Broad Peak

The twelfth-highest mountain on Earth, 8,051 metres in the Karakoram, eight kilometres southeast of K2. Broad Peak's name describes the mountain — the summit ridge runs for over a kilometre and a half, with three separate high points. The true summit at 8,051 metres is the central one. The fore-summit, at 8,030 metres, is sometimes mistakenly claimed in poor visibility, and several recorded ascents of Broad Peak have been retroactively reclassified.

The first ascent was made in 1957 by an Austrian expedition led by Marcus Schmuck. The summit team — Schmuck, Fritz Wintersteller, Kurt Diemberger, and Hermann Buhl — climbed the Northwest Ridge in alpine style with no high-altitude porters. Buhl, four years after his solo summit of Nanga Parbat, fell to his death on neighbouring Chogolisa weeks later. Diemberger, who survived, would later become the only living climber to have made first ascents of two 8000ers — Broad Peak and Dhaulagiri.

The standard route remains the Northwest Ridge. The climb is comparable in technical difficulty to Gasherbrum I but is longer, and the high camp at 7,400 metres is exposed to wind in ways that have made the summit day a notorious endurance challenge. The fatality rate is approximately 9 percent. The first winter ascent was completed in 2013 by a Polish team. Two of the four climbers died on descent.

Broad Peak is climbed less than the more famous 8000ers but is among the most attempted of the Karakoram giants. The mountain has the K2 base-camp infrastructure, the Karakoram weather pattern, and a route that — while serious — does not require the technical commitment of K2 itself. For climbers building toward K2, or for those who have decided that K2 is not the right risk, Broad Peak occupies a particular position.