Scaling the World’s Most Lethal Mountain in the Dead of Winter | Hacker News Reader

Scaling the World’s Most Lethal Mountain in the Dead of Winter

nytimes.com

139 pointsilamont35 comments

> "This is the way of the Polish climbers, who for reasons of history and culture have earned reputations as the greatest climbers of the Himalayas in winter"

take nothing away from the Poles, they've earned their reputation as the masters of winter climbing in the Himalaya; however the reasons why are mundane. Beginning in the 1960's, the Polish Teams were too poor to afford climbing permits for the pre-Monsoon season. Getting a permit for a winter climb of an 8,000 metre peak is far less expensive.

in other words, the Poles began climbing in the Himalaya in Winter because that's the only season they could afford to climb.

The reasons the Poles began climbing the Himalaya in winter were partly due to having the relevant experience from the Tatras and partly due to politics. In the age when the major Himalayan peaks were first climbed (the 50s and 60s) Polish climbers were not able to leave Poland for such trips. When the political situation started softening, there was a collective desire to put Poland on the climbing map. Since the obvious firsts on the 8000m peaks were no longer up for grabs, their attention turned to other variations: winter ascents, new routes, and alpine-style ascents.

To claim the reasons were "mundane" is to massively underplay their vision and achievements. The leading Polish climbers of the 1980s were in the vanguard of the fast & light alpinism movement - up until then virtually all Himalayan climbing was done expedition-style. One of this group - Jerzy Kukuczka - was the second person ever to summit all the 8000m peaks, most of them via new routes or in winter and mostly in alpine-style ascents. The new route he put up K2 was previously deemed unclimbable by Reinhold Messner and has never been repeated.

For those who find this article interesting, I highly recommend the book Freedom Climbers by Bernadette McDonald (https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Climbers-Bernadette-McDonald/...). It tells the story of the core group of Polish climbers who did the first ascents of most of the 8000m peaks in winter, many via alpine-style ascents and new routes.

K2 is so much more difficult in winter because of its northerly latitude. Most 8000m peaks are ~27N. K2 is 35N.

Just a nitpick on an otherwise excellent piece: Annapurna is actually the most lethal mountain in the world, just ahead of K2. It claims 34 deaths per 100 safe returns over K2's 29.

To climb K2 in winter is extraordinarily dangerous. It's dangerous enough in season. But the Poles are the hardest of hard men in these situations - good luck to them!

To nitpick your nitpick-- there are different metrics for deadliness. By sheer volume of deaths, Mont Blanc might be on top with 6,000-8,000 (estimated).

Denali is pretty bad as well.

Sheer volume is meaningless unless we know how many times it's been successfully summitted. Mont Blanc is dangerous because it's easily accessible to lay people and despite being advertised as a 'long walk' can turn deadly very quickly.

Annapurna on the other hand has been climbed less than two hundred times in history, all of those people were elite mountaineers and further third of them didn't make it back.

Wasn't a large proportion due to one avalanche though ?

That's equally misleading imo.

~30,000 skiers and hikers annually makes that rather misleading. Consider, NYC has vastly more deaths, but it's not particularly dangerous.

I was surprised to learn that. I always assumed it was K2 because it's widely said to be the most difficult peak to climb.

The one quote I found online from Ed Viesturs:

"Annapurna is all about objective danger, it's all about the glacial architecture. There are these big ice cliffs and seracs, and the question is: are the seracs leaning forward or leaning back? It comes down to that." His account of the Annapurna climb and his earlier failed attempt on Annapurna is chronicled in his new book, Himalayan Quest: No Shortcuts to the Top.

http://blog.stadum.com/2007/02/annapurna-most-dangerous-moun...

No Shortcuts to the Top is no longer a new book, but it's a great read, especially as something of a counterbalance to Into Thin Air.

Ah, Polish adventurers!

One of my all-time favourite threads on ADVrider.com (motorcycle touring website) is about a group of Polish bikers traveling through Afghanistan in 2009. They have stunning photos:

http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/afghanistan-ride-how-t...

Wow! What a thread.

For those interested I recommend the movie K2: Siren of the Himalayas (2014). It is a very nice documentary, giving the history of the mountain and up close look at an attempt to summit it. Really amazing stuff.

