazir Sabir (Pakistan) and Eiho Ohtani (Japan) - they spent the night in a snow pit, heated only by a candle, at 8470 m. Three years earlier, the Chris Bonington expedition aborted an attempt to climb this route after an avalanche killed Nick Estcourt at 6700 . Everest veteran Doug Scott was also caught by the avalanche, but was saved by a heavy backpack that served as an anchor and stopped his fall.

1982
First ascent from the North, from China. Expedition leader - Isao Shinkai. 7 participants reached the summit, all without supplemental oxygen.

1986

Reinhold Messner, trying in vain to reach the summit of K2 on the Southwest Ridge (which he called the Magic Line) as well as on the southern slope, said, "For the first time I've come across a mountain that can't be climbed from either side." In the end, he climbed to the top, without oxygen, in the floor - alpine style, along the path of the first climbers - the rib of Abruzzi. After returning home, he admitted that "Everest was a walk compared to K2". The fight continued. The French expedition led by Bernard Millet attempted to cross the Magic Line, it was the most expensive expedition in history, with a huge amount of equipment. 1400 porters carried 25 tons of equipment to the base camp. The expedition was accompanied by a film group of 10 people, photographers and journalists. A paraglider was raised to a height of 7500 m, and Jean-Marc Bovin descended on it to the base. After a long struggle, the French reached 8450 m. There were 160 left to the top.

The magic line was completed by the Poles in the tragic year 1986. Our climbers have bravely laid out another new route on K2. Anna Chervinska, an eyewitness to those events, summed it up in her book The Horror of K2: “I believe that we achieved a lot in terms of sport in 1986 on K2, we were terribly successful. But as members of the mountaineering community, we suffered great losses ".
That year there were 5 expeditions at the foot of K2. 27 climbers reached the summit, only four used oxygen. Seven died on the descent. In total, 13 people died.

Tragedies alternated with triumphs. After a heroic struggle, Wojciech Wrotz, Premyslav Piasecki and Peter Bozhik from the Czech Republic completed the Magic Line. They descended at night along the Abruzzi ridge. In the darkness, Wrotz suddenly tore off the end of the railing, which was not properly secured, and flew away.

(the route was repeated only in 2004 by the Basque team. Jordi Corominas climbed to the top)

Josef Rakonkay from the Czech Republic became the first person to climb K2 twice. Three years ago, he made an ascent from the Chinese side, as part of the Italian expedition along the North Ridge. Along the rib of Abruzzo, he also climbed with the Italians. Frenchman Benoît Chamoux reached the summit on the same route alone in a record short time of 23 hours.

A significant event was the passage of a new route along the South slope by Tadeusz Piotrovsky and Jerzy Kukucka. They descended the Abruzzo Ridge in fog, in very windy and snowy weather, without food or water for three days, spending the night without tents or sleeping bags. looking for correct route, they descended the ropes. Eventually they saw the tents of the Korean camp. They descended a steep ice slope. "I advised Tadek to go a little more to the left," Kukuchka wrote in The Ascendant, "Soon I noticed that he had lost his cat. I asked him to be careful, but he made a sudden movement, and his second cat flew off. I heard his cry "Yurek!" and saw him falling down. I was standing just below him on steep ice- he collapsed on me with all his weight, I could hardly stay in place, but I could not help him. I just saw how he disappears behind the edge of a vertical slope. "Kukuchka came to the base camp. The search for Piotrovsky was unsuccessful.

Wanda Rutkevich in June 1986 led the first women's expedition to K2 on crutches - a broken leg in the Caucasus did not stop her from this venture. The expedition began with a tragedy. Galina Kruger-Syrokomska, deputy leader of the expedition, suddenly lost consciousness in Camp 2 (6700), and soon died. Resuscitation failed. Doctors believe that the most likely cause of death was apoplexy. Wanda Rutkiewicz has reached the summit. French couple Lilian and Maurice Barra also climbed to the top. (Liliane and Maurice Barrard), husband and wife, disappeared without a trace during a storm after spending the night at 8300 m. Most likely, they were swept away by an avalanche or a collapsed serac. The fourth member of the group, Frenchman Michel Parmentier, was found safely after getting lost in dense fog during the descent.

In early August, five people reached the summit along the Abruzzi Ridge. Austrians and - for the first time - two Englishmen - Julie Tallis and Alan Rose. Julie climbed to the top with Kurt Demberger, the walking legend of Himalayan climbing, the first person to scale two virgin 8000s. IN privacy they made a very famous couple in mountaineering circles. Rose climbed with "aunt" - Dobroslava Miodovich-Wolf. They went on a route for which they did not have a permit. They believed that this was their only chance to ascend. The Englishman made it to the top. On the descent he met Demberger and Tallis, and they told him that they had seen the aunt sleeping in the snow and asked him to help her down. Alan persuaded Dobroslav to turn. She was only 150 meters from the summit.

At Camp 4 at 7900, five men and two women were in the death zone. They were delayed there due to a sharp deterioration in the weather. Julie Tallis died first - she lasted three days. Alan Rose was in a state of agony when, three days later, those who remained decided to leave the camp at noon after all. Blinded Alfred Imitzer and Hans Weiser did not go further, despite the help. Completely exhausted, they remained on the slope.

Willy Bauer, Dobroslava and Demberger continued their descent. At 7300 it turned out that Camp 3 had been blown away. At night, Bauer, and soon Demberger, reached the tent of Camp 2. "Aunt", however, did not appear. After the return of the two Austrians, Przemek Piasecki and Peter Bozhik went upstairs. However, they did not meet a Polish woman. The body of Dobroslava Miodovich-Wolf was found by a Japanese expedition the following year, below Camp 3, which had been blown away by the wind. Auntie was strapped to the railing.

This terrible account was continued by the death of two Americans in an avalanche and the sirdar of the Korean expedition, who was hit by a piece of rock.

Another famous couple was going to conquer K2. Renato Casarotto was one of the most famous climbers, he went solo routes to the mountains of various continents. Joretta usually waited for him at the base camp under the mountain, preparing delicious pies, creating homeliness as much as possible, admiring her hero without limit. Renato climbed the Magic line up to 8200m until he realized that he could not continue climbing. After talking with Joretta on the radiotelephone, he was going to quickly go down. He was almost down when he fell into an ice crack. He managed to tell Joretta on the phone what had happened and ask for help. He died after being pulled out of the crack.

