{"id":21424,"date":"2015-07-28T16:52:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T22:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/?p=21424"},"modified":"2015-07-28T23:25:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T05:25:21","slug":"k2-2015-coverage-karakorum-season-ends-with-valient-bids-death-almost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/28\/k2-2015-coverage-karakorum-season-ends-with-valient-bids-death-almost\/","title":{"rendered":"K2 2015 Coverage: Karakorum Season ends with Valient Bids, Death … Almost"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Broad<\/a>
Broad Peak from K2 in 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The summer of 2015 will go down as one of the more difficult seasons in the Northern Pakistan Karakoram\u00a0climbing season. There have\u00a0been deaths, illness<\/a> courageous summit attempts, questionable summit claims\u00a0and impressive summits. However, casting a huge cloud over everything was disturbing weather that made climbing virtually impossible for many.<\/p>\n

Broad\u00a0Peak: At Your Own\u00a0Risk<\/h3>\n

The entire season started on\u00a0an ominous note when Pakistani High Altitude Porter (HAP),Qamber Ali Jangjupa, was killed from an avalanche on the low slopes of Broad Peak, just below Camp 1.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, a determined\u00a0team from Himalayan Experience<\/a> gave it their on Broad Peak trying not once, but twice to summit\u00a0from Camp 3. Yet\u00a0sugary\u00a0snow, trapped under a thin layer of icy crust along with dangerous avalanche conditions caused the highly experienced team of climbers\u00a0and Sherpas to turn back. They are all back at Base Camp now preparing to start their arduous trek back home.<\/p>\n

This comes\u00a0on the heels of about 30 climbers a few days ago making another attempt with the same results – soft, avalanche prone snow – forcing an orderly re without a summit.<\/p>\n

Chris Jensen Burke<\/a>, making her second attempt on BP in consecutive years posted a complete\u00a0update on their attempt. She also noted what might be considered “aberrant” behavior amongst some of the climbing teams:<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, I think the summit count on Broad Peak this season is unofficially one.\u00a0 Lakpa and I did meet one chap on his way down maybe 2 weeks ago now who appeared delirious, but said he reached the summit, didn\u2019t want to talk, descended, and then another climber 60 seconds behind him rolled his eyes in the direction of the delirious chap and said \u2018no summit\u2019.\u00a0 A strong Polish chap in his 20\u2019s from the Polish ski team advised us he reached the summit (on 25th<\/sup> or 26th<\/sup>) \u2013 I would kind of put him in the category of super human and I would like to have some of what he is on\u2026 a nice chap and yesterday he went to another mountain to provide rescue assistance to a fellow Pole.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Against this backdrop, Andrzej Bargiel is reported to have summited Broad Peak – alone – and skied from the summit, a first when confirmed. He would own the sole summit of Broad Peak in the summer of\u00a02015.<\/p>\n

Gasherbrums:\u00a0A few Yes, Most\u00a0No<\/h3>\n

Over on Gasherbrum I & II, similar weather forced many to stop or not even start their summit bids. Nic Rice along with several other international teams attempted a new route up GI but in the end felt the conditions were too dangerous to go for the summit and left early.<\/p>\n

But a few were successful earlier in the season. Kari Kobler put six\u00a0on the GII summit including an impressive performance by\u00a0Sophie Lavaud<\/a> who summited\u00a0with no supplemental oxygen. Others attempted a few days later and\u00a0were turned back including Polish climbers and skiers\u00a0Olek Ostrowski and Peter ?nig\u00f3rski. who were aiming to be the first Polish climbers to successfully ski down from summit of Gasherbrum II.<\/p>\n

They tuned back above Camp 3 in difficult conditions and upon the return Olek Ostrowski went missing and is now presumed dead. It is assumed he fell in a crevasse or went off a steep ridge. Fellow climber\u00a0Andrzej Bargiel expressed his outrage at how the search was conducted in this interview<\/a> (use Google translate for your language)<\/p>\n

On GI, a strong team of four, Thomas Seidensticker, Yannick Graziani, Ferran Latorre<\/a> and Sadiq, from\u00a0Catalonia successfully summited during this season.<\/p>\n

However\u00a0just when the season was thought to be over,\u00a0Czech climbers Marek Holecek and Tomas Petrecek arrived at GI base camp intending to set a new route on the\u00a0Southwest Face. This route has been attempted before, taking lives in the process.<\/p>\n

K2:Absolutely NO!<\/h3>\n

And K2.<\/p>\n

K2 proved once again to be in a different league than any other\u00a08000 meter mountains inside and outside of Pakistan. As I have written so often based on my own summit in 2014, K2 is steep steep steep with little relief and constant\u00a0rock fall and avalanche danger.<\/p>\n

With two major commercial teams, Madison Mountaineering <\/a>and Himalayan Experience (Himex) plus a large team by Seven Summits Treks<\/a>, there was plenty of manpower to use a siege approach on the mountain. However, Himex\u00a0choose the \u010cesen Route aka Basque Route and to acclimatize on the lower camps of Broad Peak while the other choose\u00a0the more standard Abruzzi Spur on K2 thus splitting the force.<\/p>\n

