Winter K2 Update: Fighting the Cold

Not a lot of news from K2 this Tuesday, December 29, 2020, at 19:00 K2 time. It appears that there are three teams at C2: Mingma G, Nirmal Purja Purja Purja, and Snorri, and the Seven Summits Treks massive team arrived at base camp. As expected, a lot of rockfall is being reported, and it will get worse as more and more people are on the route at the same time. I’ll update this post as I get fresh information today.

It’s Cold!

It’s cold on K2! In almost every update, there is some mention of cold. Even Nirmal Purja Purja Purja made a comment with respect to between the cold and their loads they were moving slower than they might prefer.

At K2 Base Camp, Dawa Sherpa of SST says the winds are around 10 mph with a balmy -4F. That puts the wind chill at -22F/-30C. You can count on the winds being much stronger higher on the mountain.

There appear to be one more day of suitable winds before they pick back up. Then over the next ten days, there is the occasional day of low winds, but the wind chill remains between -50 and -90F. That’s cold!

Mingma G Pushes Higher to C2+

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa is pushing hard and was the first team to reach Camp 2. He posted this on Monday. No updates if they fixed the Black Pyramid Tuesday.

We three are in camp 2 today. There are no other team here. Tomorrow we will fix 900m rope from here and then decide what to do. We don’t have more rope to fix further.

Nim’s at C2

Nirmal Purja Purja Purja Purja plus his Sherpa teammates continued to C2 today. No updates if they went higher.

We came to the second camp. We will stay here for the night. Tomorrow morning I will assess the state of acclimatization of the team in order to understand whether we are ready for further ascent or not yet. We are advancing much slower than usual, but this is expected due to extremely low temperatures and a large amount of cargo. Today was a difficult but fruitful day

Snorri at C2

John Snorri Sigurjonsson with Muhammad Ali Sadpara and his son Sajid Ali continues their acclimatization, now at C2:

Me, Ali and Sajid have just arrived to camp 2 and it is -30 C. We plan to stay here over night. It was difficult to climb from camp 1 to camp 2. There is massive blue ice and it is hard to pick the ice with the crampons. Lot of rocks collapsing towards us so we had to keep 100% focus. The crampons on my left foot got loose and fell off but we managed to save it and my jumar ascender was always freezing. Still we are feeling good but really craving coca cola. My battery on my Garmin is almost out so, if you cant see my arrow moving you know why.

Seven Summits Treks Comercial

Seven Summits Treks massive commercial team arrived at K2 Base Camp. They report cold! “Finally the whole team reached the Basecamp of K2. After a few days rest at bc, will follow the 1st rotation. 10-15 KM wind at bc, -20 Degree Celsius cold.”

 

Winter 2020/21 K2 Base Camp. Courtesy of Seven Summits Treks

Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything

Share this post:

3 thoughts on “Winter K2 Update: Fighting the Cold

  1. In Pakistan where all this activity going on, no one is interested to know the details. I being familiar with the area from Askole to Base Camp keeps on tweeting about daily progress. Anyhow this blog has always been helpful to me to give details to my followers. Thanx dear

  2. Thanks for the frequent update. It’s exciting.
    I noticed on Nirmal Purja Purja Purja’ page and others that they define themselves as “Athlete”. Is that the modern trend? I don’t like that. I prefer when they defined themselves as alpinist, or mountaineer. Am I old fashion?

Comments are closed.