1990
The route along the Northwest Face was passed by the Japanese under the leadership of Tomaji Ueki. The line of their ascent went to the previously passed route along the North-Western ridge at an altitude of 8000 m,

1991
French people Pierre Beghin and Christophe Profit started on the West Ridge, diagonally crossed the Northwest Face, and reached the summit on the Northwest Ridge (the top leg of the 1982 Japanese route). They climbed in alpine style.

Trying to reach the summit of K2 in winter led by Andrzej Zawada, from Pakistan, along the Abruzzi rib. The Polish-Canadian-British expedition reached 7300 m. Later, in 2003, its participant Krzysztof Wielicki led the second winter attempt to climb K2 - from China, along the Northwest Ridge. Denis Urubko and Marcin Kachkan reached a height of 7750 m.

8 women climbed to the top of K2, but only the last three are alive. These climbers are: Wanda Rutkiewicz (June 23, 1986), Lillian Bara (June 23, 1986), Julie Tallis (August 4, 1986), Chantal Madui (August 3, 1992), Alison Hargraves (August 13, 1995), Edurne Pasaban (July 26, 2004) ), Nivez Meroy (July 26, 2006) and Yuka Komazu (August 1, 2006)

The highest overnight stay on K2 was by Daniel Mazur and Jonathan Pratt in 1993 (8550m) during their second ascent of the Southwest Ridge.

Since the French ascent in 1991, no new routes have been climbed on K2. Until 2007, there was not a single route on the Western Wall (although attempts were made).

In August 2007, a team of Russian climbers climbed K2 along a new route - along the center of the Western Face. This the hardest climb performed without the use of supplemental oxygen. 11 people climbed to the top.

Translated and supplemented by Elena Laletina, 2003 and 2007.

- the second highest mountain peak in the world, and the first in terms of mortality. Today it is no less famous peak than. The height of Chogori is 8,611 meters above sea level, which is only 237 meters below Everest.

Chogori - killer mountain

But there is something else in this mountain that makes thousands of climbers worry about it, this is its inaccessibility. In the common people, Mount Chogori is called the "mountain of death" or "mountain killer". The fact is that K2 is one of the most technically complex mountain ranges.

Mount Chogori also referred to as "K-2". The second name spread spontaneously, after one of the explorers numbered the peaks in front of him, one of them was Chogori.

The correct pyramid, with steep snowy slopes, becomes inaccessible even to experienced climbers. The mountain has 66 deaths. The mortality rate of the mountain is 25%. And there are not even 300 who conquered it. In addition, there are isolated cases for a climber to be able to climb the mountain twice.

Nobody climbed Chogori in winter. A successful ascent to K2 and the subsequent descent from the summit today take several days (not counting preparation), climbers usually use 3-4 base camps and Balti porters instead of the more traditional Sherpas for other eight-thousanders.

The main hazards are avalanches, falling seracs and stones, cracks in the approaches and the simultaneous descent of huge masses of snow. The weather on the mountain is usually bad, and accidents at an altitude of more than 8000 meters, near the very top, leave very little hope for help and rescue.

The first attempt to conquer the mountain took place in 1902, but success was achieved only on July 31, 1954, when the Italians hoisted the flags of their homeland and Pakistan on the top of K2 (A. Compagnoni from Valfurno and L. Lacedelli from Cortina d'Ampezzo).

Where is Mount Chogori (K2)

located on the border of Pakistan and China in the Karakorum system. Interesting fact: scientists argued for a long time and could not choose a mountain system for it - the fact is that there is almost no separation between the Himalayas and the Karakorum. There was even a special conference at which it was decided to divide the Himalayas and the Karakorum.

Chogori photo:

At last the morning came, giving them hope. Monday, August 22, Camp 4, altitude 7950 meters. Most In July and half of August, six members of the international expedition "North Slope K-2 2011" walked up and down the northern ridge of the second highest mountain in the world - Chogori, named K-2 because of its location - the Karakoram mountain system. This ridge is very rarely chosen by climbers for climbing.

The group was small, but all of its members have a lot of experience behind them. For two climbers from Kazakhstan - Maksut Zhumaev (34 years old) and Vasily Pivtsov (36 years old) - these were, respectively, the sixth and seventh attempts to conquer K-2. For 52-year-old Pole Dariusz Załuska, a videographer, the attempt was the third. Tommy Heinrich, a 49-year-old photographer from Argentina, has been on K-2 expeditions twice but has yet to reach the summit.

Many times the members of the expedition had to quit their jobs, return to spend the night in the lowest, base, camp, and then start all over again.

Many times they had to quit their jobs, return to spend the night at the lowest, base camp, located at an altitude of 4650 meters on the northern K-2 glacier, and then start all over again. On August 16, they once again made the ascent - as it turned out, this was their first and only real chance to conquer the summit. On the same day, the climbers reached the first camp, set up at the base of the ridge; Avalanches rumbled ahead, more than 30 centimeters of snow fell during the night. They spent the next day at camp, hoping that avalanches would clear the top of the slope so they could continue their ascent.

At 5 o'clock in the morning on August 18, they decided to go to the second camp. Every extra kilo was a heavy burden; to relieve her, Gerlinde left her travel diary in the tent. Two avalanches had already passed along the long hollow through which their path ran. About half past seven Ralph stopped: the snow cover was too unreliable. "Gerlinde, I'm coming back," Duymovitz said.

Ever since the couple began to climb together, they agreed that they would never interfere with each other if one wanted to go forward and the other did not. Each of them during the ascent was responsible only for himself - if the second was not sick or injured. They often took different solutions. So it was, for example, in 2006 on Mount Lhotse in Nepal, when Ralph decided that the fresh snow that treacherously hid the ice of the hollow was too dangerous, and turned back. Gerlinde continued climbing the slope of Lhotse for another 20 minutes before joining her husband. But now Gerlinde was overwhelmed with a feeling which in German is called wagnis- boldness. She had never climbed to the top of K-2 before, and therefore was ready to take risks that seemed excessive to Ralph who had been there.

But now, in the crevasse above the first camp, Ralph forgot about the agreement and began to ask his wife to turn back with him, although he knew that delay could deprive her of the chance to climb to the top. Composure left Thummovitz. “Ralph said that the route was very dangerous because of possible avalanches,” Maksut later said in a video on his website. - He desperately shouted, and Gerlinde shouted in response that the fate of our ascent was now being decided. If we turn today, we will miss our only chance." “I was very afraid that I would never see her again,” Ralph later explained.

