After twelve long waiting days at base camp, we finally got our chance to make a try for Broad Peak summit. We started our summit push at 11 PM in the evening of 24th July. Together with a Spanish-led expedition we were eleven climbers with headlamps on our way to the summit. It soon became clear that this was going to be a tough task due to deep snow. Whoever went first, sank in half a metre at each step. Going first were almost all the time our guides Ryan and Tomás who did a tremendous job!

At ten o’clock in the morning – after eleven hours – we were right below a col at 7800 metres which we had hoped to reach after six hours. Here suddenly clouds appeared and the wind got stronger. Since we also had to think about the long way back down, we had to take the difficult decision to turn around – after an 11 hours long tough climb, seven weeks in Pakistan, and just 250 metres below the summit.

We are now on the hike out. I will come back with pictures once we are back in civilisation.

We have had a weather shift and are currently stuck at base camp for a weather window that allows us to make an attempt to reach the summit. For the last eleven days we have been waiting at base camp – only walking over to K2 base camp once which is about an hour away, and going for short walks up or down the glacier some of the other days so that we don’t get rusty. There are strong winds high on the mountain at the moment, but they are supposed to die off quite soon according to our weather report, so that we hopefully will get a shot at the summit in a few days. Ryan has written a longer dispatch about the situation on www.mtnprofessionals.com/news.

Nine days have passed since my last update here. During this time we have been up on the mountain again twice, trying to reach camp 2 at 6200 metres.
Our first attempt we started the 3rd of July at three o’clock in the morning. We knew that several other teams were going up to camp 1 the same day, so we wanted to be out early. We reached camp 1 at nine o’clock. That was one hour faster than the first time.
We enjoyed the lunch bag our cook Ali had packed for us as a second breakfast. Then we tried to sleep a bit, but the sun was directly on our tents, so it was extremely hot. It was also very crowded in camp – every single one of the few tent spots were taken.
During the afternoon it became more windy and started to snow. Unfortunately, this kind of weather continued the whole night. At 4 AM, Ryan called base camp on the radio and asked our high altitude porter Fida, who was supposed to join us, not to come up. When we woke up around six, the weather hadn’t changed, so Ryan and Tomás decided that it was safer to go down. So unfortunately we didn’t reach camp 2 as planned this time.
On Wednesday, the 6th of July, we started our second attempt at 3:30 AM. It took us five hours and twenty minutes to camp 1 this time, which was another forty minutes faster than the last time. It started snowing during our climb and got chilly, so my fingers were a bit cold. But apart from that, everything went fine. We were the only ones at camp 1 this time, so this was much nicer than the last time.
Ironically, when we woke up the next morning at four or five o’clock, it was stormy outside again and snowing. We talked to Fida at base camp on the radio. He was supposed to come up, but due to the weather he stayed down. For us it seemed that we either had to stay an extra day at camp 1 (which we hadn’t planned food for, but we had plenty of snacks) or return to base camp another time without reaching camp 2.
But first we waited and slept a bit longer. Fortunately, around seven o’clock, the weather was a bit better. So we decided to continue to camp 2 after all and see how far we would get. We left camp 1 at 9:30. The route to camp 1 goes between rocks most of the time up to the main ridge we will be climbing on. We climbed partly on rock, but mostly on snow or ice. Some sections were very steep, so it was hard work.
We had quite calm weather in the beginning, but the wind got stronger again during the day. As we reached camp 2 at around 1:30, it was really stormy outside, so we had problems setting up our tents on the ridge. I was very relieved when I could finally move into our tent and warm myself up.
In the morning, we woke up at four o’clock. There was a beautiful sunrise above K2 outside. It was also ice cold, so even in the tent I got cold fingers when I started packing my backpack. This got worse when we eventually left the tent, so things like putting crampons on were quite a challenge.
We started walking around 5:30. The way down to camp 1 was quite easy and rather short. We reached camp 1 at a quarter past seven.Here we repacked some of our stuff. Sleeping bags and some more equipment stayed here, so that we continued down to ABC (advanced base camp) with almost empty packs.
Directly below camp 1 on the rocky part, we met our high altitude porter Fida who was on his way to camp 1 with some oxygen bottles. He joined us again shortly after on our descent.
We reached ABC already at nine o’clock – setting a new time record for the descent with one hour and twenty minutes. And after a short break here, we continued towards base camp which we reached around 10:30. Our liaison officer, captain Mohsin, the cooks Ali and Golam, and Akhbar were already waiting for us here with some snacks.
Now we are ready for the final rotation on the mountain. We need a window of five days with good weather – four days up and one day down. That might start in the beginning of next week after a couple of rest days here. But we have seen the weather change very quickly before. So we will have to be patient.