K2

The second-highest mountain on Earth and, by every measure that matters, the harder one. 8,611 metres in the Karakoram range on the Pakistan-China border, K2 has no easy side. The name is provisional — a surveyor's notation from 1856 that was never replaced because the mountain was too remote to have a local name in common use. K1 was Masherbrum. K3, K4, K5 became Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II, Gasherbrum III. K2 stayed K2.

The first ascent came in 1954, the year after Everest, by an Italian team led by Ardito Desio. Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli reached the top. The expedition was bitter, the credit disputed for decades. Reinhold Messner climbed it without supplemental oxygen in 1979. The first winter ascent was not made until 2021 — sixty-seven years after the first summer ascent, and only after every other 8000er had already been climbed in winter. K2 was the last to fall.

The standard route, the Abruzzi Spur, is steeper than anything on Everest. The Bottleneck — a couloir at 8,200 metres beneath a hanging serac — is the section that defines the mountain's reputation. In 2008, the serac collapsed and eleven climbers died on a single descent. The fatality rate among summiteers is roughly one in four. There is no commercial guiding industry on K2 in the way there is on Everest. The mountain does not lend itself to assistance.

What makes K2 different is the verticality. From base camp at 5,000 metres, the summit pyramid rises in a single architectural gesture — clean, steep, unrelenting. There is no plateau to traverse, no easy ridge to follow. The climber who reaches the top has earned every metre with full attention. The descent, statistically, is more dangerous than the ascent.