Just as Ralph had feared, the snow on the slope had begun to slough off. Maksut, Vasily and Gerlinde, walking ahead and laying the path, caused three avalanches one after another. The largest of them covered Tommy, who was almost 60 meters below, and knocked him down. Only a fixed rope, stretched like a string, kept him from falling down the slope. Tommy himself was able to get out from under the snow, but an avalanche covered the trodden path, and he also had to turn back.

Now there are four of them left: Gerlinde, Vasily, Maksut and Dariush. It was truly Sisyphean labor to make the path - only worse, because the climbers chose this punishment for themselves. After 11 hours, they stopped at a base camp on a ledge under the second camp and somehow spent the night, crowding into a double tent. The next day they mastered the most difficult section of the ridge and reached the second camp, located at an altitude of 6600 meters, where they changed into down jackets. On Saturday, August 20, in the afternoon we dragged ourselves to the third camp. There they drank coffee with honey and warmed their chilled limbs by the gas burners.

By 2010, Everest had been conquered 5104 times, and K-2 only 302. For every four climbers who successfully climbed to the top, one died.

As for Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, the pitiless mountain made a strong impression on her. For the first time, Gerlinde saw K-2 from the top of Broadpeak. It happened in 1994, the girl was then 23 years old. “I didn’t even dare to imagine that someday I would climb K-2,” recalls Gerlinde.

Gerlinde, the fifth child in a Catholic family, grew up in the mountains of Central Austria, in the village of Spital am Pirn. She went to a sports school, where, among other things, she skied. It turned out that, although she was a good skier, she could not count on great sporting achievements. But even more upsetting was the fact that the girls, whom Gerlinde considered close friends, were offended by her when she won races from them.

The passion for rock climbing was awakened in the girl not at school, but in the church. Austria is a country where crosses stand on the tops of most of the highest mountains; no wonder Eric Tischler, the local Catholic priest, wore sweatpants under his cassock and good weather often shortened the Sunday sermon in order to lead his flock to the mountains. Gerlinde, who served at the altar, came to Mass with hiking boots in her backpack. Under the guidance of Father Tischler, she made her first hike in the mountains (she was then seven) and her first ascent with climbing equipment(at age 13).

The passion for adventure eventually led Gerlinde in 1994 to Pakistan, to the Karakoram range. While climbing Broad Peak, she turned back when the weather turned bad, but then changed her mind and climbed a long ridge, two dozen meters below the 8051-meter peak. (In 2007 she will return here and conquer this eight-thousander). Returning home, Gerlinde began to save money to go hiking and climbing expeditions to Pakistan, China, Nepal, Peru.

In 1998, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner climbed Cho Oyu, the famous mountain peak near the Nepalese-Chinese border, her first eight-thousander. At the base camp, she met Ralph Duymovitz. Ralph was at the height of his fame: most recently, his ascent of the northern slope of Mount Eiger in Swiss Alps watched live by millions of viewers. Ralph and Gerlinde hit it off and have been trailblazing together ever since.

In those very recent times, women in high-altitude mountaineering were looked down upon, although by that time they had already made the most serious ascents for more than two decades. In 2003, after an unsuccessful attempt to summit Kangchenjunga, Gerlinde decided to take advantage of her acclimatization to the highlands and traveled to Pakistan to try to climb the 8126m Nanga Parbat on the Diamir slope.

Above the second camp, she was in the company of six Kazakhs and one Spaniard, who were laying the path together, lining up in one column. When the leader of the group reported by radio that the seven climbers were heading for the third camp, he did not mention Gerlind. It was her turn to plow the path - she made her way to the head of the column, but she was politely pushed aside. The woman obediently returned to the tail. After a while, she moved forward again, and when one of the men again tried to push her aside, Gerlinde's patience snapped. She resolutely went forward and, with the tenacity of a bulldozer, trodden a path along the untouched slope to the very third camp. The dumbfounded men who followed her called her Cinderella Caterpillar i.e. Cinderella Caterpillar

Gerlinde became the first Austrian to conquer Nanga Parbat, the mountain that the famous Austrian climber Hermann Buhl was the first to climb in 1953. Her success in the year of the 50th anniversary of the legendary ascent attracted the attention of specialized mountaineering magazines and encouraged Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner to turn her passion into a profession. In the next two years, Annapurna, Gasherbrum-I, Gasherbrum-II and Shisha-Pangma were added to the list of mountains conquered by her. She has climbed eight of the fourteen highest mountains in the world. In the January issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel, Gerlinde was called "the queen of the dead zone".

To Merciless Mountain
Getting to the foot of K-2 is no longer an easy journey, although it is now much easier to make than in the days when the first expeditions took several months to reach the top. I agreed with the members of the 2011 expedition that I would accompany them to the base camp. We met in Kashi, or Kashgar, ancient city on the Silk Road, in the very west of China, and set off south on June 19 in three Toyota land cruisers, escorted by a truck loaded with more than two tons of equipment. Packed in blue plastic barrels, there were tents, sleeping bags, burners, warm jackets, ice screws, solar panels, batteries, computers, almost 2750 meters of rope, 525 eggs, packages of frozen pasta with vegetables, a bottle of Scotch whiskey Chivas Regal And DVD

The road went around western edge desert Taklamakan and passed through the towns, framed by poplars and gardens, which receive water from powerful rivers flowing from the mountains of Kun-Lun in the south and the Pamirs in the west. After spending the night at the Yechen Electricity Hotel, we crossed the Chiragsaldi Pass and trudged through clouds of dust at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour until we reached a truck stop in the village of Mazar. In the morning we turned west and drove along a broken road along the Yarkand River to Ylyk, a nomadic Kyrgyz village of 250 people. There we spread our sleeping bags on the carpeted floor in an adobe house that belonged to a local mullah.

On the evening of our first overnight stay, Ralph pulled out of his backpack a "portrait" of the mountain, made on the basis of satellite imagery and photographs. Maksut studied the terrifying features of the relief of the Northern Ridge, on which the Japanese expedition first climbed to the top in 1982; he and Vasily spent many weeks on this ridge in 2007 until bad weather, coupled with a lack of provisions and water, forced them to retreat.

“You showed us that early,” Maksut said, and he was only partly joking. It will be hard to sleep now. Where do we have vodka?

On the third day we overcame the Aghil Pass (4780 meters) and descended into the valley of the Shaksgam River, which originates in the glaciers near the peaks of Gasherbrum. The currents didn't seem particularly dangerous until I saw one of our donkeys knocked off his feet and carried downstream like an empty plastic bottle. We traveled on camels.

