It’s now or…another year. The remaining climbers on K2 are on the go toward the summit, hoping their patience will pay off.
The Sherpa and Pakistani climbers led the march to Camp 1 today, while some independent climbers may wait until tomorrow and then put in a big day to join the rest at Camp 2.
The Imagine Nepal team has reached Camp 1, and some members have continued to Camp 2. They plan to summit on August 10 or August 11, depending on conditions.
Checking risks by taking them
Mingma G himself will leave Base Camp with Sohail Sakhi of Pakistan for Camp 1 later today on a somewhat risky mission. They want to check the risk of rockfall, which always increases later in the day, to plan their group’s descent. Mingma G will then join his team to bag his sixth K2 summit. That would equal the record number of summits set by fellow Nepalese Mingma David Sherpa, who left the mountain some days ago.
Mingma David Sherpa of Elite Exped was guiding French influencer Charles Page, who has remained on the mountain and is heading up with a different guide — probably Vinayak Malla of Nepal, who also works for Elite Exped and has remained on the mountain. According to Page’s tracker, he reached Camp 1 at 6,000m today.
As Mingma G recently reported, conditions are still very dry until Camp 1, but the terrain improves significantly beyond that, with good snow conditions. At the time of posting this story, we have no information about the independent climbers, including Lenka Polackova of Slovakia, Israfil Ashurli of Azerbaijan, Serge Hardy of France, and Janice Rot of Chile.
Uncertainty ahead
If all goes well, the climbers will reach Camp 3 on Friday. From there, all is uncertain. There are no ropes, no Camp 4 — which might be fixed on Saturday — and no clue about the conditions on the upper sections, which include the Bottleneck at 8,400m and the hazardous traverse under the Great Serac, before the final steep snow slopes to the summit.
Route marked on the Bottleneck section. Photo: Team Ali Sadpara/X
