To hope to plant their ice ax and their flag at an altitude of 8,611 m, these conquerors of the impossible will have to brave the violent winds of a hurricane over the next few days.
Survive abysmal temperatures and air shunned by oxygen.
Escape from avalanches, rock falls and other seracs.
So far, no biped, not even the yeti, has managed, in winter, to conquer K2, the second highest peak on the planet behind Everest.
Of the 14 peaks exceeding the mythical bar of 8000 m, "the mountain without mercy" as it is nicknamed, which stands on the Himalayan range, in Pakistan, on the border with China, is the last, in fact, to have never been climbed between December and February.
Since 1987, all winter climbing attempts have failed, sometimes taking the breath away from go-getters who imagined being sacred “pioneers” but who are, today, forever wrapped in a white shroud.
Four teams storming the summit
In winter, therefore, no one climbed beyond 7650 m.
Will this season finally be the right one?
In any case, there have never been so many contenders for the monumental feat.
We could well play elbows on the fixed ropes installed by the sherpas on the normal route, the Abruzzo spur.
Some 65 climbers of multiple nationalities, enrolled in four teams, are currently sharpening their crampons at base camp, at 5,135 m.
Polish mountaineer Magda Gorzkowska arrived at base camp on January 3.
Reuters
The more leggy took a head start last week during a first foray at 7000 m.
Before going back down to square one, just to acclimatize, slowly but surely, to the altitude.
“K2 in winter is
The place to be
.
It can bring glory and beauty to whoever succeeds, so it whets the appetites of performers ”, deciphers the Himalayan artist François Damilano, director of the (award-winning) documentary“ K2, a special day ”.
On the spot, only a handful of cadors are able to climb on the giant pyramid-shaped ridge.
Among them, the Nepalese Nirmal Purja, ex-soldier of the British special forces who chained in 2019 the fourteen "8000" at the speed of lightning, six months and six days.
And his compatriot Mingma Sherpa, also a collector of the highest pinnacles on the globe, including two K2 in… summer.
The two extraterrestrials have every intention of making history by offering their nation a winter first on an "8000" when, for four decades, it is almost always the Polish "ice warriors" who win the cup. .
Nepalese Nirmal Purja hopes to succeed in this first winter.
Facebook / @ NimsPurja
Serious applicants also include a Spaniard, an Icelandic, a Bulgarian, a Greek, a Chilean, a Dutch and a Swiss.
The native of the country, the Pakistani Muhammad Ali Sadpara, also has great arguments, he who was, in 2016, on his land, one of the heroes of the first victorious rope in winter of Nanga Parbat, culminating at 8126 m.
He is accompanied by his son Sajid, who became in 2019, at the age of 20, the earliest conqueror of K2 in summer.
“Papa” Muhammad Ali will be able to count on the precious advice of his guardian angel, the hexagonal legend of the peaks, Marc Batard, 69 years old, currently on his way to the K2 base camp.
“I'm going to motivate him to be careful, to encourage him to climb with oxygen.
Because the competition, this year, pushes to the taking of risks ”, advances the one who aims, in May 2022, for his 70 springs, to reconquer the Everest without oxygen.
But there, five months after a ruptured aneurysm, eager to regain an Olympic form, he should be content with the K2 base camp and therefore see from afar the summit with the silhouette so sharp.
Terrible weather conditions
But why then does the latter resist so much to human assaults in winter?
First, because the ultra-changeable weather conditions, which defy the best forecasters, are more hostile there than elsewhere in the first weeks of the year, with winds that can blow at 200 km / h.
"It is an isolated summit, in full draft, which takes the full force of depressions", sums up the high mountain guide François Damilano.
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Result: in this open-air freezer, the perceived temperature can rush down to - 65 ° C!
In winter, a period of low pressure, the amount of oxygen available is also even lower than in summer, which increases this feeling of polar cold.
Even at base camp, we shiver.
And to access it, it is already an obstacle course.
A one-week trek without a refuge.
“The approach walk is twice as hard as in summer, you may have to stir snow up to your stomach,” says Marc Batard.
For the moment, K2 could only be conquered in summer, when the weather makes the ascent less difficult. AFP / Amelie Herenstein
To the hell promised by the heavens, we must add unparalleled technical difficulties, rich in steep slopes exposed to the winds that prevent any emergency retreat.