On the fifth morning, after an hour of walking, as if on cue, everyone stopped and looked at the cloudless sky in the south, as if struck by the sudden appearance of a UFO. K-2 towered there. Gerlinde, who saw K-2 many times with south side, sat down on a stone and looked at the peak for a long time, and a storm of emotions reflected on her face. I did not want to disturb her, and I asked what she was thinking at that moment, much later, a few weeks later. “I thought, ‘What can I expect this time? How will everything turn out?” was the answer.

Her relationship with K-2 was marred by painful memories. On this mountain, but on the south side, she was three times, last time in 2010 year. A rockfall that then occurred above the third camp forced Ralph to turn back, and Gerlinde continued her ascent in the company of an old friend Fredrik Erikson, an extreme skier who made ski descents from mountain peaks. With skis, Fredrik went out with Gerlinde from the fourth camp to the summit of K-2. At the very beginning of the crevice, called the Throat of the Bottle, Erickson stopped to strengthen the hook, and as he nailed it, his foot slipped. In the blink of an eye, Fredrik flew past Gerlinde and disappeared.

Shocked, Gerlinde went down as far as she could, but she managed to find only one ski - and then the slope ended in a foggy void. Fredrik's body was later found buried in the snow 900 meters below the Throat of the Bottle. He was 35. Gerlinda wanted only one thing: to get as far away from K-2 as possible. Sluggish, sad, overwhelmed by thoughts about the price to pay for the life she had chosen, she returned home. Gerlinde was often asked why she was drawn again and again to return to K-2, and for a long time she herself could not find the answer to this question. However, over time, the woman began to think that the mountain was not to blame for the death of Fredrik. Yes, the loss was irreparable, one might say ruthless, but the mountain was not. “A mountain is a mountain, and we are the people who come to it,” says Gerlinde.

Conquest
On Monday, August 22, at about seven in the morning, Gerlinde, Vasily, Maksut and Dariusz left the fourth camp and went where their common dream led. The climbers climbed a steep ice slope known as the Japanese Couloir, the most visible feature of the upper part of the northern slope of K-2. But at this altitude, where the air contains only a third of the oxygen compared to the air we breathe at sea level, in chest-high snow, in a wind that carries snowflakes that sting so painfully that sometimes we had to stop and turn away, the climbers were advancing terribly slowly. By one o'clock in the afternoon they had overcome less than 180 meters.

Although Vasily and Maksut had already been above the fourth camp in 2007, they were not familiar with the Japanese Couloir, and it was difficult to see the terrain up the slope. They had been walking for 12 hours; 300 meters to the top. Ralph urged Gerlinde on the radio to return to Camp Four for the night, because now they had paved the path and knew the way.

“You can’t spend the night there, you won’t be able to rest,” said Ralph. “Ralph,” Gerlinde replied, “we are almost there. We don't want to turn back."

They set off again at about seven in the morning, when another flawless morning was taking place. Now or never! Gerlinde's backpack contained spare batteries, gloves and sunglasses, toilet paper, bandages, drops for snow blindness, hydrocortisone, a syringe; in addition, she carried a flag with the logo of her main sponsor, the Austrian oil company. And she also had a small copper box with a statue of Buddha, which she was going to bury in the snow on top. In the inner pocket was a half-liter flask of water melted from the snow: it would freeze in a backpack.

The climbers moved up the slope towards the 130-meter snow slope, rising to the crest of the summit. They still suffered from the cold, but by 11 o'clock they saw that they would soon be out in the sun. At three o'clock in the afternoon they reached the base of the slope. At first they were pleased that the snow only reached their shins, but after 20 meters it was already up to their chest. If earlier the first in the column gave way after 50 steps, now they changed after ten, with Vasily and Maksut walking first more often. My God, thought Gerlinde, are we really going to have to turn back when we've come this far already?

At some point in an attempt to find more easy way they abandoned the idea of ​​marching in one column. Ralph watched in amazement from below their footprints divided into three: Gerlinde, Vasily and Maksut began to look for the best way to go further. Ahead lay a strip of snow-covered stone, rising at an angle of 60 degrees. No matter how steep this climb was, it still turned out to be easier. The climbers again lined up in a column, and when Gerlinde changed places with Vasily, the snow only reached her knees. Encouraged by hope and energy, they overcame the slope and reached the ridge, where the wind-packed snow was as hard as asphalt. It was 16:35, the summit is already visible.

"You can! Ralph shouted over the radio. - You can! But it's getting late! Be careful!"

Gerlinde took a sip from her flask. My throat hurt, it hurt to swallow. Although it is impossible to sweat in this cold, the climbers were still dehydrated due to the fact that they had to gasp for air.

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner had to take the last steps to the top of K-2.

After 15 minutes, Vasily and Maksut came shoulder to shoulder. Everyone hugged. Half an hour later, staggering, Dariusz climbed to the top. He got frostbite on his hands because he had to take off his gloves to change the batteries in his camcorder. It was seven o'clock in the evening. Their shadows stretched far across the top of K-2, and the pyramidal shadow of the mountain itself fell for many kilometers to the east, and the whole world shone in a wonderful golden light.

Dariusz filmed Gerlinde trying to articulate what it means for her to be here: “I am overwhelmed with feelings… Standing here after so many failed attempts, after so many years,” she wept, but then pulled herself together. “It was very, very difficult to come here for so many days, but now everything is just amazing. I think anyone can understand why we're doing this."

don't leave us
- "Do not leave us and protect us" ...

Two days later, when Gerlinde reached the first camp, Ralph met her on the glacier. They hugged and for a long time could not unclench their hands. In the camp, Gerlinde found a letter that Ralph had left for her, hoping that she would return - written in toilet paper a more than a meter long message in which he spoke of his love and explained why he decided to turn around: “I don’t want to always be the person who doesn’t let you go forward.”

At the base camp, Gerlinde spoke via satellite phone to Jan Olaf Erickson, Fredrik's father, who wanted her to tell her everything she saw from the top of the mountain where his son is buried. The President of Austria called with congratulations. The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan congratulated Maksut and Vasily on Twitter. Having gone to have lunch in the tent that served them as a dining room, Gerlinde fell asleep over a plate of sliced ​​watermelon.

The whole family gathered at the Munich airport to meet Gerlinde. Her father, hugging her, burst into tears and for the first time did not say that she had already climbed the mountains enough and now she could stop.

