Comments on: 9 Climbers Feared Dead In K-2 Avalanche

Three Others Missing On World's Second-Tallest Mountain

[wardoglrs]

This was and is always the risk i do not look at them as though they were killed in glory but rather a bunch of show offs, Play with matches and die by fire

[petesis]

Riccardo. Were you above the bottleneck when your friends accident occurred? I have never been on K2 (I am a big fan of books about it and climbing in general, (vertical limit stunk) but the photos of the bottleneck do not look that steep. It seems steep in some of the photos and in others it looks like a walk up. Probably most guys are too busy to photograph it in the really dicey sections. Maybe I have just not seen the right photos. Every account I have read says it is very dicey. I have seen the huge hanging glacier with the couloir to the left. It looks like the path would skirt the rocks. Of course it is way high and way cold too. There are reports that there are some climbers still coming down so perhaps the death toll will not be as high as that reported. A serbian was killed before any of this happened (in the bottleneck) and perhaps the Koreans were actually on the fixed ropes when they were swept by the falling serac. It sounded like maybe these climbers made the top very late and actually bivouaced above the bottleneck and were attempting to come down the next morning when the accident hit.

I was both climber and expedition head for the International K2 expedition in 1992 with elite climbers from Mexico, Sweden and New Zealand. I am the first Mexican and Latin American to summit Mt. Everest and to complete the Seven Summits Grand Slam and on that expedition were with me Gary Ball and Rob Hall, amongst others.
My direct climbing partner was Adrian Benitez, one of Mexico%u2019s top mountaneers and on summit day, August 14th, 1992 we left camp 4 whilst the others stayed as they were feeling sick due to high altitude.
Weatherwise and our window of opportunity was getting slimmer so Adrian and I left for the top and when we were about 300 m from the summit an ice wall we were climbing broke and Adrian fell 9000 ft to his death.
Adrian fell and I was left in the middle of a storm hanging from a ledge, shuddering with panic and unable to move for a while.
It took me over two hours getting to a safer place where I radioed to base camp with the unfortunate news.
In the mean time I had no time to mourn as I had to aid in the rescue of Gary Ball who had developed pulmonary and cerebral edema on Camp 4 at above 8000 meters.
Bringing Gary down took us nearly four days due to bad weather. The sad end of the story is that he later died in Daulaghiri.
K2 is a killer mountain. The chances of dying against summiting and coming back alive are 3 to 1 so I really doubt that if there are missing people there, they would be alive after a day. RICARDO TORRES-NAVA

[haoli25]

Look for them in the Spring.

[ubrew12]

I''ve climbed Mt Whitney with my daughter, and backpacked much of the Sierra Nevada. I''m too old to tackle K2, and now never will, but have seen enough to be able to say: in their short years, these people lived a lifetimes worth. That will never be understood by the many Puritans clogging these messages. But, it doesn''t matter, because they don''t matter. God gave them the chance to see for themselves Gods perfectly beautiful [yet perfectly cruel] creation. And they gave it a pass.

Here''s to those who would never pass up the chance to see God''s creation! Not for any page of the Bible.

[cbsfan73]

thgdriver wrote:
"All I can add is I hope nobody else gets dead or injured looking for the thrill seeking fools. The story did not say if they were heads of their family''''s. If they had wives, kids, then they were selfish to boot!"

Yeah, the same goes for promiscuous s.e.x.

[thgdriver]

mainemade Made my point already. All I can add is I hope nobody else gets dead or injured looking for the thrill seeking fools. The story did not say if they were heads of their family''s. If they had wives, kids, then they were selfish to boot!

[cbsfan73]

mainemade wrote:
"They knew they may not make it out alive. At least they died doing something they loved. Cause you got to Love it to do it."

Does this mean that people should go out and have promiscuous *** (we all know there is a risk) because we love doing it?

Giggity Giggity Goo...

[mainemade]

Mother Nature will always win when she wants to get angry.
These climbers, just like all the other misguided thrill seekers before them (personal opinion) knew the risks going in. They knew they may not make it out alive. At least they died doing something they loved. Cause you got to Love it to do it.

[cbsfan73]

I wonder how many of these special breeds would risk their lives saving the poor or fighting a tyrannical government.

Must people put disturb everything? Have people not learned that they do not need to put their print on everything?

Why did the man climb the mountain? Because it was there.