The climbers who summited K2 yesterday are now carefully descending the mountain.
As the trackers of several climbers indicate, each team is following a different pace. The Imagine Nepal and Alpinist Climber Expeditions’ teams have been slowly heading for Camp 2. There, they will likely rest before packing up and continuing to Base Camp during the coldest hours tonight.
No-O2 climbers
Prakash Sherpa has updated the list of his team’s summits. His Alpinist Climber Expeditions group summited at 5:35 pm, about two hours after the first team. Two of his members, Kahshin Leow of Singapore and Lenka Polackova of Slovakia, climbed without bottled oxygen. Polackova climbed with her husband, Jan Polacek. A strong Nepali team supported them, including leader Prakash Sherpa, plus Sonam Chhiring Sherpa, Sona Chhiri Sherpa, Pasang Nuru Sherpa, Lhakpa Wangchu Sherpa, and Chhiring Sherpa.
They returned safely to Camp 3 for the night. Today, they are proceeding down at least to Camp 2.
Instagram story by Prakash Sherpa.
All the no-oxygen climbs this year were done by full-board commercial climbers with Sherpa support, not by independent climbers — whom leader Mingma G recently described as “rope parasites” — with hired logistics only to Base Camp.
Another no-O2 climber, Sohail Sakhi of Pakistan, was one of the rope-fixing team. Earlier this season, he summited Nanga Parbat on his own and again without oxygen.
Sohail Sakhi from Hunza also summited Nanga Parbat without oxygen or porters in early July. Photo: Instagram
First climbers back
Charles Page went ahead and descended with his guide all the way to Base Camp, according to his tracker. Vinayak Malla of Elite Exped likely guided Page.
The other Elite Exped summiters were Kirsty Joan Mack, Phuri Kitar Sherpa, and Nima Sherpa.
Mashabrum Expeditions reports that Siddhi Bahadur Tamang of Nepal, who is working in Pakistan with Madison Mountaineering, summited as part of the rope-fixing team. This is Tamang’s seventh time on the summit of K2 — a record. Mingma David Sherpa had hoped to break it this year, but in the end, he called his attempt off and went home.
An unusual year
This has been an unusual year on K2. Over half the climbers eventually left the mountain because they lost patience with the bad conditions or ran out of time. Yesterday’s off-season summits were the only ones on K2 this year. Preliminary reports suggest that 36 climbers topped out yesterday, August 11.
K2 at night. Photo: Seven Summit Treks