Gerlinde lost seven kilograms during the expedition - despite the fact that even before that she was unlikely to have even a kilogram of excess weight. At a solemn meeting in the German Buhl, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was waiting for a sea of ​​flowers and gifts, among them was a huge bottle of red Rhine wine, on the label of which her portrait flaunted.

Many times they had to quit their jobs, return to spend the night at the lowest, base camp, located at an altitude of 4650 meters on the northern K-2 glacier, and then start all over again. On August 16, they once again made the ascent - as it turned out, this was their first and only real chance to conquer the summit. On the same day, the climbers reached the first camp, set up at the base of the ridge; Avalanches rumbled ahead, more than 30 centimeters of snow fell during the night. They spent the next day at camp, hoping that avalanches would clear the top of the slope so they could continue their ascent.

At 5 o'clock in the morning on August 18, they decided to go to the second camp. Every extra kilo was a heavy burden; to relieve her, Gerlinde left her travel diary in the tent. Two avalanches had already passed along the long hollow through which their path ran. About half past seven Ralph stopped: the snow cover was too unreliable. "Gerlinde, I'm coming back," Duymovitz said.

Ever since the couple began to climb together, they agreed that they would never interfere with each other if one wanted to go forward and the other did not. Each of them during the ascent was responsible only for himself - if the second was not sick or injured. They made different decisions over and over again. So it was, for example, in 2006 on Mount Lhotse in Nepal, when Ralph decided that the fresh snow that treacherously hid the ice of the hollow was too dangerous, and turned back. Gerlinde continued climbing the slope of Lhotse for another 20 minutes before joining her husband. But now Gerlinde was overwhelmed with a feeling which in German is called wagnis- boldness. She had never climbed to the top of K-2 before, and therefore was ready to take risks that seemed excessive to Ralph who had been there.

But now, in the crevasse above the first camp, Ralph forgot about the agreement and began to ask his wife to turn back with him, although he knew that delay could deprive her of the chance to climb to the top. Composure left Thummovitz. “Ralph said that the route was very dangerous because of possible avalanches,” Maksut later said in a video on his website. He shouted desperately, and Gerlinde shouted back that the fate of our ascent was now being decided. If we turn today, we will miss our only chance." “I was very afraid that I would never see her again,” Ralph later explained.

Just as Ralph had feared, the snow on the slope had begun to slough off. Maksut, Vasily and Gerlinde, walking ahead and laying the path, caused three avalanches one after another. The largest of them covered Tommy, who was almost 60 meters below, and knocked him down. Only a fixed rope, stretched like a string, kept him from falling down the slope. Tommy himself was able to get out from under the snow, but an avalanche covered the trodden path, and he also had to turn back.

Now there are four of them left: Gerlinde, Vasily, Maksut and Dariush. It was truly Sisyphean labor to dig the path - only worse, because the climbers chose this punishment for themselves. After 11 hours, they stopped at a base camp on a ledge under the second camp and somehow spent the night, crowding into a double tent. The next day they mastered the most difficult section of the ridge and reached the second camp, located at an altitude of 6600 meters, where they changed into down jackets. On Saturday, August 20, in the afternoon we dragged ourselves to the third camp. There they drank coffee with honey and warmed their chilled limbs by the gas burners.

By 2010, Everest had been conquered 5104 times, and K-2 only 302. For every four climbers who successfully climbed to the top, one died.

On Sunday, August 21, the weather improved, and the ascent to the fourth camp was easy. Now the climbers were at an altitude of about eight thousand meters, in the so-called dead zone, where the human body can no longer adapt to the lack of oxygen in the air. Feelings are dulled here, and the simplest task can take forever. In the afternoon, climbers sharpened spikes on their boots and melted the snow. “At some point, we all got excited, but it was a good excitement,” Gerlinde later said. “We held hands, looked into each other’s eyes and said: “Yes, tomorrow is our day!”

Priest climber

K-2 occupies a special place among the eight-thousanders. Although this mountain is 239 meters lower than Everest, the glory of a peak that throws a special challenge to climbers has long been attached to it. Storming it is very difficult and dangerous. By 2010, Everest had been conquered 5104 times, and K-2 only 302. For every four climbers who successfully climbed to the top, one died. After the first unsuccessful expeditions undertaken by the British and Italians at the very beginning of the 20th century, the Americans tried to conquer K-2 in 1938, 1939 and 1953. Charles Huston and Robert Bates titled a book about their unsuccessful 1953 climb quite unequivocally: "K-2: The Merciless Mountain." In 1954, K-2 was finally conquered by a large Italian expedition.

As for Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, the pitiless mountain made a strong impression on her. For the first time, Gerlinde saw K-2 from the top of Broadpeak. It happened in 1994, the girl was then 23 years old. “I didn’t even dare to imagine that someday I would climb the K-2,” recalls Gerlinde.

Gerlinde, the fifth child in a Catholic family, grew up in the mountains of Central Austria, in the village of Spital am Pirn. She went to a sports school, where, among other things, she skied. It turned out that, although she was a good skier, she could not count on great sporting achievements. But even more upsetting was the fact that the girls, whom Gerlinde considered close friends, were offended by her when she won races from them.

The passion for rock climbing was awakened in the girl not at school, but in the church. Austria is a country where crosses stand on the tops of most of the highest mountains; no wonder Eric Tischler, the local Catholic priest, wore sweatpants under his cassock and, in fine weather, would often shorten his Sunday sermon to lead his flock into the mountains. Gerlinde, who served at the altar, came to Mass with hiking boots in her backpack. Under the guidance of Father Tischler, she made her first hike in the mountains (she was then seven) and her first ascent with climbing equipment (at 13 years old).

The passion for adventure eventually led Gerlinde in 1994 to Pakistan, to the Karakoram range. While climbing Broad Peak, she turned back when the weather turned bad, but then changed her mind and climbed a long ridge, two dozen meters below the 8051-meter peak. (In 2007 she will return here and conquer this eight-thousander). Returning home, Gerlinde began to save money to go hiking and climbing expeditions to Pakistan, China, Nepal, Peru.

In 1998, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner climbed Cho Oyu, a famous mountain peak near the Nepalese-Chinese border, her first eight-thousander. At the base camp, she met Ralph Duymovitz. Ralph was at the height of his fame: most recently, his ascent of the northern slope of Mount Eiger in the Swiss Alps was watched live by millions of television viewers. Ralph and Gerlinde hit it off and have been trailblazing together ever since.