"If, over there, nature decides to destroy you, there is nothing you can do," warns Shamyl Sharafat Ali, a Pakistani expatriate in France who advises the hexagonal ropes venturing on the peaks of his country.
“It's a pyramid with all the sides very steep.
There is very little space to set up a camp on the mountainside.
For the tent, you have to carve a platform in the ice.
There, we are not at the campsite!
», Says François Damilano.
No right to the slightest mistake
Out of the winter season, the K2, tamed for the first time in 1954 by an Italian team, was only climbed by 450 heroes against 10,000 for Everest, which would almost look like a healthy walk despite its 237 m more.
The mortality rate rose to 22% against 4% for the Toit du Monde, which had been trampled in winter in 1980. “At K2, you don't have a wild card.
A recall error, you fall and it's over, ”describes Franco-Swiss Sophie Lavaud, 52, who climbed it in July 2018.
Danger number 1 is called “Bottleneck”, translate “bottleneck”: at 8200 m, a very narrow corridor with a slope of 50-60 degrees, overhung by seracs which threaten to crack at any moment.
“When you're in front of him, don't think too much.
But there, hypoxia, the lack of oxygen supply, it helps not to think too much!
», Smiles the one who crossed this frozen column at night.
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“K2 is the most beautiful but the toughest of the 8000s. The storms are terrible.
It is difficult to warm up, even with lots of layers of clothes ", blows the Swiss Jean Troillet, 72, whose peregrinations are narrated in the book" A life at 8000 m "(Guérin editions).
It was in the summer of 1985 that he invited himself up there.
Beware of hallucinations!
"Me, I saw double without having drunk or smoked," he laughs.
Do not count on the Helvète to subdue the K2 this time in winter.
"I promised my children not to go back," he agrees.
Are all the suitors seasoned enough?
Anyway, barnum-like base camps are hardly his cup of tea.
For this winter season at K2, commercial expeditions supported by an army of sherpas have opened the way for customers who have spent several tens of thousands of dollars.
Kings of staging on Instagram but not necessarily aces of peaks.
Specialists are sometimes surprised at their lack of preparation.
“I fear the cacophony”, confides Marc Batard, baptized “The sprinter of Everest” in the 1980s. “When you have spent so much money, you can be faced with a dilemma which, historically, has taken many lives. in the mountains: continue at all costs or turn back ”, apprehends the Pakistani Shamyl Sharafat Ali.
After a blank year in escapes linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, he also fears “the frustration” among some climbers determined to gain height “at any cost” before having to be rescued by helicopter by the army Pakistani.
This week, a Pole suffering from a hernia had to be evacuated already by air.
VIDEO. Nepal: traffic jam in the "death zone" of Everest
"What stresses the authorities, it is the accidents which then make the headlines", he underlines.
He is also worried about these possible climbers positive in recent months for coronavirus but asymptomatic, who did not have a chest scan before taking off.
“But who, at an altitude of 6000 m, will perhaps realize the damage caused to their lungs,” he warns, referring to the fatal edema.
What is certain is that the K2 in winter will not remain virgin forever.
“You always end up getting to the top even if it takes time.
Man has always succeeded in going further ”, positive the Lord of the“ 8000 ”Jean Troillet.
“And if the pioneer succeeds with oxygen, the real ascent will remain, without oxygen”, imagines Marc Batard.
And that also without having recourse to Pakistani guides or Nepalese sherpas.
The one still without the help of the fixed ropes ... It will be necessary above all to come down alive, which is not won on this colossal wall of dark rock and ice.
“Once at the top, we did half the way,” recalls the Himalayanist Sophie Lavaud.
The abominable snow peak has not finished nourishing the vertical ambitions of dreamers who are not cold in their eyes.
Why we call it K2
This summit, which is a letter and a number, owes its name to a British engineer, Lieutenant Thomas Montgomerie.
In the middle of the 19th century, traveling through British India to map them, he stopped in front of the Karakoram massif (hence the K) and draws the six most edifying peaks on the horizon, ranking them from K1 to K6.
Local names are then given to each of them except for K2 which, because of its extreme isolation, its distance from any civilization, will keep its code, the locals not having taken care to baptize it.
Conversely, for example, the K5 which became the “Gasherbrum I” (“beautiful mountain” in the Balti language), another 8000 m very well known to mountaineers.