The teamwork of Nepali Sherpas and Pakistani HAPs worked hard early to break through deep, soft snow to fix lines to Camp 3 on both routes. Climbers went on one acclimatization rotation reaching Camp 2 on the Abruzzi and C3 on the \u010cesen.<\/p>\n

Then a very strong and experienced team lead by Mike Horn<\/a> took the risk during a tiny weather window but\u00a0turned back just\u00a0above Camp 3 on the\u00a0 \u010cesen\u00a0returning with the verdict that K2 was “unclimbable” this year – soft snow, exposed rock, avalanche and extreme rock fall – everything K2 is known for.<\/p>\n

The next setback was a huge series of slab avalanches off K2’s flanks that shook up \u00a0the base camp community and buried most of the climbing\u00a0gear\u00a0of Seven\u00a0Summits Treks. They dug for days and recovered most of\u00a0the gear from under 15 feet of hard packed snow at Advanced Base Camp at the foot of the Abruzzi.<\/p>\n

Five Sherpas moving up that same day reported the snow had slid off and down to the glacial ice. A large falling rock hit my longtime Sherpa climbing partner, Kami Sherpa, dislocating his shoulder and breaking his left arm and hand. A heroic effort got him back to K2 Base Camp then evacuated by helicopter to Skardu where he underwent surgery.<\/p>\n

For Kami this comes on top of losing his home in Pangboche from the earthquakes in Nepal. I set up a fund<\/a>\u00a0to raise money to help Kami\u00a0and his family with ongoing medical expenses and to rebuild his home. Please contribute if this speaks\u00a0speaks to you. Thank you sincerely.<\/p>\n

With all this, Himex\u00a0and Madison Mountaineering said enough and ended their K2 climb, Seven Summits Treks soon followed suit. But this is a familiar situation for K2 in that since\u00a02009 there have been only two years with successful summits from the Pakistan side of the mountain: 2012 and\u00a02014. In 2011,\u00a0Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner<\/a>\u00a0lead a small\u00a0team to summit\u00a0from the Chinese side.<\/p>\n

Russell Brice summarized the conditions on both Broad Peak and K2 as follows:<\/p>\n

I dare say that I need to explain why we elected to continue to climb on Broad Peak even after we had decided to cancel climbing on K2. These mountains and the routes that we were attempting are completely different. The \u010cesen route is very steep and is mainly a rock climb but with snow covering. The upper part of the route does move onto a glacier where we were expecting deep unconsolidated snow. But as the temperatures have been so high the snow has almost disappeared on the lower part of the route thus exposing green ice with water running down it, and there was also much rock fall.<\/p>\n

As opposed to Broad Peak, which is a much less steep route and is mainly on snow slopes. The most dangerous part of this route is from Crampon Point to C1 where the avalanche came down earlier killing one person and injuring several others. Now that this slope is denuded of snow there is also green ice but also a lot of small rock fall, however contained in various shoots that dissect the snow slopes. Once above this, the route is relatively safe, however because of the low angled snow slopes, the snow is very deep and unconsolidated, so it is actually like climbing through a bowl of icing sugar, but only thigh deep. Doesn\u2019t taste so good either !! Obviously this also has the potential to slide off as well, especially once a trail has been cut through it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, my wishes to\u00a0the remaining team on GI for a safe attempt, but\u00a0the odds are against them.<\/p>\n

High Temperatures: High Risk<\/h3>\n

2015\u00a0has been a difficult year on the world’s highest mountains. There have\u00a0been deaths from Everest\u00a0to Mont Blanc to Broad Peak and more. While death is part of climbing at these rarefied altitudes, something was drastically different this year, and I don’t mean earthquakes.<\/p>\n

The ambient temperature at 6000, 7000 and 8000 meters was higher than in previous years. The snowpack was like soft ice cream and the rocks fell like rain. The “normal” routes became death traps. Team were unprepared to scout out alternatives and yielded to the inevitable choice of life over summits.<\/p>\n

What the autumn season will reveal back in Nepal after the earthquakes is up to anyone’s guess. The normal routes will surely be different as a result of two earthquakes back to back that were well over 7 in magnitude. Personally I would not go first and would wait another year for the earth to settle.<\/p>\n

But it could be more of\u00a0the same as climbers flock to Peru, Argentina in South America. The question will be if the high temperatures will wreak \u00a0the same havoc on those high mountains in the second half of 2015<\/p>\n

But adversity often brings opportunity. Perhaps we have a new era of exploration that will bring back adventure to the commercialized world of high altitude mountaineering – finding new routes on our most beloved mountains.<\/p>\n

Climb On!<\/p>\n

Alan<\/p>\n

Memories are Everything<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The summer of 2015 will go down as one of the more difficult seasons in the Northern Pakistan Karakoram\u00a0climbing season. There have\u00a0been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"2015 has been a difficult year on the world's highest mountains. There have been deaths from Everest to Mont Blanc to Broad Peak and more. While death is part of climbing at these rarefied altitudes, something was drastically different this year, and I don't mean earthquakes.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[422,423],"tags":[425],"class_list":["post-21424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-k2","category-k2-2015-coverage","tag-k2-2015-coverage"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424","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=21424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}