In those very recent times, women in high-altitude mountaineering were looked down upon, although by that time they had already made the most serious ascents for more than two decades. In 2003, after an unsuccessful attempt to summit Kangchenjunga, Gerlinde decided to take advantage of her acclimatization to the highlands and traveled to Pakistan to try to climb the 8126m Nanga Parbat on the Diamir slope.

Above the second camp, she was in the company of six Kazakhs and one Spaniard, who were laying the path together, lining up in one column. When the leader of the group reported by radio that the seven climbers were heading for the third camp, he did not mention Gerlind. It was her turn to plow the path - she made her way to the head of the column, but she was politely pushed aside. The woman obediently returned to the tail. After a while, she moved forward again, and when one of the men again tried to push her aside, Gerlinde's patience snapped. She resolutely went forward and, with the tenacity of a bulldozer, trodden a path along the untouched slope to the very third camp. The dumbfounded men who followed her called her Cinderella Caterpillar i.e. Cinderella Caterpillar, in honor of the famous German truck brand.

Gerlinde became the first Austrian to conquer Nanga Parbat, the mountain that the famous Austrian climber Hermann Buhl was the first to climb in 1953. Her success in the year of the 50th anniversary of the legendary ascent attracted the attention of specialized mountaineering magazines and encouraged Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner to turn her passion into a profession. In the next two years, Annapurna, Gasherbrum-I, Gasherbrum-II and Shisha-Pangma were added to the list of mountains conquered by her. She has climbed eight of the fourteen highest mountains in the world. In the January issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel, Gerlinde was called "the queen of the dead zone".

To Merciless Mountain

Getting to the foot of K-2 is no longer an easy journey, although it is now much easier to make than in the days when the first expeditions took several months to reach the top. I agreed with the members of the 2011 expedition that I would accompany them to the base camp. We met in Kashi, or Kashgar, an ancient city on the Silk Road in the very west of China, and set off south on June 19 in three Toyota land cruisers, escorted by a truck loaded with more than two tons of gear. Packed in blue plastic barrels, there were tents, sleeping bags, burners, warm jackets, ice drills, solar panels, batteries, computers, almost 2750 meters of rope, 525 eggs, packages of frozen pasta with vegetables, a bottle of Scotch whiskey Chivas Regal And DVD with the film "Handy Week".

The road skirted the western edge of the Takla Makan Desert and passed through towns lined with poplars and orchards, which draw their water from powerful rivers flowing from the Kun-Lun mountains in the south and the Pamirs in the west. After spending the night at the Yechen Electricity Hotel, we crossed the Chiragsaldi Pass and trudged through clouds of dust at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour until we reached a truck stop in the village of Mazar. In the morning we turned west and drove along a broken road along the Yarkand River to Ylyk, a nomadic Kyrgyz village of 250 people. There we spread our sleeping bags on the carpeted floor in an adobe house that belonged to a local mullah.

On the evening of our first overnight stay, Ralph pulled out of his backpack a "portrait" of the mountain, made on the basis of satellite imagery and photographs. Maksut studied the terrifying features of the relief of the Northern Ridge, on which the Japanese expedition first climbed to the top in 1982; he and Vasily spent many weeks on this ridge in 2007 until bad weather, coupled with a lack of provisions and water, forced them to retreat.

“You showed us that early,” Maksut said, and he was only partly joking. It will be hard to sleep now. Where do we have vodka? »

On the third day we overcame the Aghil Pass (4780 meters) and descended into the valley of the Shaksgam River, which originates in the glaciers near the peaks of Gasherbrum. The currents didn't seem particularly dangerous until I saw one of our donkeys knocked off his feet and carried downstream like an empty plastic bottle. We traveled on camels.

On the fifth morning, after an hour of walking, as if on cue, everyone stopped and looked at the cloudless sky in the south, as if struck by the sudden appearance of a UFO. K-2 towered there. Gerlinde, who had seen K-2 many times from the south side, sat down on a rock and stared at the peak for a long time, a storm of emotions reflected on her face. I did not want to disturb her, and I asked what she was thinking at that moment, much later, a few weeks later. “I thought, ‘What can I expect this time? How will it all turn out?” was the answer.

Her relationship with K-2 was marred by painful memories. On this mountain, but on the south side, she visited three times, the last time in 2010. A rockfall that happened above the third camp forced Ralph to turn back, and Gerlinde continued her ascent in the company of an old friend Fredrik Erikson, an extreme skier who made skiing from the mountain peaks. With skis, Fredrik went out with Gerlinde from the fourth camp to the summit of K-2. At the very beginning of the crevice, called the Throat of the Bottle, Erickson stopped to strengthen the hook, and as he nailed it, his foot slipped. In the blink of an eye, Fredrik flew past Gerlinde and disappeared.

Shocked, Gerlinde went down as far as she could, but she managed to find only one ski - and then the slope ended in a foggy void. Fredrik's body was later found buried in the snow 900 meters below the Throat of the Bottle. He was 35. Gerlinda wanted only one thing: to get as far away from K-2 as possible. Sluggish, sad, overwhelmed by thoughts about the price to pay for the life she had chosen, she returned home. Gerlinde was often asked why she was drawn again and again to return to K-2, and for a long time she herself could not find the answer to this question. However, over time, the woman began to think that the mountain was not to blame for the death of Fredrik. Yes, the loss was irreparable, one might say ruthless, but the mountain was not. “A mountain is a mountain, and we are the people who come to it,” says Gerlinde.

Conquest

On Monday, August 22, at about seven in the morning, Gerlinde, Vasily, Maksut and Dariusz left the fourth camp and went where their common dream led. The climbers climbed a steep ice slope known as the Japanese Couloir, the most visible feature of the upper part of the northern slope of K-2. But at this altitude, where the air contains only a third of the oxygen compared to the air we breathe at sea level, in chest-high snow, in a wind that carries snowflakes that sting so painfully that sometimes we had to stop and turn away, the climbers were advancing terribly slowly. By one o'clock in the afternoon they had overcome less than 180 meters.

Although Vasily and Maksut had already been above the fourth camp in 2007, they were not familiar with the Japanese Couloir, and it was difficult to see the terrain up the slope. They had been walking for 12 hours; 300 meters to the top. Ralph urged Gerlinde on the radio to return to Camp Four for the night, because now they had paved the path and knew the way.

“You can’t spend the night there, you won’t be able to rest,” said Ralph. “Ralph,” Gerlinde replied, “we are almost there. We don't want to turn back."

