One of the world most famous beautiful mountain is K2 known as the King of Mountains. It has been ranked on first position by climbing difficulty while second most hardest with fatal ratio. In local Balti( Tibetan) language, K2 is called as ‘Chogo Ree’ which mean a Big Mountain. It is located on the border of China Tashkurqan of Xinjiang provice and Baltistan territory of Pakistan. It is Challenging and demanding but equally rewarding, delightful and remarkable as well. Skardu, the bewitching capital of Baltistan region, is the starting point for mighty K-2 by crossing a beautiful lush green fertile and fruit laden Shigar valley and drive as far as Askoli, the last inhabitant before falling into the throne of mountains. Walking on the unpredictable but charismatic and enchanting Baltoro Glacier, we glimpse several famous and beautiful mountains on the way towards K2.
Baltoro glacier is the richest in having the most above 7000m high mountains in the world on this particular Karakorum range with 19 above 7600m high peaks including the 4 giants of Karakorum K2, Broad peak ,Gashabrum I and Gashabrum II. Climbers call it a ‘Savage Mountain’ because of its climbing difficulty. The real adventure challengers with the experience of climbing the savage mountains can have a courage to make a new history.
The standard and most used rout for climbing K2 is the Abruzzi route(Southeast ridge) which was used by the Italian group on 31st July 1954 while climbing K2 for the First time in history. The group was headed by Ardito Desio and the two climbers who reached the top were Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. The K2 advanced Base Camp lies at the altitude of 5,450m . The route follows an alternating series of ice fields, rock ribs, snow slopes and some technical rock climbing on two famous features, “House’s Chimney” and the “Black Pyramid”.
Above the Black Pyramid, dangerously exposed and difficult to navigate slopes lead to the easily visible “Shoulder”. The last major obstacle is a narrow couloir known as the “Bottleneck”, which places climbers dangerously close to hanging seracs. It was partly due to the collapse of one of these seracs around 2001 that no climber’s summitted the peak in 2002 and 2003 and most of the eleven people lost their lives due to the breaking of huge ice blocks from this cliff and often on their way down.
Overview
| Duration: | 55 days | Altitude: | 8611m |
| Range: | Karakorum | ||
| Camp nights: | 45-50 | Hotels nights: | 6-8 |
| Grade: | Extremely hard | Best Period: | Mid June to end of August |