| Kali Prasad |
Posted
on 15-May-01 10:08 PM
Mount Everest trendy but K2 tougher
By Sal Ruibal, USA TODAY
Welcome to Mount Everest? Take a number,
please.
It hasn't quite come to that on the world's
tallest peak, but the annual May rush to the
summit has the 29,035-foot mountain
humming with activity.
More than 50 climbing teams are bustling
about the base camp these days, including:
A multi-national expedition whose
mission is to clean up the peak, which crew member Ken Nagouchi
calls "the world's highest garbage site."
A team from the National Federation of the Blind attempting to put
sightless climber Erik Weihenmayer on the summit.
An Indian squad championing a climber who has one leg and uses a
crutch.
Alpine detectives exploring the mountain for evidence in the mysterious
1924 disappearance of British climbers George Mallory and Andrew
Irvine .
With more than 400 humans now clambering about its face, Everest is clearly
the place to be.
But is Everest the toughest boulder on the block?
Mystique and media aside, climbing experts say that when compared to K2,
the top of the world is a Disneyland ride.
"Climbing K2 is like winning the Olympic gold medal," says Connecticut
climber Heidi Howkins, who used Everest as a practice site for her two
unsuccessful attempts on 28,250-foot K2, the world's second-highest peak.
"The normal Everest route through the Kumbu Icefall has a top-to-bottom
average gradient (slope) of 27 percent. No route on K2 has less than a 47
percent gradient."
Jonathan Thesenga, associate editor of Climbing Magazine, rates K2 as a 10
in difficulty, but gives Mt. Everest a mediocre 6.
"K2 is the toughest of the 8,000-meter peaks. The routes are steeper and
there are many ice faults along the way," he says. "It is more exposed and
remote. A lot of people die on K2."
Over the years, approximately 1,300 climbers have reached the summit of
Everest and 168 have died, a death-to-summit ratio of 1:7.7.
K2's peak has been reached by 189 climbers, with 49 fatalities, a 1:3.8 ratio
twice as lethal as Everest's.
Of those 49 dead, 22 succumbed after reaching the peak. All five of the
women who reached K2's top did not survive to tell of the experience; three
died during descent and the others died soon afterward.
Only one climber — Josef Rakoncaj of Czechoslovakia in 1983 and 1986 —
has conquered K2 twice; Apa Sherpa reached the top of Everest 11 times
between 1983 and 1996, all without supplemental oxygen.
But because of the media attention surrounding the 12 deaths on Everest in
1996 — dramatically chronicled in Jon Krakauer's best-seller "Into Thin Air"
— Everest has become and attractive destination for wealthy thrill seekers.
"That really exposed this world and dusted off, if you will, an old gal who's
maybe lost a little bit of her luster," "Thin Air" survivor Beck Weathers
recently told Mountainzone.com.
By contrast, K2 is a media molehill. The film "K2" was released in 1992 to
little buzz. "Vertical Limit", another K2-based adventure film, brought in a
respectable $68.4 million after its release in December 2000, but the
mountain played a secondary role to stars Chris O'Donnell, Bill Paxton and
Scott Glenn .
Howkins' new book, "K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit" (National
Geographic Adventure Press), is one of 15 K2-themed books for sale in
Internet bookstores, compared to more than 100 with Everest as their topic.
For inspired readers with peak fever and at least $75,000, guide services for
Everest expeditions are a few mouse clicks away at more than a dozen web
sites.
And age is no barrier: Toshio Yamamoto of Japan climbed Everest at age 63
years and 311 days; Shambu Tamang of Nepal did it at 16.
While Everest is for sale on e-Bay, K2 stands aloof.
The ice and sandstone cone has its peak season in June and July, but so far
only three expeditions have signed on: all professional climbers, no tourists.
"No one guides on K2," says Thesenga. "With good guides, supplemental
oxygen and good weather, just about anyone can summit Everest. You can
have all that on K2 and still not have even a slim chance."
Even getting to the base of K2 is extremely difficult.
Everest teams can take a plane to Katmandhu, then helicopter to base camp.
To reach K2, on the disputed border of China and Pakistan, Howkins' team
flew to Islamabad, Pakistan, then drove overland 1,000 miles to Kashgar,
China. After several more days on dusty back roads, they took Jeeps across
the Taklamahan Desert to the hamlet of Ikik, where they loaded their gear on
camels and walked for a week to a glacier field at the base of K2.
Their 13,000 pounds of gear was then dumped at the base of the glacier and
the 12 climbers and six local porters ferried it 15 miles up the mountain to
base camp.
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