In K2 aftermath, lessons learned

Veteran climbers say the mountaineers were highly experienced, but point out several factors that contributed to the tragedy in which 11 died.

from the August 6, 2008 edition

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Colleagues in close touch with those on the mountain say the Dutch team was the first to arrive at the K2 base camp this season, in mid-May, and shouldered much of the burden of route setting and logistics.

"Wilco and his team ... were putting up all the fixed ropes, and other people were climbing on it," says Mr. Sjogren, who also runs a company supplying satellite and other technical equipment to expeditions.

That created some friction among the teams, Sjogren says. On summit day, van Rooijen's group was further delayed by climbing down to aid a fallen Serbian climber, only to find that he was dead.

The result was a nighttime summit on Friday, though the weather was exceptionally good.

"So it's a little hard to say: 'That was the wrong decision, you should have a [cutoff] time,' " says Sjorgen. "You really should have a cap of time. But sometimes things happen that make you change your decision.... This accident can't be put on the climbers, that they've been careless."

Mr. Warner agrees, saying though there were tactical errors, the determining factor was the ice fall. He knew a dozen of the climbers on the mountain this week, all of them "tremendously experienced."

Top climbers, not 'trophy hunters'

Many of the climbers on K2 this week – such as Norwegian climber Rolf Bae, who was swept away with the ice fall – were experienced polar explorers. Mr. Bae was on his second K2 climb, and in early June had completed a new route on Pakistan's Trango Tower face, spending 27 days on one of the biggest sheer rock walls in the world.

"This is the kind of climber we are talking about here," says Sjogren, noting that van Rooijen had summitted Mt. Everest before without bottled oxygen – a very rare feat. "These were not the trophy hunters, the first-time climbers. And none of them were on a commercial expedition."

But Reinhold Messner, the Italian climbing legend who first tackled all 14 peaks taller than 8,000 meters (26,250 feet), was critical. "People today are booking these K2 package deals almost as if they were buying some all-inclusive trip to Bangkok," he told a German television station. Reaching the summit after dark "is just pure stupidity; that is not professional."

Warner says that though the tragedy will raise the issue of commercial guiding, it didn't factor on K2 this time.

"Let's just pray that they were driven to climb [K2] by some deeply held personal goal and not for some external hope to become rich and famous," adds Warner. "The world is not going to be a better place because the 280th person summited K2. But hopefully they, as an individual, are better for it."

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