THE KILLER MOUNTAIN
The 2008 K2 disaster occurred on 1 August 2008, when eleven mountaineers from international expeditions died on K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth.Three others were seriously injured. It was the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering.
Climbing on K2 since the disaster:
The summit of K2 was not reached again until 23 August 2011, when Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (Austria, 14th eight-thousander), Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov (Kazakhstan, both 14th eight-thousander) and Darek Zaluski (Poland) topped out K2 via the North Pillar.There were no summits in 2009 and 2010, during which season renowned skier Fredrik Ericsson fell to his death in the bottleneck. According to AdventureStats, the last 17 fatalities on K2 have all occurred in, around or above the bottleneck, once again proving the deadly nature of K2's upper slopes.The Sherpas and Pakistani high-altitude porters (HAPs) started to prepare fixed lines upwards before midnight. They were joined by Spanish climber Alberto Zerain who had come up from camp III during the night and decided to continue his summit push rather than stay at camp IV. However, the most experienced HAP, Shaheen Baig (from the Serbian team), had to go back down with symptoms of high altitude sickness. His experience was missed and in the confusion, ropes may have been left behind or placed too far to the right side of the Bottleneck.
When the groups started upward at 3 a.m., the Sherpas and HAPs had prepared lines from the shoulder, where they were not needed, up into the Bottleneck (a steep couloir–a gully–leading to the summit slopes), and then had run out of rope for the traverse just above the bottleneck. This forced them to take rope from the lower portion of the route and use it to prepare the lines above the Bottleneck, causing an unplanned delay. At this point the American group decided to abort the attempt and return to the lower camp. It should be noted though, that traditionally, the Bottleneck and ensuing traverse were climbed without fixed ropes. It has been suggested[by whom?] that the climbers of the 2008 K2 summer season were perhaps depending too much on the fixed ropes.
At 8 a.m. people were advancing through the Bottleneck. Dren Mandić decided to attend to his oxygen system and so unclipped the rope to let other climbers pass. Mandić lost his balance and fell, bumping into Cecilie Skog. She was still clipped to the rope and was only knocked over. Mandić however, fell over 100 m down the bottleneck. Some climbers claimed that he was still moving after the fall. People in Camp IV saw the fall and sent a group to help recover his injured or dead body. Swede Fredrik Sträng stated he took command of the recovery operation.
When Sträng reached the body, Serbian climbers Predrag Zagorac and Iso Planic and their HAP Mohammed Hussein had already arrived. They had found no pulse and judging by the severity of his injuries, Mandić was pronounced dead. The Serbian climbers decided to lower the body down to camp IV and Sträng assisted them. They were joined by HAP Jehan Baig (from the French-led independent expedition). He had fulfilled his assisting duties and had been allowed to head down. Several people later indicated he may have been suffering from high altitude sickness, since he had displayed questionable behaviour in abseiling down the bottleneck. Sträng also noticed that he was incoherent, first offering to help in the rescue, later refusing to help, only to return moments later to assist them again. Jehan Baig lost his footing, bumping into Sträng who then urged him to let go of the rope attached to Mandić harness, before all four climbers would be dragged down. Baig finally let go of the rope, but to Sträng and the others' surprise, he did not try to stop his slide by using the self-arrest technique. Jehan Baig fell to his death. It is unclear why he did not try to stop his slide. Sträng decided to descend without the body of Mandić. The Serbian group wrapped the body of Mandić in a flag and fastened him to the mountain before aborting and starting to descend.
These delays, together with the traffic jam in the Bottleneck, resulted in most people reaching the summit much later than planned, some as late as 8 p.m. (the typical time for summiting being between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.). All together, 18 people summited that day. On the descent, the Spaniard Alberto Zerain, who had topped out first and alone at 3 p.m., managed to pass through the Bottleneck without trouble. But at 8:30 p.m. when the Norwegian group — including Lars Flatø Nessa and Cecilie Skog who reached the summit two hours later than Zerain — had almost negotiated the traverse leading to the Bottleneck, a serac (a large block of ice) broke off from the ice field above. As it fell, it cut all the fixed lines and took with it Rolf Bae (Cecilie Skog's husband), who had abandoned the attempt only 100 m below the summit and was descending at the front of the group. Lars and Cecilie continued descending without the fixed lines and managed to reach Camp IV during the night.
