Sorry for the delay but it has taken a few days to recover from the summit push and reflect enough to write this post. It is pretty long but I wanted to have the account for myself as well as to go through the process.
It was only last Saturday, 20 July that I was standing at 8,000 meters on the shoulder of K2, having slept at Camp 4 and completed the entirety of the technical and steep 'Cesen route' on the mountain's south face. I spent an extraordinary 18 hours essentially alone at 8,000 meters and, along with sherpa Ming Dorje, I was the highest person on the planet during that time.
I was ready, strong, had plenty of energy in the tank and was only a few hundred meters below the summit in a perfect weather window. But I didn’t summit K2.
After a month of increasing optimism that we would reach the top, it turned out that K2 had been hiding a nasty surprise just below its summit slopes, and it felt as if the mountain had been taunting us until right at the end. Around 90% of the climbers on the mountain and all major expeditions bar one left for home, declaring the summit pyramid too dangerous to climb this year due to 2 meter deep unstable snow in the Bottleneck and Traverse and the extremely high risk of a slab avalanche right onto our pathway.
While up at 8,000 meters uniquely I had the time to reflect on the views, the history and the sheer beauty of the place in total peace. There was just a single lone tent, no voices, no clanging of equipment and frantic preparations for a summit attempt, no other climbers, not even any footsteps as it had snowed as I came up from Camp 3 the previous day. Just the high mountains as perhaps they felt 40 years ago, free of any other people. I will never forget that time spent up high on K2, and I feel sure it will never be repeated in that way.
But to review to how I got there, and why I got no further...
16 July/17 July
As planned we climbed back up to Camp 2 on 16 July. This time I made the climb in 6 hours versus the 7.5hrs it took me last time. This was quick and I only stopped once to rest and hydrate. My body had acclimatised well.
Rather than move up to Camp 3 the next day we held as there were reports of delays up high, so we decided to stay at the lower altitude of Camp 2 and move our summit day from 19 to 20 July. Not realising that anything was wrong, I focused on the fact that I was getting a rest day and went to sleep happy.
By the end of 17 July expedition leader Garrett came by the front of my tent and confirmed that the 20 July was now looking like a better weather day anyway – lower winds, no precipitation, clear skies, and our original summit date of 19 July would now see some snowfall. Given other teams were all higher, they’d have to go for the summit or descend before that, so we’d have the summit day to ourselves.
Something that had seemed so preposterous at the end of May when I decided to join the expedition seemed about to materialise. I went to sleep feeling sure that barring accident or a sharp turn in the weather, I would summit K2 on my first attempt. How crazy was that?
18 July
But by the next day, everything had changed.
We climbed to Camp 3 at 7,000 meters but all day bad news from above kept filtering in. “The rope fixing teams failed again yesterday. Two sherpas were caught in two separate avalanches and swept 50 meters down the Bottleneck, one had broken his arm and was both were lucky to be alive…”. Pause. Then “…the snow is not only deep but completely unconsolidated and the consequences if the slope avalanched with us on it or beneath it could be catastrophic”.
I stood in total silence, knowing exactly what this meant. Then, “All teams are descending to Base Camp as its too dangerous. Just to make sure the reports are right, some of our team will go up from Camp 3 to Camp 4 today to take a look at the snow situation at the Bottleneck for themselves. The plan is that we’ll continue the move up to Camp 3 today to be in position in case they take a different view”.
At 6pm Garrett’s head appeared at the opening of our tent at Camp 3 and I could immediately tell from his expression the summit was out. He explained that four of our guys had gone up to verify the snow reports and they were true.
In the crucial Bottleneck and Traverse sections above Camp 4 – they only way to the final summit slopes – they had found 2 meter deep ‘sugary snow’. Usually there is hard ice there, which is difficult to climb but allows you to put in ice screws and attach rope, as it is an 80 degree pitch, then you can front-point with your crampons across. Instead there was a plastering of unconsolidated and extremely deep snow – no rock for pitons, ice so far buried underneath that protection could not be placed in it, and the last resort – snow stakes – were just pulling straight out as the snow was too soft. It didn’t help when Garrett said that these conditions were so unusual that no one up there had ever seen them on this part of K2. “It’s always hard ice up there on those sections”. Lucky us…after a month of almost perfect build up we’d run into a brick wall.
Essentially he explained that it was a potential death trap. Even if various people could take turns to break trail through snow that deep, there wasn’t anything to safely secure ropes to while it was in that condition. And given the Bottleneck was at a 65-70 degree angle and the Traverse at between 80-90 degrees (i.e. vertical in places), you cannot climb it without ropes.
Then of course on top of the danger of falling off, the slope above the Traverse was loaded with snow and ready to avalanche. And if it did, everyone on it or below it would be swept away to their deaths.