From the description (via Rotten Tomatoes):

"This breathtaking film follows an historic attempt to summit the world's most challenging peak on the 100-year anniversary of the Duke of Abruzzi's landmark K2 expedition in 1909. World-class alpinists Fabrizio Zangrilli and Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner team up with veteran climbers Jake Meyer and Chris Szymiec in a dangerous foray of high altitude mountaineering. The documentary also examines the history and geography of the Karakoram mountains while contemplating the risks, rewards and personal nature of exploration in an age when there are few blank spots left on the map. The second highest peak on Earth at 8,611 meters, K2 is also one of the most dangerous mountains to climb: for every four people who have reached the summit of K2, one person has died trying. (C) First Run"

Another favorite Himalayan documentary is "Meru (2015)" [0]. One of the climbers ended up marrying the producer/director.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meru_(film)

It seems that the possibility of death plays a large part in the appeal of something like this. This makes me wonder in the future if we will have VR games that will actually kill you if you fail.

I'm assuming you meant this but wanted to put it out there - it is not the possibility of death that is the appeal, it is the possibility of cheating death. Small but essential difference.

Having done a bit of risky mountain stuff I quite like the modest risk of dying doing it. Part of my rationalization is you're going to die some day and doing it Bond movie style might be more interesting than Alzheimer's in a hospice. It's also a bit of an FU to the government forcing you to scan your shoes at airports and such like to prevent the 1E-10 chance of you leaving the party early.

Though I despise security theatre as much as the next bloke, I'd say the governments' intentions here are to keep you from making others leave the party early (or at least to give an appearance that they are doing their bit in this regard).

I'm not sure if it's the possibility of death or just the release of whatever brain chemicals trigger that "rush". I certainly don't want to die when driving fast, but i'm assuming that the feeling I get is at least partially attributable to my brain saying "you are going too fast, you need to slow down".

I don't get this in a sim - even in VR (although it's getting close).

In my experience, the generalization that "it" is about a "rush" isn't the case. For one thing, mountaineering at almost any level, but especially on 8k peaks, is a long, slow, march. There will be some moments that are a rush, but if one is interested in a rush then BASE jumping would be a lot more effective.

The other thing is that mountaineering involves lots of specific skills - rock climbing, ice climbing, long unsupported approaches, self arrest, winter and extreme cold conditions, the ability to acclimate - all of these have to be put together to solve a problem: getting there and back in one piece. And that problem solving, combined with the ability to overcome the mind game of suffering is the motivation for all the mountaineers I know.

Thanks for that perspective. My 'outdoors' experience consists solely of day hikes and snowboarding on marked trails. Nothing even close to those extremes.

We're playing one right now. Kills you if you succeed, too.

Must be a bug.

All so the AI robots can get some thermal energy.

You may appreciate this relevant cartoon: http://pbfcomics.com/134/

As someone attracted to this sort of thing, I have to say that it has nothing at all to do with the risk of death. Putting the fear of death into a simulated experience would do nothing for me. And for the record I would _prefer_ to be able to do extreme mountaineering without the risk of dying. Risk of death just happens to be what comes with the territory when pushing oneself to the limits of endurance.

Not possibility of death, but the sense of danger. An adventure needs a certain level of danger or it's boring. Then there's the accomplishment, doing something nobody thought of or tried.

I was reminded of this quote-of-a-quote from Wikipedia:

> The Italian climber Fosco Maraini argued in his account of the ascent of Gasherbrum IV that while the name of K2 owes its origin to chance, its clipped, impersonal nature is highly appropriate for so remote and challenging a mountain. He concluded that it was:

... just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last.

So yes, if that's the kind of mood you get into when climbing that mountain, I don't think reflections about death are very far away...

More seriously, I don't think we'll have deadly VR games: I think the challenge is usually about doing something no-one has done before or going somewhere no-one has been before. Mortal danger is a straight-forward reason why that is the case, but I don't think it's reason to do it on its own: The goal already has to be there and it has to be worthwhile.

Great story. For anyone interested in having a sample and to test yourself a bit I can recommend Kilimanjaro. It's very touristy but it'll definitely make you push yourself to beyond what you think are your physical limits.

Along the same lines I would recommend Aconcagua. It isn't really touristy, it is a trail hike for all intense and purposes as it is not at all technical.

It's about 3,500 feet higher though which is a fair bit when you get into that range. I'm not sure I would say "not at all technical." Depending on the current conditions there could be snow and ice (and may be easier if there is).

And "intents and purposes" :-)

Well having been to both (didn't summit Aconcagua) I'd say that Aconcagua is a fair bit tougher even if it's still technically a "hike" :)

"The Katowice club overlooked Frédéric Chopin Street; its coat of arms is an eagle and an ice pick. Many dozens of climbers each night talked mountains, life, and more mountains, and sang songs and drank vodka. To gain admission at that time, a young climber had to demonstrate technical prowess, sleep outside on a mountain ledge (known as a bivouac), pass written tests and show a command of mountaineering history, art and literature."

My favorite book about K2 is "Surviving K2" by Wilco Van Rooijen, a survivor of the 2008 K2 disaster. The doco "The Summit" from 2012 was good too.

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