K2 facts

Jet stream streaks across the summit of K2, the word's most dangeros mountain.

(Picture by courtesy of Doug Scott)

K2 is the second highest mountain in the world. The name is the notation that surveyor T.G. Montgomery gave the peak in 1856. K stands for Karakoram, and 2 means it was the second peak of 35 that Montgomery listed in the Karakoram Range in the western Himalayas. The locals call it Chogori, which means Great Mountain. But K2 is so widely known that the local Balti porters call it Ketu.

Considered by many mountaineers to be the ultimate climb, it stands at 8,611m above the Concordia glacial field at the head of the Baltoro Glacier, on the border of China and Pakistan. Its steep ridges leading up the sheer slope of its pyramid peak of ice and rock were long considered unclimbable.  Attempts in 1902, 1909, 1934, 1938, 1939 and 1953 all failed.  The first successful ascent, in 1954, by an Italian team, had an armada of 500 porters, six scientists and 11 climbers. Eventually two climbers reached the top.

As of 2002, 196 climbers summitted K2 198 times (two of them doing it twice). Of these, 129 did it without oxygen. In all, 52 mountineers died on K2, 22 of them perishing during descent after having summitted. That means, more than one in 10 K2 summitters died. It is an infamous fact that K2 has the highest percentage of fatalities of summitters during descent on all mountains.