To be safe the loaded slope would have to collapse (i.e. avalanche naturally) and shed all the unconsolidated snow, revealing the ice underneath. But when would that happen? A day, a week, next season? Garrett explained that the snow had probably been sitting there since winter and it would probably take more snow to dump on it before the slope would give way, which meant bad weather was required. To wait until that happened – and it was still a big 'if' – and we would be into the August Monsoon season and it would be too late.
Nonetheless, he recommended that we go down, preserve energy and then he’d have some of the Sherpas come up and see if the situation with the snow had changed in a few days, in which case we’d come up for another attempt. We could not stay where we were as we didn’t have enough food and in any case, we were at 7,000 meters. I asked Garrett honestly how likely the situation was to change, and he said basically extremely slim.
That was it, the summit attempt effectively over.
Two of my teammates and I lay in our tents, all grown men, all in silence, all devastated. We must have sat there for a couple of hours without exchanging a word. Eventually I called Alix, took a sleeping pill, and fell asleep at over 7,000 meters.
19 July
We were woken at 6am in the middle of a snowstorm. The snowfall predicted for 19 July had come early and it had been falling all night, laying 30-40cm of new snow. All the tracks to Camp 4 would be filled in.
Everyone had decided to go down to Base Camp, rest and hope that the snow at the Bottleneck above might avalanche over the next few days so they could come up again and try it when it was safe.
But given Garrett’s assessment of how likely that was the previous evening, I decided to go up not down.
I wanted to climb up to 8,000 meters to Camp 4, not to try for the summit (I knew that was out of the question) but just to be up high on the historic Shoulder of K2, look over into China, and most importantly, to complete the Cesen route. I was determined my expedition was not going to end with a retreat from Camp 3.
We had switched from the ‘normal’ Abruzzi route to the Cesen at the beginning of July and it had proven to be one of the steepest, most beautiful and elegant climbing lines I’d ever seen, let alone been on. As someone who learnt to climb in the Alps, summits aren’t everything and you can complete a route without going to the top. I wanted to finish the Cesen as it merged with the Abruzzi at the Shoulder and was technically over at Camp 4.
I explained my position.
“We don’t recommend that as it is blowing a gale now, it’s snowing and all the tracks to Camp 4 will be filled in with the fresh snow, making a very long day even harder”. I asked whether if the ‘sugar snow’ in the Bottleneck hadn’t been there we’d have been heading up for a summit attempt the following day, even in these conditions. “Well, yes”. ‘OK well if it’s not to dangerous to go up, I’d like to go up’.
Consternation and confused looks. Garrett came over and checked why I wanted to go and asked was I sure. I explained my determination to finish the route, even alone.
Then after about 15 minutes of deliberations out of earshot it was agreed and arranged. The rest of the team would all descend to Base Camp, and I would go up to Camp 4 to spend the night on the Shoulder of K2 at 8,000 meters, accompanied by Sherpa Ming Dorje who was also keen to do as much of the mountain as he could.
I knew why there was concern – going up in a storm, the extra snow, why split the group, and the climb to Camp 4 is easily the longest day on the mountain with 1,000 meters of vertical height gain right into the ‘Death Zone’.
But perhaps more importantly, all the other expeditions on the mountain had already gone back to Base Camp - we were the last up and the last to go down. So I’d be up at 8,000 meters without team support and perhaps a two-day climb for anyone to reach me if I got into trouble and Ming Dorje couldn’t help.
After everyone else headed down we left at 8.30am and immediately hit an extremely steep slope, topped with an awkward rock scramble over verglas ice to the anchor. I felt the altitude but was also filled with renewed determination. We climbed into the teeth of the worsening storm and it was the steepest climbing on the mountain yet - did this thing ever let up?
The only people we saw all day were our team’s sherpas who were descending to Base Camp having checked the conditions above Camp 4 the previous day.
They all looked quizzically at me and were carrying tents and oxygen bottles, essentially stripping the mountain of our team’s equipment. “Have you left a tent at Camp 4 for us?” I asked one of them who stopped to switch ropes at an anchor. “Yes, one” was his reply and he moved quickly down the mountain. It was now the only shelter left on the Cesen.
Eventually I saw patches of blue in the sky and the weather began to clear, while K2’s summit pyramid emerged from the clouds above my left shoulder, the infamous serac looking huge and menacing. At 3.30pm we crested the ridge and walked onto the Shoulder of K2. There was Camp 4, or rather, a single tent with all the signs of where the others others had been buried by the new snow. It was bleak, barren and staggeringly beautiful.