They set off again at about seven in the morning, when another flawless morning was taking place. Now or never! Gerlinde's backpack contained spare batteries, gloves and sunglasses, toilet paper, bandages, drops for snow blindness, hydrocortisone, a syringe; in addition, she carried a flag with the logo of her main sponsor, the Austrian oil company. And she also had a small copper box with a statue of Buddha, which she was going to bury in the snow on top. In the inner pocket was a half-liter flask of water melted from the snow: it would freeze in a backpack.

The climbers moved up the slope towards the 130-meter snow slope, rising to the crest of the summit. They still suffered from the cold, but by 11 o'clock they saw that they would soon be out in the sun. At three o'clock in the afternoon they reached the base of the slope. At first they were pleased that the snow only reached their shins, but after 20 meters it was already up to their chest. If earlier the first in the column gave way after 50 steps, now they changed after ten, with Vasily and Maksut walking first more often. “My God,” thought Gerlinde, “are we really going to have to turn back when we have come so far already? »

At some point, in an attempt to find an easier way, they abandoned the idea of ​​walking in one column. Ralph watched in amazement from below their footprints divided into three: Gerlinde, Vasily and Maksut began to look for the best way to go further. Ahead lay a strip of snow-covered stone, rising at an angle of 60 degrees. No matter how steep this climb was, it still turned out to be easier. The climbers again lined up in a column, and when Gerlinde changed places with Vasily, the snow only reached her knees. Encouraged by hope and energy, they overcame the slope and reached the ridge, where the wind-packed snow was as hard as asphalt. It was 16:35, the summit is already visible.

"You can! Ralph shouted over the radio. — You can! But it's getting late! Be careful! »

Gerlinde took a sip from her flask. My throat hurt, it hurt to swallow. Although it is impossible to sweat in this cold, the climbers were still dehydrated due to the fact that they had to gasp for air.

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner had to take the last steps to the top of K-2.

After 15 minutes, Vasily and Maksut came shoulder to shoulder. Everyone hugged. Half an hour later, staggering, Dariusz climbed to the top. He got frostbite on his hands because he had to take off his gloves to change the batteries in his camcorder. It was seven o'clock in the evening. Their shadows stretched far across the top of K-2, and the pyramidal shadow of the mountain itself fell for many kilometers to the east, and the whole world shone in a wonderful golden light.

Dariusz filmed Gerlinde trying to articulate what it means for her to be here: “I am overwhelmed with feelings ... To stand here after so many failed attempts, after so many years,” she cried, but then she pulled herself together. “It was very, very difficult to come here for so many days, but now everything is just amazing. I think anyone can understand why we're doing this."

don't leave us

Ralph stayed up most of the night tracking the descent. More than a third of the tragedies on K-2 happened on the way back. At half past eight in the evening, he saw four thin rays descending the slope into the Japanese Couloir. Exhausted, Gerlinde found that as she moved through the darkness, she kept repeating the words of the prayer to herself: "Steh uns bei und beschtze uns""Don't leave us and protect us"...

Two days later, when Gerlinde reached the first camp, Ralph met her on the glacier. They hugged and for a long time could not unclench their hands. At the camp, Gerlinde found a letter that Ralph had left for her, hoping she would return, a more than a meter-long message written on toilet paper in which he spoke of his love and explained why he decided to turn around: “I don’t want to always be a man, that keeps you from moving forward."

At the base camp, Gerlinde spoke via satellite phone to Jan Olaf Erickson, Fredrik's father, who wanted her to tell her everything she saw from the top of the mountain where his son is buried. The President of Austria called with congratulations. The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan congratulated Maksut and Vasily on Twitter. Having gone to have lunch in the tent that served them as a dining room, Gerlinde fell asleep over a plate of sliced ​​watermelon.

The whole family gathered at the Munich airport to meet Gerlinde. Her father, hugging her, burst into tears and for the first time did not say that she had already climbed the mountains enough and now she could stop.

Gerlinde lost seven kilograms during the expedition - despite the fact that even before that she was unlikely to have even a kilogram of excess weight. At a solemn meeting in the German Bule, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was waiting for a sea of ​​flowers and gifts, among them was a huge bottle of red Rhine wine, on the label of which her portrait flaunted.

Some media, mostly Pakistani, have already come out with screaming headlines that K2 is now becoming the new Everest.
However, they do not take into account the fact that in the most favorable seasons, a maximum of 50 people climbed the summit of K2, while 500 climbed Everest.

In general, if Everest is associated with great height, K2 is associated precisely with technical difficulties.

K2 is only 240 meters below Everest, but climbing this peak is a completely different kind of mountaineering, here you will need a confident knowledge of mountaineering techniques and experience; every climber on K2 must be able to move both on ice and on snow, rocks, mixed. If you are confident in only one type of climbing, on others you will play "Russian roulette" on K2.

Rope railings on K2 work like a "placebo" - some of them only indicate the path of ascent and many sections are simply not able to stop the climber from falling.

In most of the route, the climber rises on the strength of the legs, clinging to the rock and pulling himself up on the jumar. Crampons on a boot are mainly used not to move comfortably in the snow, but to gain a foothold on the ice-rocky slope, this is a rather exhausting task - constantly looking for tiny footholds in the rock.
If you unsuccessfully put your foot and slipped, unable to hold on to your hands, you will fall off the elephant and die, nothing will hold you in this fall.
Climbing K2 is pretty serious even without taking into account the huge height of the mountain.

But not only the ascent, the descent is also quite difficult. You must be able to make and run a rappel over and over again, and every time must be perfect, there is no room for error.
There are also places on K2 with huge "Gordian knots" of old ropes, which, in a good way, should be removed from the mountain. If during the descent you choose the wrong rope from this pile, it may burst under your weight. On the descent, the climbers are already very tired, the psychological load is very high, and it is in such situations that mistakes happen.
Here, no one will assess the situation for you, here you are on your own, there is no guide, no Sherpa, or even a teammate. You must be able to assess the degree of risk yourself.

Avalanches on K2 are a big threat.

Many climbers can point me to other eight-thousanders such as Nanga Parbat, Makalu, or lower mountains such as Meru or Fitzroy, which present similar or even more difficult climbs.
But here I am comparing climbing K2 with standard route Everest, so what more people understand what is at stake.