As a result of the serac fall, the climb in the Bottleneck became steeper and more technical. Chunks of ice lay scattered around the route, and the mountaineers above were stranded in the so-called death zone above 8000 meters.Since the climbers were counting on the fixed lines, they were not carrying additional ropes and fall protection devices, forcing the climbers to "free climb" the descent through the notorious Bottleneck. There were still multiple climbers above the Bottleneck, and according to Dutch mountaineer Wilco van Rooijen, panic broke out among them. Some tried to descend in the darkness, while others decided to bivouac and wait until morning before descending.
Pemba Gyalje descended in the darkness without fixed ropes and reached the Camp IV before midnight. Sherpa Chhiring Dorje also free-climbed the Bottleneck with "little" Pasang Lama (who had been stranded without an ice axe) secured to his harness. "I can just about imagine how you might pull it off," writes Ed Viesturs in K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain. "You kick each foot in solid, plant the axe, then tell the other guy to kick with his own feet and punch holds with his hands. Don't move until he's secure. Still, if Pasang had come off [i.e. 'fallen'], he probably would have taken Chhiring with him. Talk about selfless!"
Two members of the Korean expedition, Kim Jae-soo and Go Mi-Young, also managed to navigate the bottleneck in the dark, although the latter had to be helped by two Sherpas from the Korean B team, Chhiring Bhote and "Big" Pasang Bhote, who were supposed to summit the next morning. The men had climbed up around midnight with food and oxygen and found Go Mi-Young stranded somewhere in the Bottleneck, unsure of which route she had to take. They guided her down safely.
Meanwhile, Dutchman Cas van de Gevel and Frenchman Hugues D’Aubarede had also decided to manoeuvre the bottleneck in the dark. As he reached the bottom of the Bottleneck, Cas van de Gevel witnessed a climber falling to his death, a story corroborated by the two Sherpas Chhiring Bhote and "big" Pasang Bhote, who also had witnessed one or two objects falling from the mountain. This climber was likely Hugues D'Aubarede, whom van de Gevel had passed just above the Bottleneck in the dark on the way down. D'Aubarede had run out of bottled oxygen hours before, and when van de Gevel had passed him, he had looked tired and insisted van de Gevel descend before him.
Marco Confortola, Wilco van Rooijen and Gerard McDonnell bivouacked above the traverse, as they could not find the fixed ropes leading across the traverse. Confortola claimed that during the bivouac, he heard screams and saw headlights disappear below him after a roaring sound came from the serac field. At that point, 8 people were still above the Bottleneck, stranded in the death zone.
List of fatalities:
| Name | Nationality | Location of death | Cause of death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dren Mandić |  Serbia |
Below the Bottleneck | Fell during the ascent |
| Jehan Baig |  Pakistan |
Fell while trying to recover Dren Mandić's corpse | |
| Rolf Bae |  Norway |
Bottleneck | The first serac fall |
| Hugues D’Aubarede |  France |
Above the Bottleneck | Fell in descent during the night |
| Karim Meherban | Pakistan |
Either the second serac fall or the third serac fall. | |
| Gerard McDonnell† |  Ireland |
After helping the injured Koreans, he was hit by either the second or third serac fall. | |
| Kyeong-Hyo Park |  South Korea |
Above the Bottleneck | The fourth serac fall |
| Hyo-Gyeong Kim | South Korea |
||
| Dong-Jin Hwang | South Korea |
||
| Jumik Bhote |  Nepal |
||
| Pasang Bhote | Nepal |
||
|
| |||
