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Traffic jam on K2: about 150 climbers reach the top in a single day, almost half than in all of history

2022-07-27T13:02:32.876Z


The Sherpas of Nepal transfer the Everest business model to the second highest and most dangerous mountain on the planet


With all due respect to the carvings, Everest (8,848m) is no more a mountain than K2 (8,611m), especially since this last colossus of the Karakoram has a technical, severe and dangerous section known as the bottleneck that, since its conquest in 1954, has fueled the nightmares of mountaineers.

In fact, until fairly recently, only pedigree climbers tackled K2;

the rest queued at the discounted, sweetened and heavily kicked Everest.

And this explains why Everest knows, according to the Himalayan Database count, 10,658 confirmed summits and K2 observes just 377 as of February 21, 2021.

Something has changed: this summer the queues to access its summit have also reached the second highest mountain on the planet, causing a veritable uncontrollable barrage of summits: 145 in a single day, the same ones that achieved it between 1954 and 1996 But that queue is in the worst possible place: a narrow, vertical passageway dominated by a

serac

hanging, that is, by a huge mass of ice that at any moment can lose tons of its configuration.

It's like standing in line to buy bread under a burning building.

The bottleneck always poses a huge risk, a sword of Damocles: here there have been avalanches, massive ice falls, severed ropes while mountaineers celebrated their summit and got trapped on the descent... Now imagine a similar mishap, in a mousetrap crowded with applicants, it is almost grotesque.

The mountaineer of the Sherpa ethnic group Mingma G seems to denounce the situation through a video with images collected on July 22, the same day that 145 people reached the culminating point of K2.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mingma G (@mingma.g)

The history of K2 was altered when a team of 10 Nepalese signed their first winter ascent, in January 2021. Then, the Nirmal Purja and Mingma G teams joined forces: they were not only looking for a hole in the history of Himalayanism, but an expansion of your business.

These days, both have climbed K2 again, leading a good number of clients by the hand.

In his social networks, Nirmal Purja, the man who amazed the parish by climbing the 14 eight-thousanders of the globe in just over six months, shows his chest assuring that he placed 33 of his clients at the top on the same day.

Incidentally, to quell some doubts and out of the blue,

Nims

recalled that he had also climbed the mountain in winter without the aid of artificial oxygen.

With work traditionally restricted to eight-thousanders in spring and autumn, Nepalese wanted to find new sources of income, especially in summer when the monsoon makes it impossible to get close to Nepal's highest mountains.

Opening its line of business to the five eight-thousanders located in Pakistan seemed like the best idea and the best marketing effect was to supplant Poles and other Westerners from the list of first winter visitors.

They dispatched the K2 without disheveled, reaching its top in a platoon: the extreme seemed simple.

Now they have copied the Everest tactic: huge amounts of material and highly qualified Sherpa workers to guarantee fixed ropes to the top and, especially, at the bottleneck, the section that opens or closes the doors to the top.

In a show of efficiency,

the Sherpas came to place a rope line for ascent and another for descent to prevent traffic jams from leading to dramatic situations.

Right now, local companies, Nepalese agencies and Western guides work on K2.

What was previously considered a mountain for climbers, a small refuge where you can continue imagining that autonomous and committed mountaineering could subsist even if it is your normal route, has resulted in just one year in a copy of Everest.

To reduce the difficulty of the mountain, commercial interests, reliable weather reports, kilometers of fixed ropes, hundreds of oxygen bottles and a large number of Nepalese Sherpas have allied themselves.

Local companies, Nepalese agencies and Western guides work on K2.

What was previously considered a mountain for climbers, a small refuge where you can continue imagining that autonomous and committed mountaineering could subsist even if it is your normal route, has resulted in just one year in a copy of Everest.

To reduce the difficulty of the mountain, commercial interests, reliable weather reports, kilometers of fixed ropes, hundreds of oxygen bottles and a large number of Nepalese Sherpas have allied themselves.

Local companies, Nepalese agencies and Western guides work on K2.

What was previously considered a mountain for climbers, a small refuge where you can continue imagining that autonomous and committed mountaineering could subsist even if it is your normal route, has resulted in just one year in a copy of Everest.

To reduce the difficulty of the mountain, commercial interests, reliable weather reports, kilometers of fixed ropes, hundreds of oxygen bottles and a large number of Nepalese Sherpas have allied themselves.

It has resulted in just one year in a copy of Everest.

To reduce the difficulty of the mountain, commercial interests, reliable weather reports, kilometers of fixed ropes, hundreds of oxygen bottles and a large number of Nepalese Sherpas have allied themselves.

It has resulted in just one year in a copy of Everest.

To reduce the difficulty of the mountain, commercial interests, reliable weather reports, kilometers of fixed ropes, hundreds of oxygen bottles and a large number of Nepalese Sherpas have allied themselves.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nirmal Purja MBE - NIMSDAI (@nimsdai)

The wave of applicants, estimated at around 400 people, fits poorly into a mountain whose locations for its high-altitude camps, on the Abruzzo spur route, are meager.

Here, several climbers have reported fights over guaranteeing a place in fields 1 and 2, and taking turns using the tents on site during the acclimatization phase.

Not all of them fit, simply because the terrain is too steep.

In addition, Mingma G himself was more concerned days ago about the heat in the area (just 17 degrees below zero registered at the top) and the consequent rockfall on the route, which has already caused injuries to three workers.

Days before the viral video recorded on July 22, many summit hopefuls reached Camp 4, at about 8,000 meters,

to be in the front line and start the race when the fixed ropes were installed.

At the moment, three fatal accidents have been registered unofficially, none of them in the bottleneck area.

And it should be remembered that although in Nepal private helicopters fly freely extracting mountaineers from Everest and the rest of its eight-thousanders, in Pakistan it is the army that has these devices and their flights depend on the military command.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-07-27

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