{"id":20060,"date":"2014-07-21T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/?p=20060"},"modified":"2016-05-27T13:40:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T19:40:36","slug":"k2-honoring-fallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/21\/k2-honoring-fallen\/","title":{"rendered":"K2: Honoring the Fallen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"K2<\/a>K2 is well known for taking lives be it from avalanches, mind falls or disappearances, 84 people have lost their lives. This is not lost on anyone who comes to K2, even to base camp.\u00a0 Art Gilkey lost his in 1953 as part of the legendary belay often called the Brotherhood of the Rope.<\/p>\n

I visited the Gilkey Memorial today. It has become a gathering space for all who have lost their lives on K2, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I and II. Friends, teammates, family often place simple plaques on the rock pillars standing high above the Goodwin – Austin Glacier. Some plaques are simple metal plates with a name and date hammered into the soft metal.<\/p>\n

One plaque was special to me, Ger McDonnell. I climbed on Broad Peak with Ger in 2006. He lost his life on K2 in 2008 trying to save the lives of others. I didn\u2019t know Ger well enough to call him a close friend, but I knew him well enough to know he was a special person with a gift few have in this life. His spirit shown so bright, it was impossible to be sad around him. His voice so smooth as he sang his Irish songs, impossible not to sing along. His smile so contagious, impossible not to smile back.<\/p>\n

I stood there today overlooking K2, base camp, the glaciers frozen in time as are the memories of these climbers. It is hard to visit such a site and explain why we climb, but then it is clear why we do.<\/p>\n

Climb On!
\nAlan
\nMemories are Everything<\/p>\n

An anonymous donor has generously agreed to match all donations made to Cure Alzheimer\u2019s Fund throughout our K2 climb, to a maximum of $25,000.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Double your impact and make a donation to end Alzheimer\u2019s today!<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/media.bladowenterprises.com\/k2\/gilkey.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

K2 is well known for taking lives be it from avalanches, mind falls or disappearances, 84 people have lost their lives. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[405],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-20060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-k2-2014","tag-k2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}