K2 2018 Summer Season Coverage: Snow Stalls Progress

The weather around the Karakoram peaks is slowing and even stopping progress this week. Meanwhile some teams are not at Base Camp yet.

Broad Peak Delays

Furtenbach Adventures  reports in with big snow stalling progress. They are a bit nervous because they also want to get K2. When this scenario occurs, often teams will abandon BP and get over to K2 for that attempt, but its too early to make that call now. Furtenbach said today 29 June : “Dumping again. Broad Peak basecamp this morning” and a couple of days ago:

After one night in C1 and one night in C2 whole team is back in basecamp due to bad weather and heavy dumping again. Our sherpas did again crazy hard work fixing the route and breaking trail to C3 in deep snow.

Gasherbrum Delays

Dávid Klein and Hungarian Szilárd Suhajda targeting GII and GI are stuck. Their home team of Kalifa also reports everyone is stalled at base camp:

heavy snow is now making it impossible to move on the mountain, and with a dangerous amount of fresh snow, narrow visibility is not conducive to climbing.

K2 has ropes near 7,200-meters

As previously reported, Akira Oyabe and his 10 member team from Japan have the route was completed to Camp 2, “… from now on, you will be able to set up a tent setup for C2 7350 M. It’s progressing nicely for a 1-month attack.” They are back at K2 BC holding for weather.

Canadian Nathalie Fortin with her teammates Serge Dessureault, Maurice Beauséjour once again commented on the bad weather even though they did spend at night or two at C1/C2:

Who’s There?

For review, these are some of the teams in the Karakoram this Summer:

Climbers with blogs that appear to be updated include:

What’s Next in Pakistan?

This heavy snow is becoming more troubling as it is creating serious delays. That said, the largest team are still on the trek including Seven Summits Treks with 39 members, Madison Mountaineering with 11 Sherpas. Along with Furtenbach’s Sherpa support, they can set the route in fairly quickly if it becomes overwhelming for the Japanese team.

Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything

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