On-site support for climbers on K2 is nothing compared to Everest

Pakistan compared to Nepal and Tibet provides a different level of availability (logistics) of mountains.
Nepal has Sherpas, Tibet has Sherpas, Pakistan has High Altitude Porters (HAPS).

Nepalese Sherpas are the world's most famous climbing helpers because they have been working for foreign expeditions since the early 1900s.
In Tibet, in Lhasa, there is a specialized school for mountain guides, which has trained and graduated many qualified Tibetans - mountain guides during its existence.

In Pakistan, the problem is with experienced mountain guides, of course they are, but they are very few. Today, the country only intends to increase the training and production of qualified specialists
Therefore, many expeditions come to Pakistan with Nepalese Sherpas, who, like on Everest, hang railings, carry loads to high-altitude camps and accompany clients to the top.
But the Pakistani government does not like this approach. Each Sherpa in the team must have a full permit (permit) for climbing, like any client of the expedition. From time to time there are even proposals to completely ban the use of Sherpa assistance in the mountains of Pakistan, as they deprive Pakistani mountain guides of the opportunity to earn money.

All these problems only lead to higher prices for expeditions to Pakistan, although they are still much cheaper than Everest.
So, a permit to climb the second highest mountain in the world - K2 costs $ 1,700 per person,.

Fortunately, to date, the ban on the use of Sherpa labor has not been adopted by the Pakistani government, and on expeditions to K2, Pakistani mountain guides have the opportunity to practice high-altitude work from Nepalese Sherpas.
Personally, I think that the help of local, Pakistani mountain guides is important on K2, they should have all the skills that Nepalese Sherpas now have, because every year the number of foreign climbers in the Karakorum mountains will increase.

The weather on K2 is worse than on Everest

From 1985 to 2015, there were 11 years on K2 in which not a single successful ascent was made. From 2009 to 2015, there were only three successful seasons - 2011 (only from the Chinese side), 2012 and , and in each of them no more than 40-50 people climbed to the top, and this was almost a record of ascents due to the unprecedentedly long weather window for one week.

Since the eight-thousander K2 is the northernmost eight-thousander in the world and, moreover, it is located to the west of all the other large peaks of the Karakorum, it takes all the "blow" of weather fronts. As everywhere in the mountains, weather quite difficult to predict, but on K2 the weather caused many deaths

The death rate on K2 is much higher than on Everest, thus scaring away many who want to climb the summit.

For all the time of ascents to Everest, about 287 people died, while 7581 times climbed to the top. Thus, the mortality rate on Everest is ~ 4%.

On K2, 86 people died during the entire ascent, while K2 was climbed 375 times. Thus, the percentage of mortality on K2 is ~ 23%.

The leading cause of death on K2 is missing in action. On Everest - fall from the slope.

There are several objective reasons, for which the mortality rate on K2 is higher than on Everest: this is the lack of a helicopter rescue team, bad unpredictable weather, and given the extremely small number of climbers on the mountainside, the limited supply of equipment, provisions and assistance in rescue work.

Why is K2 becoming an increasingly popular mountain?

Given all the above reasons, this question is not easy to answer. K2 is still the lot of professional climbers.
As the climbers themselves say: "Climbing Everest gives you the right to brag about yourself. Climbing K2 gives you respect from climbers".
Although I do not agree with this expression, I believe that all climbers deserve respect, and those who have climbed Everest are those who have climbed K2. But that is a subject for another article.

Here I will note that only 200 people in the world have climbed both Everest and K2.

Mostly the same commercial teams have been working on K2 since 2000, primarily the Austrian company Kari Kobler.
In recent years, the Seven Summits Treks have brought at least 30 people to K2 per season.
Himalayan Experience and Madison Mountaineering are also involved in the climbs.

Previously, the use of oxygen tanks while climbing was rare, but now they are used by the vast majority of climbers on K2.
Also, climbers themselves participate in fixing the railings on the climbing route, even those climbers who participate in commercial teams. In addition, on K2, even experienced, professional climbers use a rope installed by Sherpas in climbing.
Weather forecasting has improved, but is still very far from ideal.

The K2 base camp is now full of tents for canteens, cinema halls with projectors, with laptops. Food has improved and cooks hired in Nepal and Pakistan delight climbers with good, tasty cuisine.
Unlimited Internet has become the norm in the base camp.
So in general, in the K2 base camp, everything is not so bad, compared, for example, with what was shown in the movie "Vertical Limit".

The second highest peak in the world after Everest has many names: Chogori, K-2, Godwin-Austen, Dapsang (8611 meters). This is the northernmost eight-thousander that exists on the planet. Chogori is located on the border between Pakistan (in the administrative unit of Gilgit-Baltistan, controlled by Pakistan) and China, belongs to the Karakoram mountain system.

The first to discover this peak in 1856 was a European expedition. This expedition gave the original name for Mount K2, as the second peak discovered in the Karakoram mountain system. Naturally, K-2 had a different name among local residents, however, European geographers did not know him, except for K-2, 5 more peaks were also discovered. Historically, it so happened that almost all over the world this peak is referred to as "K-2", but in the CIS countries the name "Chogori" remained.

The first attempt by climbers to conquer this peak in 1902 was unsuccessful, for a long 52 years climbers from all over the world tried to climb K2, but their attempts also ended unsuccessfully. Only in 1954, an Italian expedition led by an experienced climber Ardito Desio managed to conquer the hitherto impregnable K-2. The first woman to climb K-2 was Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz in 1986.

In 1987, a dispute arose between American and Chinese geographers - experts from the United States claimed that, according to their satellite, the height of K-2 is 8858-8908 meters, and this particular peak is the highest in the world. Chinese scientists, on the other hand, claimed that K-2 has a height of 8611, and Everest 8,848 meters, as later studies showed, the Chinese topographers were right.

But the second peak in the world is ahead of all other peaks in terms of the number of climbers who died on their slopes. Among climbers, K-2 is also called the “Killer Mountain”, because among the 284 climbers who conquered Chogori, 66 of their colleagues died during the ascent. The mortality rate reaches 25%. More than one climber has not conquered K-2 twice, and all winter ascents to the summit ended either in failure or in tragedy.

Chogori (K2) is rightfully considered the most technically difficult peak to climb, only Annapurna (8091 meters) and Kanchenjunga (8586 meters) can compete with K-2 in terms of climbing difficulty, a large number of climbers also died on these peaks, the mortality rate significantly exceeds 20 %. However, these two eight-thousanders are not very popular among climbers, so K-2 is the "leader" among the "killer peaks".