6th Report – the International K2 Expedition to the North Pillar of K2
Dear Friends,
raining at the moment, as we write these lines, wet snow on our tent in the advanced base camp.
Tuesday night we are after eight very busy, very impressive days on the mountain come back here.
After looking at the end of July in the Chinese base camp had recovered well, we started on 2 August at Camp I on. A long, split at the end very rich ascent, where we asked ourselves how often we are likely to rise even through the rough glacier up. Good thing we had with the break-even waited a day. That day went by from the intense sunlight countless avalanches and the snow could sit well.
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Brief Update 8th August 2011 :
After an exhausting ascent and a lot of fixing work, the K2 team spent two nights at around 8,000m, which was necessary due to the constant snowfall (about 30cm). They are currently trying to get back to Camp III and then to base camp, where they are planning to rest for a few days. We are expecting the next detailed newsletter by midweek.
Warm Regards
Gerlinde Ralf and the whole team
© TEXT G.Kaltenbrunner/R.Dujmovits; TRANSLATION: Elke Luginsland
Camp II – Darek Zaluski (Poland)
Darek Zaluski in CII on the North Pillar of K2
Testing the GOLD awarded Immelman jacket.
5th Newsletter – International K2 North Pillar Expedition
When we were still on the mountain about a week ago, Charly had told us that we would have to deal with pretty bad weather for the coming days. With this in mind, we decided get some rest and breath some ‘thicker’ air at our Chinese Base Camp, which the locals call “Sughet Jungal”, at 3,850m. “Sughet Jungal” means virgin forest or jungle with bushes and that is exactly how we remembered it from our first few days of the expedition.
We had left our personal tents as well as the mess and kitchen tents pitched in the middle of these beautiful meadows, bushes and small creeks as we had expected to come back to recharge our batteries down there. After having spent more than four weeks at the rocky and barren Italy Base Camp at the edge of the K2 glacier, it was great to get down.
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4th Newsletter Int. K2 North Pillar Expedition
We spent another five days and four nights at high camps on the mountain. Last night we came back to our advanced base camp, tired but also very content. We left from our advanced base camp on 19th July after a forecast of at least six days of good weather.
Bad weather brought continuous snowfall and heavy fog from our deposit camp onwards, which left us doubting our plans on arrival at Camp I. The climb across the glacier — with lots of crevasses and several falls (no injuries) — didn’t make it any easier for us. Over night the sky cleared and so we started on 20th July at 5:30 am.
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Already one week has gone by since our last newsletter and there have been days of great teamwork and a lot of progress on the mountain.
After 3 days of rest and bad weather, we went back up to Camp I on 12 July. At our deposit camp, we packed our backpacks again with some fixing gear, like clamps, ice screws, snow flukes and fixing ropes. We were going to fix one of the steeper parts of the north pillar route. Already at Camp I we were knee-deep in snow, but due to the intensity of the sun during the day, the snow had settled somewhat. As soon as we had freed our tents from the snow, we had a fortifying meal of garlic fried potatoes that our cook Abdul had prepared for us. We discussed the tactics for the following day, which, however, would not go according to plan.
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