Broad Peak

Broad Peak (8,051m)

Twelfth-highest mountain in the world

July 18, 2022

Eric Gilbertson, Andreas Frydensberg, Marie Saame, Andrew Gwozdz

June 13 – flight to Islamabad
June 14 – flight to Skardu, hike Mt Karpucho (2700m)
June 15 – Wait in Skardu, buy supplies
June 16 – Wait for paperwork in Skardu, hike Mazur Rock (3700m)
June 17 – Drive to Bardumal Camp (3000m)
June 18 – Trek to Paju (3400m)
June 19 – Trek to Urdukas (4050m)
June 20 -Rest day for bad weather
June 21 – Trek to Concordia (4570m)
June 22 – Trek to basecamp (4850m)
June 23 – Rest day
June 24 – Walk past K2 BC and back (5100m)
June 25 – Climb to C1 (5600m), return to BC
June 26 – Rest day
June 27 – Climb to C2 (6100m), sleep at C1 (5600m)
June 28 – Move to C2 (6100m)
June 29 – Climb to 6700m, descend to BC
June 30 – Rest
July 1 – Move to C2 (6100m)
July 2 – Move to C3 (7000m)
July 3 – Climb to 7200m, descend to BC
July 4 – Rest
July 5 – Rest
July 6 – Rest
July 7 – Move to C3 (7000m)
July 8 – Summit attempt to 7900m, sleep C3 (7000m)
July 9 – Descend to BC
July 10 – 16 – Rest, wait for weather window
July 17 – Climb to C3 (7000m)
July 18 – Summit, descend to C2 (6100m)
July 19 – Descend to BC, start resting for K2

Broad Peak is one of the tallest mountains in the world, and is located deep in the Karakoram range in Pakistan. Of the 14 8000m peaks in the world it is one of the lower and less-technical summits. It was first climbed in June, 1957 by an Austrian expedition.

Andreas and I were interested in eventually climbing K2, the hardest 8000m peak, but we wanted to work our way up before we gave it a shot. Last summer we had climbed a few 7000m peaks in Kyrgyzstan, including Pik Pobeda via the Abolakov route. That gave us technical mountaineering experience up to around 7400m, which was good preparation for K2, but we also wanted high altitude experience. We knew on K2 we would have to move quickly through the bottleneck, a technical section around 8000m. Before giving this a shot we wanted to see how well we did above 8000m on a less-technical peak.

I had the summer available, so this meant we would try to climb an 8000er in Pakistan, where the climbing season is June-August. (The 8000ers in Nepal and Tibet are not in season during these months because of monsoon precipitation). We wanted to climb one of the easier ones so we could have a high chance of making it above 8000m and gaining enough confidence to move on to K2. There are five 8000ers in Pakistan – Gasherbrum I (G1), Gasherbrum II (G2), Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, and K2. Of these, G2 is considered the easiest, and Broad Peak the second easiest.

Marie and Andrew were also interested in joining, and Marie had already climbed G2 last summer. So we decided to go for Broad Peak. Broad is not necessarily “easy”, but from what we had read it had fewer/shorter technical sections than G1, Nanga Parbat, or K2. The one downside was that whenever we came back to do K2 we would likely want to acclimate on Broad, which would mean climbing it again. I was ok with that, though.

We wanted to climb K2 without using supplemental oxygen and without porters or guides or sherpas above basecamp, so we would try Broad without supplemental oxygen and unguided. We wanted a high chance of success on Broad, so we decided to climb the standard west ridge route. Of course, this meant there would probably be a bunch of other climbers on the route, and we were fine with them helping break trail. There would also likely be guided groups on the route and they would be fixing lines on crux sections. We were ok with either paying the guided groups for permission to use their fixed lines or helping them fix the lines. It would be silly to climb next to a freshly fixed line and not use it.

There was a bit of uncertainty, though, about trail breaking and line fixing. Based on reports from last year there were mostly independent unguided groups on Broad and they had to coordinate and cooperate on breaking trail and fixing lines. I read this led to some friction between groups. I wanted to come prepared just in case it was left up to us to do all the trail breaking, and just in case there were no fixed lines. So this meant we’d be prepared just in case conditions were like our ascent of the Abolakov route on Pobeda last year where we broke trail bottom to summit and there were no fixed ropes.

I recalled trail breaking had been extremely difficult on Pobeda with just me and Andreas. This time we would have a bigger group, but I still wanted to make it easier somehow. In theory, snowshoes should help with trailbreaking, but in practice they don’t work well on steep slopes. They just slide down because the toe part sticks out too much and the snowshoe is not rigidly attached to the foot – it can rotate. The west ridge on Broad Peak is almost completely steep snow slopes, so snowshoes wouldn’t work. Skis are also not effective or practical going up slopes that steep.

