Main Info
Altitude: Min 600m – Max 8611m
Zone: Permitted
Duration: 60 days
Best Time: June – August
K-2 8611m is the most impressive, but difficult peak in the world. It is perhaps for this reason that the
locals called” Chogori” the king of mountains’. K2 has variously been described as the “awesome”, “killer”,
“savage” and “the mountain of mountains”. Its lower face is rocky up to 6,000 meters, beyond which it
becomes a vertical ocean of snow.
The peak has been climbed by over two three hundred climber through different routes. The first ascent
route is known as the standard route or Abruzzi Ridge and used for more than any other route, via the
Abruzzi Spur (Southeast Ridge). K2 was first attempted by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi in 1909 but
was first climbed by an Italian expedition on July 31, 1954. The expedition was led by Ardito Desio and the
two climbers who actually reached the top were Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. Also on the
expedition was the famous Italian climber Walter Bonatti and Pakistani Hunza porter Mahdi, who proved
vital to the expedition’s success in that they carried oxygen to (8,100 m) for Lacedelli and Compagnoni.
Their dramatic bivouac in the open at that altitude wrote another chapter in the saga of Himalayan
climbing. This spur begins at an altitude of 5,400 m, where Advanced Base Camp is usually placed. The
route follows an alternating series of rock ribs, snow slopes, ice fields, 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”
