Surveyors’ “K2” became the mountaineers’ savage king
K2—Mount Godwin-Austen—rises 8,611 metres, Earth’s second summit after Everest’s 8,849. Straddling Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan and China’s Taxkorgan in the Karakoram, it earned the nickname “Savage Mountain” after American climber George Bell said in 1953 that it “tries to kill you,” and for decades it lived up to that grim reputation.
Thomas Montgomerie of the Great Trigonometrical Survey sketched the Karakoram from Mount Haramukh, roughly 210 kilometres south, in 1856 and tagged its two most prominent peaks K1 and K2. K1 turned out to be Masherbrum, but K2 had no known local name, perhaps because it is barely visible from any village. Mount Godwin-Austen, honouring an early explorer, was rejected by the Royal Geographical Society, and Chogori, big mountain in Balti, may have been coined by outsiders, though it underlies the official Chinese name Qogir. Mathematician André Weil named K3 surfaces partly with the peak in mind.
Its sides are relentlessly steep: the north face climbs over 3,200 metres above the Qogir Glacier within 3,000 metres of horizontal distance. A faulty 1986 survey briefly claimed it beat Everest, a 2014 satellite measurement gave 8,609.02 metres, and the rock is K2 Gneiss, a Cretaceous granite 115 to 120 million years old that was buried, cooked and later thrust upward.
Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley led the first serious attempt in 1902, reaching 6,525 metres during 68 days on the mountain, only eight of them clear. In 1909 the Duke of the Abruzzi pioneered the spur now named for him, then declared K2 unclimbable. Charles Houston’s 1938 team neared 8,000 metres, and Fritz Wiessner’s 1939 expedition came within 200 metres before Dudley Wolfe and three Sherpas vanished. Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni finally stood on top in 1954 with Ardito Desio’s Italian team.
Until 2021, about one climber died for every four who summited, and by August 2023 some 800 had succeeded against 96 deaths. Reinhold Messner called it the mountain of mountains. In January 2021 Nepalese climbers under Nirmal Purja and Mingma Gyalje Sherpa made the first winter ascent, the last eight-thousander to fall in winter, yet the unstable east face has never been climbed.
Source: K2