However, my backcountry skier friends in the cascades introduced me to something called ascent plates. These are basically flat rectangular pieces of metal that you can sandwich in between your crampon and your boot. In the front your crampon points stick out, and the plate is basically rigidly attached to the boot. These were developed in the pacific northwest by backcountry skiers. The plates allow you to ascend steep snow gullies with deep snow without sinking in as much, and they act like snowshoes for steep slopes. But you can also ascend icy patches since the crampon frontpoints stick out.

I figured these would be perfect for Broad Peak. I bought a pair and tested them out in the cascades and they were a game changer. Instead of wallowing up a steep slope I could quickly march up at twice the speed. We each then got a pair in preparation for Broad Peak. I’ve never heard of anyone use these on 8000m peaks, but that’s probably because climbers don’t know about them. They are starting to catch on in the Alps, though.

In case there were no fixed ropes I would just bring enough rock and ice protection to pitch those sections out. I was ok leading any technical rock or ice on Broad (which sounded like not much). We did not plan on fixing any ropes ourselves.

I found a conservative Broad peak itinerary listed on the summitclimb guided group website, and we planned to use this as our baseline itinerary. We would do three rotations progressively higher to 7000m before a final summit push.

For logistics we wanted to go as cheap as possible to get our permits and get ourselves and our gear to basecamp. It’s not practical to carry all your gear in so far for that long a trip on your own, so everyone hires local porters with donkeys to help. It’s also standard practice on peaks like this to hire cooks for basecamp. Generally a logistics operator can take care of all of these things. Or a guide company will take care of them. But we only wanted the bare minimum service, and we didn’t want to be guided.

We went with Alpine Adventure Guides (AAG) with Ali Saltoro and I could not have been more pleased. Marie had gone with AAG last year to climb G2 and highly recommended them. She was in charge of organization and coordination with AAG for this year’s expedition. Ali is the cheapest operator for 8000ers in the Karakorum, as far as I can tell, and takes care of everything from the time you land in Islamabad to basecamp. He organizes all the permits and porters and transportation and you get a basecamp staff to cook meals down in basecamp. But you are completely on your own above basecamp. Ali is very well-connected with people in government and the military and if you need anything done he is the best man to talk to. He also knows tons of information on climbing history in the area and which peaks and routes are unclimbed. The price for Broad peak permits and logistics service was $4,800.

This is at least an order of magnitude cheaper than guided climbs up Broad Peak. One way costs are reduced is Ali puts together different independent teams and lists them as one big team. This reduces the permit fee per climber. So we would plan to be sharing basecamp and meals with some other climbers, which was totally fine.

One final piece of logistics is we needed reliable weather forecasts. In the past I’ve had friends inreach message me forecasts from online sites like mountain-forecast.com, but this is not super reliable. If our weather forecast is wrong it can cost a lot of time in failed summit attempts. This year and the past few years we’ve paid a professional meteorologist, Chris Tomer, to give us daily forecasts. Chris gave us forecasts last year on Pik Pobeda and Khan Tengri and was extremely accurate. He also previously forecast for the successful first winter ascent of K2 (by Nims and team in 2019) so we knew he knew the area well. He would send daily forecasts to my inreach as with last summer.

Broad Peak wasn’t exactly our only goal for the summer, though. Andreas and I wanted to finish our two remaining snow leopard peaks – Communisma and Korzhenevskaya in Tajikistan. So after climbing Broad we planned to fly to Tajikistan and make quick ascents of these peaks, since we’d already be acclimated from Broad.

I departed for Pakistan June 10 a few hours after submitting my final grades for Seattle University. I had a 12 hour layover in Boston, which was just enough time to go to my friend Jake’s wedding. Then I connected in Istanbul and made it to Islamabad, Pakistan around 3am June 13. Ali met me at the airport and brought me to a guest house with the rest of the team. I met a few of the other climbers who would also be on our permit. Moritz, Corinne (from Germany), and Serge (France) were planning to climb K2 and Jackson (USA) was trekking to K2 basecamp. We later met Jeff and Priti (USA), who were trying for a first ascent of the unclimbed K7 central.

That evening we had dinner with the whole team at the Kabul restaurant. Ben and Nico (France) were climbing Broad and going for a speed ascent. Enkbhat (Mongolia) would be climbing Broad solo. G-Lo (Australia/Mexico) would be climbing Broad with high-altitude porter Ali. (A different Ali – Ali is a very common name in Pakistan). Guiseppe and Titiano (Italy) were also climbing Broad. Finally, Zeeshan (Pakistan) would be our liason officer. Each group is required to have a liason officer from the Pakistani military because the peaks are very close to the borders with China and India.

