K2, at 8,611 metres (28,251 ft) above sea level, is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest at 8,849 metres (29,032 ft). It lies in the Karakoram range, partially in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and partially in the China-administered Trans-Karakoram Tract in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang.
Mountaineering, mountain climbing, or alpinism is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become sports in their own right. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering are also considered variants of mountaineering by some, but are part of a wide group of mountain sports.
Mount Everest, known locally as Sagarmatha or Qomolangma, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
The eight-thousanders are the 14 mountains recognized by the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) as being more than 8,000 metres (26,247 ft) in height above sea level, and sufficiently independent of neighbouring peaks. There is no precise definition of the criteria used to assess independence, and at times, the UIAA has considered whether the list should be expanded to 20 mountain peaks by including the major satellite peaks of eight-thousanders. All of the eight-thousanders are located in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges in Asia, and their summits lie in the altitude range known as the death zone.
In mountaineering and climbing, a first ascent, is the first successful documented climb to the top of a mountain or the top of a particular climbing route. Early 20th-century mountaineers and climbers focused on reaching the tops of iconic mountains and climbing routes by whatever means possible, often using considerable amounts of aid climbing, and/or with large expedition style support teams that laid "siege" to the climb.
Anatoli Nikolaevich Boukreev was a Soviet and Kazakh mountaineer who made ascents of 10 of the 14 eight-thousander peaks—those above 8,000 m (26,247 ft)—without supplemental oxygen. From 1989 through 1997, he made 18 successful ascents of peaks above 8,000 m.
Christopher Eugene O'Donnell is an American actor who performs in film and television.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It details Krakauer's experience in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a storm. Krakauer's expedition was led by guide Rob Hall. Other groups were trying to summit on the same day, including one led by Scott Fischer, whose guiding agency, Mountain Madness, was perceived as a competitor to Hall's agency, Adventure Consultants.
Nazir Sabir is a Pakistani mountaineer. He was born in Hunza. He has climbed Mount Everest and four of the five 8000 m peaks in Pakistan, including the world's second highest mountain K2 in 1981, Gasherbrum II 8035m, Broad Peak 8050m in 1982, and Gasherbrum I 8068m in 1992. He became the first from Pakistan to have climbed Everest on 17 May 2000 as a team member on the Mountain Madness Everest Expedition led by Christine Boskoff from the United States that also included famed Everest climber Peter Habeler of Austria and eight Canadians.
Edmund Viesturs is an American high-altitude mountaineer, corporate speaker, and well known author in the mountain climbing community. He was the first American to climb all 14 of the eight-thousander mountains, and the 5th person to do so without supplemental oxygen. Along with Apa Sherpa, he has summitted eight-thousanders on 21 occasions, including Mount Everest seven times.
A mountain film is a film genre that focuses on mountaineering and especially the battle of human against nature. In addition to mere adventure, the protagonists who return from the mountain come back changed, usually gaining wisdom and enlightenment.
Tommy Caldwell is an American rock climber who has set records in sport climbing, traditional climbing, and in big-wall climbing. Caldwell made the first free ascents of several major routes on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Alison Jane Hargreaves was a British mountaineer. Her accomplishments included scaling Mount Everest alone, without supplementary oxygen or support from a Sherpa team, in 1995. She soloed all the great north faces of the Alps in a single season—a first for any climber. This feat included climbing the difficult north face of the Eiger in the Alps. Hargreaves also climbed 6,812-metre (22,349 ft) Ama Dablam in Nepal.
The 2008 K2 disaster occurred on 1 August 2008, when 11 mountaineers from international expeditions died on K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth. Three others were seriously injured. The series of deaths, over the course of the Friday ascent and Saturday descent, was the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering. Some of the specific details remain uncertain, with different plausible scenarios having been given about different climbers' timing and actions, when reported later via survivors' eyewitness accounts or via radio communications of climbers who died later in the course of events on K2 that day.
Mixed climbing is a climbing discipline used on routes that do not have enough ice to be pure ice climbs, but are also not dry enough to be pure rock climbs. To ascend the route, the mixed climber uses ice climbing equipment, but to protect the route, they use both rock-climbing equipment and ice climbing equipment. Mixed climbing varies from routes with sections of thick layers of ice and sections of bare rock, to routes that are mostly bare rock but which are "iced-up" in a thin layer of ice and/or snow.
Everest is a 2015 biographical survival film directed and produced by Baltasar Kormákur and written by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy. It stars an ensemble cast of Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Martin Henderson and Emily Watson. Based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, it focuses on the survival attempts of two expedition groups, one led by Rob Hall (Clarke) and the other by Scott Fischer (Gyllenhaal). Kormákur, Universal Pictures, Walden Media, Cross Creek Pictures and Working Title Films dedicated the film to the late British actress Natasha Richardson.
Free Solo is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform the first-ever free solo climb of a route on El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park in California, in June 2017.
On the 1954 Italian expedition to K2, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli became the first people to reach the summit of K2, 8,611 metres (28,251 ft), the second-highest mountain in the world. They reached the summit on 31 July 1954. K2 is more difficult to climb than Mount Everest, 8,849 metres (29,032 ft), which had first been climbed by a British expedition in 1953.
The 1938 American Karakoram expedition to K2, more properly called the "First American Karakoram expedition", investigated several routes for reaching the summit of K2, an unclimbed mountain at 28,251 feet (8,611 m) the second highest mountain in the world. Charlie Houston was the leader of what was a small and happily united climbing party. After deciding the Abruzzi Ridge was most favorable, they made good progress up to the head of the ridge at 24,700 feet (7,500 m) on July 19, 1938. However, by then their supply lines were very extended, they were short of food and the monsoon seemed imminent. It was decided that Houston and Paul Petzoldt would make the last push to get as close to the summit as they could and then rejoin the rest of the party in descent. On July 21 the pair reached about 26,000 feet (7,900 m). In favorable weather, they were able to identify a suitable site for a higher camp and a clear route to the summit.