The Shoulder of K2 is a special place. For someone like me who has been reading about K2 since I was a child it has been the scene of so much drama. It is where Dudley Wolfe was abandoned in 1939. It was where Compagnoni and Lacedelli, the first people to climb K2 in 1954, left Walter Bonatti and his porter Mahdi out in the cold, a controversy that would run through the Italian courts for 50 years. It was where the 1986 and 2008 disasters played out, with 13 and 11 deaths respectively. This was where 99% of the summit attempts on K2 were launched from. Up on the Shoulder I was suddenly higher than anything around me, apart from K2’s summit pyramid, the ‘mountain on a mountain’. I looked up at the Bottleneck, just a few hundred meters away and it looked ponderous, plastered with snow.
I felt essentially alone. While Ming Dorje busied himself in the tent I sat outside and just took it all in. I wasn’t using supplementary oxygen and felt completely fine.
It then hit me that it’s an exceptionally rare if not unique experience to be alone so high on an 8,000 meter peak like that. Due to the odd set of circumstances, literally everyone else on the mountain on both routes was now in Base Camp, including my entire team, now over 3,000 meters below. Normally if you’re alone up high you’re probably in big trouble and hardly taking in the view. If on the other hand the weather is good there will be at least 20-30 people there, multiple tents, lots of activity, everyone getting ready for a summit push that evening. On Everest it would be 5 times as many people, oxygen bottles clanging, noise, and so on.
You are never at 8,000 meters alone and with a chance to just sit and appreciate the beauty of where you are as you are either frantically getting ready for a summit attempt or recovering from one and trying to lose altitude as quickly as possible before you die.
Instead I was just calmly passing time as the sun set before going to bed, in perfect weather, no wind, stunning views, and alone. The mountain looked perfect, normal, and the views breathtaking. I could see for hundreds of miles and could see the curve of the earth, not as clearly as when I was on the summit of Everest but enough to give flat-earthers pause. We had left the world of the modern commercial expedition behind.
I took out a picture of Alix and Lelio as the sun was setting and our fingers were freezing:
It was magical. And totally unexpected. There is only one camp in the world higher than the Cesen Camp 4 on K2 and that is the high camp on the North Side of Everest. There would be no one there now given the Monsoon in Nepal and there was no one on the summit of Nanga Parbat ether.
So that meant that from the moment I arrived in Camp 4 to when we left perhaps 18 hours later Ming Dorje and I were almost certainly the highest humans on the planet.
Not only did we have the Shoulder at 8,000 meters to ourselves, but also we were alone on the entire mountain. After the sun set we shared a dinner of ramen noodles and spoke about our families – Ming Dorje is married and has a 5 year old son, Tashi, and we exchanged pictures of our boys. Alone 500 meters from the top of K2, it felt like experiencing the mountain 40 years ago.
20 July
I slept soundly and the next morning was even clearer and the view out of the tent was stunning.
I’ll admit that I did look up at the summit wistfully, a view I had studied in pictures and videos thousands of times. It was SO close and I had the energy to make it up there in hours. But the snow conditions meant it was just not passable and the chance of being swept away in an avalanche was just too high. And that was that.
We took more pictures and I went over to the ridge which marked the China-Pakistan border and sat astride it. The Shoulder being relatively flat this was the only time we could walk around without being tied on to the fixed ropes and wearing crampons. I gazed far into China and saw a whole range of mountains that had been hidden for us all expedition. It was a beautiful morning – literally no wind, not a cloud in the sky, and not that cold.
It was also torture. It was 20 July, our planned summit day. Garrett had been right about the weather. During the 2016 expedition he had spent 50 days at K2 Base Camp and seen the mountain once, literally once. There were no summit attempts that year. Yet here I was on a summit day of such perfection there might only have ever been less than 10 like this with climbers up here. And instead I was packing and about to head down, not up.
Few people can have ever felt so strong and in such perfect weather up there, and yet be unable to climb to the summit.
I said my goodbyes to a place I may never see again, and dropped into a hand rappel down back down the Cesen towards ‘home’. Immediately the gradient was back to 55 degrees and the tension on the rope was almost constant. Rappel, keep the footwork tight, and make sure you clip into the correct rope at each anchor. Repeat over and over.
Some of the anchors were jumbles of old ropes with, somewhat inexplicably, three versions of the same colour rope, only one of which was new and secure. Clip into the wrong one, put your weight on it and it could snap. Focus hard, ‘safety not speed’ as Garrett had said over the radio that morning.
The reason that you don’t encounter so many bodies on K2 as on Everest is that K2 is so steep that if someone falls or dies they will inevitably fall down to the glacier 3,000 meters below. It is a sobering fact and I knew the descent is where most of the accidents happen.
On top of this we were planning to drop all the way from 8,000 meters above Camp 4 to Base Camp at 4,900 meters in a single day.
We reached Camp 3 in less than two hours and rested, and then onto Camp 2 where we changed out of our down suits as we were dripping with sweat. The mountain had changed in the five days I’d been away – snow had melted and large previously covered rocky sections had emerged which were very tricky to navigate while descending forwards in crampons and exhausted. Eventually went left the sunny ledge at Camp 2 and committed to getting to Base Camp (the tents at Camp 1 had been removed).
