Photo: K2 (Chogori, Godwin Austen) - the second-highest mountain on Earth

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth. It is located in the Karakoram segment of the Himalayan range, in Pakistan and China, on the border between the Gilgit-Baltistan region in the Pakistan administered Northern Areas, and the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang, China.

The Chinese authorities officially refer to K2 as Qogir; Chinese: 乔戈里峰, Pinyin: Qiáogēlǐ Fēng; other names include Mount Godwin-Austen, Lambha Pahar ("Tall Mountain" in Urdu), Dapsang, Kechu, and Chogori, which means "The King of the Mountains."

The mountain was first surveyed by a European survey team in 1856 headed by Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen. Thomas Montgomerie was the member of the team who designated it "K2" for being the second peak of the Karakoram range. The other peaks were originally named K1, K3, K4 and K5, but were eventually renamed Masherbrum, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and Gasherbrum I respectively.

The first serious attempt to climb K2 was organized and undertaken in 1902 by Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley, but after five serious and costly attempts, no member of the team actually reached the summit, possibly due to a combination of questionable physical training, personality conflicts, and poor weather conditions — of 68 days spent on K2 (the then-record for longest time spent at such an altitude) only eight provided clear weather.

Subsequent attempts to climb the mountain in 1909, 1934, 1938, 1939 and 1953 also ended in failure. The 1909 expedition, led by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi, reached an elevation of 6,666 m on what is now known as the Abruzzi Spur (or Abruzzi Ridge). This is considered part of the standard route today; see the route section below.

An Italian expedition finally succeeded in ascending to the summit of K2 on July 31, 1954. The expedition was led by Ardito Desio, although the two climbers who actually reached the top were Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. The team included a Pakistani member, Colonel Muhammad Ata-ullah. He had been a part of an earlier 1953 American expedition which failed to make the summit because of a storm which killed a key climber, Art Gilkey.

In 1977, 23 years after the Italian expedition, Ichiro Yoshizawa led the second successful ascent to the top. The Japanese expedition ascended through the Abruzzi Spur route traced by the Italians, and used more than 1,500 porters to achieve the goal.

The year 1978 saw the third ascent of K2, via a new route, the long, corniced East Ridge. (The top of the route traversed left across the East Face to avoid a vertical headwall and joined the uppermost part of the Abruzzi route.) This ascent was made by an American team, led by noted mountaineer James Whittaker; the summit party were Louis Reichardt, James Wickwire, John Roskelley, and Rick Ridgeway. Wickwire endured an overnight bivouac about 150 m below the summit, the highest that anyone had spent a night up to that date. This ascent was emotional for the American team, as they saw themselves as completing a task that had been begun by the 1938 team forty years earlier.

Another notable Japanese ascent was that of the difficult North Ridge (see route information below), on the Chinese side of the peak, in 1982. A team from the Mountaineering Association of Japan led by Isao Shinkai and Masatsugo Konishi put three members, Naoe Sakashita, Hiroshi Yoshino, and Yukihiro Yanagisawa, on the summit on August 14. However Yanagisawa fell and died on the descent. Four other members of the team achieved the summit the next day.

The peak has now been climbed by almost all of its ridges. Although the summit of Everest is at a higher altitude, K2 is considered a more difficult climb, due in part to its terrible weather and comparatively greater height above surrounding terrain. The mountain is believed by many to be the world's most difficult and dangerous climb, hence its nickname "the Savage Mountain." As of August 2004, only 246 people have completed the ascent, compared with 2,238 individuals who have ascended the more popular target of Everest. At least 56 people have died attempting the climb; 13 climbers from several expeditions died in 1986 in the K2 Tragedy during a severe storm.

Legend once had it that K2 carried a "curse on women." The first woman to reach the summit was Wanda Rutkiewicz, of Poland, in 1986. The next five women to reach the summit are all deceased — three of them died on the way down. Rutkiewicz herself died on Kangchenjunga in 1992. However, the "curse" was broken in 2004 when Edurne Pasaban summitted and descended successfully, and again in 2006 when Nives Meroi of Italy and Yuka Komatsu of Japan became, respectively, the seventh and eighth women to summit K2, both descending successfully.

For most of its climbing history, K2 was not usually climbed with bottled oxygen, and small, relatively lightweight teams were the norm. However the 2004 season saw a great increase in the use of oxygen: 28 of 47 summitters used oxygen in that year.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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Photo: The North Face of K2