June 14

The next morning we all got on a flight to Skardu, while we put a lot of our baggage in a jeep to be driven there. This was cheaper than paying extra baggage fees, though the drive was around 20 hours so I appreciated being able to take a ~1 hour flight instead. During the flight the pilot acts like a tour guide, pointing out interesting mountains along the way. We saw Tirich Mir to the west and I think I maybe even saw Noshaq, the Afghanistan highpoint that we climbed a few years ago.

We soon landed and took a taxi to the Concordia Hotel. Ali said it might take a few days for some final paperwork to be finalized, and we would have time to buy any more supplies we needed.

That evening we wanted to get a bit of exercise, so Andrew, Andreas, G-Lo, and I hiked up Mt Kharpocho. It’s a fun little hill next to the Indus River with a great view of town.

June 15

There were some delays with paperwork, so we spent the next day walking through town getting some final supplies.

I still needed a bit more food, since I had maxed out my checked baggage weight with lots of group gear. And we needed fuel, which we weren’t able to fly with.

We walked around town and found a few small shops selling dried fruit, nuts, and snack food. I bought a few more weeks of food, meaning I had about 3 weeks total. We would be fed while in basecamp, so I figured this was sufficient for the time we were on the peak.

Unfortunately, fuel seemed to be pretty scarce. There were four different mountaineering shops in town, and we cleaned them all out of fuel. Apparently, a shipment from Korea had gotten delayed. I knew there would be many other mountaineers wanting fuel, and I think we were lucky to get those canisters. Though, since most groups are guided on 8000ers nowadays it’s possible the guides secure fuel farther in advance or drive it over from Nepal.

The mountaineering shops are pretty fun to look around. They have basically any piece of gear you could possibly need – down suits, metal cable ladders, pickets, food, ropes. I hear what happens is climbers come back from a trip and just sell their used gear to the shops in Skardu. So most things are used, including ropes. This means you should be very careful with anything you buy there. But fuel was fine. We shook the canisters and they all felt at least mostly full. One shop owner even showed us some “traditional” mountaineering gear. He had a rope made from yak hair and a caribbeaner made from bent sticks. I was fine going with the more conventional modern gear, though.

June 16

The next day Ali said there were still more delays with getting all the proper paperwork. We had already bought all our supplies, so decided to go for a hike. Andrew, Jeff, and Priti went to a good paragliding location while I, Andreas, G-Lo, Mortiz, Corinne, and Serge went to check out something called Mazur Rock. We’d seen a picture and it looked like an interesting rock feature sticking out over a cliff with a great view of Skardu. We didn’t really have any beta on it other than a location marked on google maps. It looked high enough (3700m) that hiking there should help us a little bit with acclimation, which was encouraging.

We took a taxi out of town until the road got too steep for it, so it dropped us off. We then hiked to a waterfall, and shortly after Moritz, Corinne and Serge headed back. Andreas, G-Lo and I continued up the road. We reached a small village at the end of the road and they confirmed we were heading in the correct direction. We then followed a trail up the hill to the side, but it was a bit confusing since there were many

side trails to choose from. I think these are from shepherds.

Eventually, though, we reached the rock we recognized from the pictures at around 3700m. The view was amazing, and with the correct camera angle we could get some pictures of each other sitting on the edge of the rock that looked like it was a thousand feet above thin air. In reality it wasn’t actually very exposed or dangerous though.

We hiked back down to Skardu and took motorcycle taxis back to the hotel. We learned then that Ali had brought everyone who remained at the hotel to get local SIM cards, and we were too late to get in on that. Apparently it’s a complicated process to get one, and the shops had all closed and Ali was no longer available to help. I heard last year SCOM had erected a cell tower in Concordia and it supposedly provided 4G service with internet if you got a local SIM card (only available from Skardu). Ali assured us he would send a WiFi hotspot to basecamp, though, so we would all have internet access if we wanted it.

Over the course of the day Andreas and I had talked to Moritz, Corinne, and Serge about their K2 plans and we decided it might be worth giving K2 a shot ourselves. The safest way to acclimate for K2 seemed to be to first climb Broad Peak, which we were already doing. Broad was less technical, with less rockfall risk, so it would be easier and safer to do many acclimation rotations. If our bodies reacted ok above 8000m on Broad Peak then that would give us confidence that we could attempt K2.

I had been reading trip reports and doing research on K2 for the past several years, so was very familiar with beta for the peak. I have three different K2 books at home, which I’ve read multiple times. I’m working on climbing the highest mountain in every country on earth and K2 is the Pakistan highpoint, so it was very high priority for me.

If we stayed to climb K2 we would very likely have to cancel our Tajikistan plans since there wouldn’t be enough time for both, but we agreed K2 was a more important peak to us and it was worth giving it a shot.

