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Traveler Name:
Chris Warner

Adventure:
Shared Summits: K2: Climbing the Savage Mountain

On Sunday December 16th, at 2 p.m. EST, NBC Sports and Jeep World of Adventure Sports will be broadcasting a one hour television special about the 2007 Shared Summits K2 Expedition. It is being broadcast nationwide on your local NBC station.

Click here for more info.

Why Climb K2?

7:36 am EDT Friday July 20, 2007: SUMMIT REACHED !

K2, at 28,253 feet (8611 meters), is the second highest mountain in the world and is thought to be the ultimate mountaineering achievement. A truly awe-inspiring sight, its giant pyramid-shaped peak rises for over two vertical miles above the surrounding glaciers. Knife edged ridges and impenetrable cliff faces make the mountain seem unclimbable. Upon these slopes, epic adventures have been playing out since 1902. The stories of sacrifice and teamwork, jealousies and hubris, suffering and triumph, add to the lure of the peak.

Every year a handful of the world's best mountaineers approach the remote base camp, anxious about the challenges that lay above. They come to test themselves upon this iconic mountain, knowing the odds are stacked against them, but hoping that they will be rewarded with a shot at the summit.

The Savage Mountain

K2 has earned its nickname: "The Savage Mountain." All of the books chronicling K2 expeditions focus on the risks, resulting tragedies, and the heroism demonstrated by the climbers. The movies (K2 and Vertical Limit), documentaries (Women of K2) and countless articles about the peak all paint a portrait of extremes. K2, the world's second tallest peak, easily eclipses Everest as the hardest mountain in the world. While the crowded slopes of Everest expose human weaknesses, which have been so well chronicled in the media, the supra-human challenges of K2 often yield tales of teamwork and self-sacrifice. The savageness of K2 brings out the nobility of man.

K2: the Last Great Challenges

While ascending K2 by any route is a major undertaking, the greatest challenges in mountaineering can be found on the unclimbed faces of the world's hardest peaks. K2 historians point to a handful of "last challenges": among them, the East Face. Expedition Leader Chris Warner had attempted K2 twice before, during seasons when not a single climber summited. His experiences on K2 lead to a few critical observations: the bad weather comes from the West, slams into the upper mountain, with high winds which then whip across the North and South faces. While climbers are pinned down even on "calm days" on these routes, and the snow dangerously "slabs" up, the East Face can still be climbable. Late season (mid July to late August) snowfalls tend to bring the biggest accumulations, and this snow rarely settles. In addition, in recent years (as well in the 80s) June has had the most stable weather. In fact, global climate change has resulted in K2 becoming more dangerous during the "peak climbing" season of late July and August. The group departed the US in mid-May and launched an early season attempt on the prominent buttress that ascends the East Face.

The ascent of this route marked only the 9^th time that an American team has summited any of the fourteen 8000 meter peaks by a new route, despite nearly 80 years of Himalayan climbing history. Many of today's most successful climbers have settled into a race to summit them all by their easiest routes.

Friday 4:36 pm local time (7:36 am EST).

Chris Warner and Bruce Normand have summited. Don Bowie followed shortly after at 4:42 pm. As of this writing, four Russians (Nikolay Kadoshnikov, Victor Afanasyev, Aleksander Eliseev, and Roman Gubanov) , the one Korean woman and two Sherpas, one Korean man, one Iranian (Kazem Faridian), Daniele Nardi from Italy, and Joao Garcia from Portugal have summited.  With each new summit, applause, cheering and laughter erupt from camps along The Strip. Perhaps one of the most amazing feats was the successful summit of a lone Czech, Libor Uher, by the Cesen Route.

For more of the story or information on Shared Summits, click here.