K2 – Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain

A thrilling chronicle of the tragedy-ridden history of climbing K2, the
world’s most difficult and unpredictable mountain, by the bestselling authors
of No Shortcuts to the Top

At 28,251 feet, the world’s second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of
the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the ultimate
achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as
Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In
August 2008 eleven climbers died in a single thirty-six-hour period on K2–the
worst single-event tragedy in the mountain’s history and the second-worst in
the long chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges. Yet
summiting K2 remains a cherished goal for climbers from all over the globe.
Before he faced the challenge of K2 himself, Ed Viesturs, one of the world’s
premier high-altitude mountaineers, thought of it as ‹the holy grail of
mountaineering.›

In K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain, Viesturs
explores the remarkable history of the mountain and of those who have
attempted to conquer it. At the same time he probes K2’s most memorable sagas
in an attempt to illustrate the lessons learned by confronting the fundamental
questions raised by mountaineering–questions of risk, ambition, loyalty to
one’s teammates, self-sacrifice, and the price of glory. Viesturs knows the
mountain firsthand. He and renowned alpinist Scott Fischer climbed it in 1992
and were nearly killed in an avalanche that sent them sliding to almost
certain death. Fortunately, Ed managed to get into a self-arrest position with
his ice ax and stop both his fall and Scott› s.

Focusing on seven of the mountain’s most dramatic campaigns, from his own
troubled ascent to the 2008 tragedy, Viesturs and Roberts crafts an edge-of-
your-seat narrative that climbers and armchair travelers alike will find
unforgettably compelling. With photographs from Viesturs’s personal collection
and from historical sources, this is the definitive account of the world’s
ultimate mountain, and of the lessons that can be gleaned from struggling
toward its elusive summit.