ONE MAN'S CLIMB

AS THE snows cleared and good weather returned on 20 July, all the teams at camp started to witness something unprecedented on our weather forecasting channels. An excellent weather window was appearing, not just for a few days, but an extended period of at least ten days into August. We checked, double checked and triple checked with every forecast online, but they all showed the same, fine, stable weather and low winds, even at the highest altitudes. On K2, even getting a weather window was far from assured and, for many years, never even arrived. When they did occur, they might be for four or five days’ maximum and rarely ideal. Ten days was unheard of, however. The excitement was palpable, a plan was about to be set.

With the unprecedented weather window upon us, we still faced at least five major hurdles and decisions to make in our quest to summit K2. That was: snow and ice conditions which could still be a showstopper high up on the mountain; rock fall dangers which we couldn’t control; avalanche threats which we could only partially mitigate against; the steepness and technical demands of the summit push which we could hopefully tackle; and overcrowding which was somewhat in our control. With all this considered, a first summit date was set, from which we would work everything backwards.

As the team with the