ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — At least nine climbers were feared dead Sunday after ice sheared off the summit of K2 and crashed down the mountain, sweeping away fixed ropes and leaving some mountaineers trapped in the dark.
The catastrophe on the world's second-tallest peak cast a pall over the international climbing community and caused one mountaineer to report on a website from Base Camp: "There's a taste of death in this place."
Reports were conflicting. The Alpine Club of Pakistan, the country where K2 is located, placed the death toll at nine and said several climbers remained missing. Everest news.com had a list of 11 dead, while another climbing website, K2climb.net, reported that only one body had been found.
The difficult terrain on the Himalayan giant on the Pakistani-Chinese border makes it nearly impossible to carry out a large search-and-rescue mission, so it may take days or even weeks to get precise details.
But this could rank as the deadliest climbing episode since the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, during which eight people perished, made famous by Jon Krakauer's bestselling book "Into Thin Air."
Although K2, at 28,251 feet, is not as tall as Everest, at 29,035 feet, it is considered tougher to climb because of unrelenting bad weather and steep and difficult terrain from every approach. Climbers must be adept in rock and ice climbing, as well as general mountaineering.
"It's one of those mountains where, once you've climbed it, you don't ever go back," said Ed Viesturs, a climbing legend who lives in Washington state. "For every step you go up, it tries to bring you down."
It has been referred to as "the Savage Mountain," and in 1986, in what is referred to as the K2 Tragedy, 13 climbers from various expeditions succumbed during a severe storm.
Death or disorientation from exposure can occur rapidly at high elevations, and climbers are sometimes rendered immobile by frostbite and hypothermia. But some climbers have survived for days.
The accident also has raised the issue anew: Has commercial mountaineering grown too large, and are too many inexperienced climbers being led into such a potentially perilous realm?
"Many people buy these packages to K2 and especially to Everest," Italian climber Reinhold Messner told Reuters news agency. "They are certainly strong people, but they do not have enough experience to react."
