Pakistani mountaineers conquer K2 for the first time as a team

[Counter-Errorist]

BBC News - First Pakistan team of climbers scale K2 summit

A team of Pakistani climbers has reached the top of the world's second tallest mountain, the K2, the first since Italians scaled it 60 years ago.

The climbers reached the summit at 02:30 (22:30 GMT on Friday).

Correspondents, however, say descending from the top is more dangerous.

K2 lies near Pakistan's northern border with China. It is regarded by mountaineers as more challenging to conquer than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak.

Six Pakistanis - Hassan Jan, Ali Durani, Rahmat Ullah Baig, Ghulam Mehdi, Ali and Muhammad Sadiq - form part of the country's fist successful team to reach K2's summit. Three Italians are also part of the group.

Individual Pakistan climbers have reached the top before - but this is Pakistan's first successful team attempt.

The BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Islamabad says many have died returning to the base camp in the past as the descent is trickier.

In June, the Italian organisation supporting the Pakistani effortannounced it had installed a weather station feeding data to the climbers and researchers monitoring activity in high mountain regions.

Three Italians - Achille Compagnoni, Lino Lacedelli and Ardito Desio, reached the top on 31 July 1954.

 

[W.11]

thats pathetic, first time? ever?

 

[Progressive1]

thats pathetic, first time? ever?

do you even know what ascending K2 means in mountaineering? and if you read properly it is first team attempt individually it has been done before.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Great achievement , congradulations to the brave Pakistani adventurers for achiveing this wonderful goal

 

[Progressive1]

As expected all from Gilgit Baltistan,they are very peaceful but when it comes to bravery second to none in Pakistan.

 

[Koovie]

Congrats

But why did nobody climb it for 60 years despite being the 2end highest point on earth?

 

[Pakistanisage]

Better late than never....

 

[dil_dil]

Congrats

But why did nobody climb it for 60 years despite being the 2end highest point on earth?

Climbing mountains was western thing, now being picked up by brownies.

 

[W.11]

do you even know what ascending K2 means in mountaineering? and if you read properly it is first team attempt individually it has been done before.

ohh okay, i didn't read the next part

 

[Progressive1]

Congrats

But why did nobody climb it for 60 years despite being the 2end highest point on earth?

K2 has just 246 summit ascents and highest fatality rate, as mentioned in article it is first Pakistani team effort,individuals have done it before . K2 is compeletely different ball game from mount Everest from wilderness, extreme climate to technicalities while mount Everst in now almost commercial.

 

[Secur]

But why did nobody climb it for 60 years despite being the 2end highest point on earth?

Not many people, I believe, have a death wish. Its the killer mountain for a reason.

 

[waz]

K2 is one the three most dangerous mountain to climb in the world! Far more hazardous then Everest.



The world's most dangerous mountains - Telegraph



#4. K2, border of Pakistan and China (28,251 ft.)
The second highest mountain in the world, this peak has a nasty reputation, especially when it comes to female climbers. The first woman to reach the summit was the legendary Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz, who got to the top in June 1986. Over the next 18 years all five female climbers who summited this peak were killed. Three died during the descent down K2, two others on nearby mountains. Rutkiewicz also perished close by, on Kangchenjunga in 1992. The curse was finally broken in 2004 by Edurne Pasaban, a 31-year-old Spanish mountaineer, who remains alive to this day.


K2 kills one climber for every four who summit. Conquering the "holy grail of mountaineering" means dealing with steeper, icier slopes and less predictable weather than on Everest. Some 280 people have summited K2 since 1954, when it was first conquered. Dozens of deaths have been recorded since 1939, most of which occurred during the descent. While the overall death toll is reportedly less than Everest's, the proportion of those killed to the number of people who have attempted climbing K2 is significantly higher. The death rate recorded since the 1990s sits just below Kangchenjunga's at 19.7 percent.

K2, the world’s second highest mountain, is easily one of the cruellest of the killer peaks.

For every four people to reach the 28,251ft summit, which marks the border between Pakistan and China, one has died trying.

Everest anniversary: World's five deadliest mountains - Yahoo News UK

 

[Side-Winder]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=832010273516346

 

[Armstrong]

So @Icarus - Do you think you have what it takes to scale the mountain ?

I was thinking of taking one of those K2 Base Camp tours though I think that they'd be very expensive & very taxing on my body !

 

[Icarus]

So @Icarus - Do you think you have what it takes to scale the mountain ?

I was thinking of taking one of those K2 Base Camp tours though I think that they'd be very expensive & very taxing on my body !

Scale a mountain, no.
Scale a mountain of paperwork, yes.