It was a long, long descent and by the time we reached the glacier it was 6pm. I looked at my leather guide gloves (designed for arm-rapping rope) and there were multiple holes burned through them from the friction. Once on the glacier we were safe, unclipped, and walked the hour back to Base Camp and into to the dining tent to join my fellow team members. My expedition was over.
Where is the line?
Or was it? Within a day there was talk about various individual members of larger disbanded expeditions talking about going up and coming together to form new ‘teams’ to give it another shot, to see if someone could unlock the issue of the deep snow in the Bottleneck. Then one of the teams reversed their decision and decided to go up again.
To be clear, by time I got back to Base Camp Garrett had already called off our expedition, writing that:
“This season we encountered deep and unstable snow just to the left of the ice cliff (Serac), above and below the ‘bottleneck’ and have decided to conclude our expedition. We believe that conditions will not change enough in the near future to stabilize this portion of the route, and allow climbing within our risk tolerance. We are now packing up our base camp and preparing for the 100 km trek out.
It would have been exhilarating to stand atop K2 a third time. However, as professionals our experience and training dictate that we not push into a zone we believe to be avalanche prone.”
But while Garrett’s expedition was over, I could have joined another pretty easily and for little cost. What if he had been wrong? What if he had been too cautious? What if he had called it too early?
Also, the ropes were fixed and I knew the route. Hell, I’d completed the route up and down to 8,000 meters! I was here, my gear was here, I was acclimatised, in shape, and free of any health issues. I had already been to 8,000 meters and the weather was looking good until the Monsoon was due to move in on 26 July. While over 90% of the climbers had called it a day and most had already left, what if they were missing a trick?
The answer was a firm no for me.
Many times I had been told I was a nutcase to go to K2 and take the risks I take, but I am a calculated risk taker, not an adrenaline junkie. I love the mountains and had dreamt of climbing K2 since I was small; I am not looking for danger.
For the entire time I’d been on the mountain I had felt safe – the route was in good condition, there was little rock fall and while incredibly steep, I had felt that the ropes were well anchored and the campsites pretty protected from avalanche. I hadn’t worried about dying once. As long as I didn’t screw up with my technical and rope work, I was convinced I’d be safe.
But this was different. The idea of going up above Camp 4 towards the Bottleneck without a major change in conditions felt wrong. All the warning lights were flashing red. Many of the world’s best climbers had already left, declaring it too dangerous.
Over the past few days I have had to watch as the one team that decided to go back up summited successfully, with around 10 climbers making the top, and many of them weaker climbers than me. To say I have had mixed emotions is an understatement.
But it doesn’t matter. Just because you take a great risk and get away with it, doesn’t make it a good idea. Heading towards an avalanche-loaded slope in the hope it doesn’t trigger when you’re under it or on it just isn’t for me. Even though I have dreamt about climbing up the Bottleneck, over the Traverse and onto the summit ridge of K2 for over 35 years, I wouldn’t have enjoyed any of those steps. How dumb to die when in an accident that was so entirely predictable?
I love life and my family too much and my son is two and a half.
It was amazing, challenging, and I got to experience something magical on my own on the Shoulder of K2 which I will never forget. It has upped my game when it comes to technical climbing at high altitude and re-affirmed my confidence that I am fine above 8,000 meters and don’t suffer the effects of high altitude as much as others.
As I close this (overly long) post I often think of where the line is and should be in all this.
Certainly climbing under a potentially loaded avalanche slope when you’ve been warned it could go any minute is too far, but at the same time I found myself replaying again and again a quote by Robert Browning that a good friend wrote to me before I left:
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp”
I will continue to look for that elusive line between those two driving forces in the things I love. And while I will take a few months to reflect, I think I may have around 611 meters of unfinished business left on K2.
What a story! What an adventure! I admire your courage, your strength and your wisdom in equal measure pal. I can't imagine how it must have felt when the other teams decided to go back up, and summited, after you thought you'd had the best of the mountain that year. Shit man, that was tough. But you are right in what you say. You have a family and you must measure risk accordingly. This shows your true measure and I admire you for it, more so than had you summited through recklessness. Well done mate, that took true courage. Much love and admiration, Bruce xx
What an utter hero 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼 Well done mate. Big love, A
Hi sweet Valerio, I have continued to follow your progress and posts "religiously" excuse the pun. Been absolutely enthralled with what you have been doing and what you have achieved. Well done! Your decision not to continue to the summit was the right one I am sure of it. Maybe when you show Leilo how to climb you can accompany him when he is old enough for a K2 experience himself. Having prayed for your safety I am really pleased you are Ok and in one piece. The pictures are great and you haven´t changed a bit. Give my love to Alix when you see her. Wishing you all the very best, God bless you all. Love, Patricia