We would need to be very well-acclimated to try K2 without supplemental oxygen, so would need to climb Broad slowly to get thoroughly acclimated. We had plenty of time to do this, though, since we hadn’t bought any flights out of Pakistan yet and had the whole summer free.

For some reason this year many more climbers planned to climb K2 than in any previous year. Over 400 permits were issued for K2 this year and in the past at most around 60 climbers ever climbed K2 in one season. I’m not sure what caused the increased popularity this year.

This many climbers makes K2 dangerous. Rockfall below camp 2 (c2) is notoriously bad, and more climbers means more rocks. Also, camp 1 (c1) and c2 are very small and there’s no way this many climbers can fit at once.

By acclimating on Broad we would only have to go up K2 once instead of doing multiple acclimation rotations. This would minimize rockfall exposure and time fighting for campsite space.

Finally, it was likely that whenever we summitted Broad would coincide with the first summits on K2 (they are right next to each other and would likely have the same weather windows). We hoped that a majority of climbers would summit K2 in this first weather window and soon leave the mountain. Our strategy would be to wait for the next weather window (if it occurred) and push for the summit then. Hopefully then the mountain would be free of climbers, rockfall danger would be minimal, campsites would be available, and there would be no waiting in line behind inexperienced guided climbers.

I was a little concerned, though, that it was now too late to get a K2 permit. I know other climbers planning for K2 start the permit process months or a year in advance. But Ali is very well-connected. He told us he could get us the permit in just five business days and the permit price was $2,000 USD.

We were a bit nervous about losing this money if it turned out we had trouble breathing above 8000m on Broad and decided to not do K2, though. Ali told us once we gave the government the money there was no getting it back. So, to mitigate risk, we would each do a bank transfer of the money to Ali using our phones. Our plan was then to wait until we climbed Broad to make any decision.

If everything went well on Broad then we would request Ali get K2 permits with the money we gave him and we would go for K2. If for some reason we had a lot of trouble with breathing above 8000m on Broad then we could always skip K2 and Ali would just give us our money back. We assumed we’d want to use the 5-day wait for the permit as rest days anyways between Broad and K2. Marie was also interested in this plan, so we all three transferred the money to Ali.

It seemed to me like there was a relaitively low chance that we’d be feeling strong enough after Broad to go and do K2, and K2 wasn’t even in our original plans. I decided not to even tell anyone else about this possibility.

I know many climbers spread news about their plans far in advance to try to get sponsors and increase publicity, but I’m a fan of the climber mantra “send before you spray”. It seems weird to me to get publicity for something you haven’t yet done but are only planning to do. But more importantly, I didn’t want any external pressure to affect my decision making on K2. If I told a bunch of people I was planning to climb K2, then I might feel pressure to push for the summit in dangerous conditions to not disappoint them. If nobody knew I was trying for K2, then I would have no reservations turning around if conditions weren’t right.

If I didn’t do well at altitude on Broad I could always skip K2 with no shame and nobody knowing. The only people that knew about the possible K2 plans were my climbing partners Andreas and Marie and Ali Soltoro so he could get the permit if we needed it.

That day I posted a few pictures on instagram of climbing Mazur Rock, and a few people asked if I was going for K2. I didn’t know what to say so I just didn’t say anything, since I didn’t want the word getting out.

We sorted all the K2 logistics out late that night, which turned out to be about the last possible time for us to make this decision since that was the last time we would have enough internet to make the wire transfer for the permit. (I never really got the internet to work on my phone in basecamp).

June 17

In the morning we got up early and loaded all our gear into six jeeps. All the paperwork had been sorted out and it was time to drive to the start of the trek. Jeff and Priti would be driving to Hushe to trek in to K7 Central while everyone else would be driving to near Askole to trek up the Baltoro. We drove up along the Braldu River going deeper into the mountains. We had to stop occasionally at military checkpoints, but Zeeshan made sure we passed through smoothly.

The roads got rougher and we drove over a few sketchy swinging bridges. Luckily the drivers went over one at a time to not put too much weight on the bridge. By late afternoon we reached the last village, Askole, and stopped for lunch.

I recalled from the book about the 2008 K2 accident that the road stopped at Askole, and all my maps show only trail beyond the village. But apparently in the past few years a lot of effort has been put into extending the road. We drove on a rough track beyond town, and soon stopped at a Central Karakoram National Park building. There we filled out some final paperwork and were at last free to enter the park.

The road got very rough beyond that, and I can see why we were in Jeeps. We were driving through streams and going up steep loose gravel on narrow tracks with a cliff on the side leading to the river. There were very long stretches with no possible place to pass or turn around, and I think it’s important for drivers to coordinate their timing in advance. Amazingly, we were able to make it all the way to Bardumal Camp, saving at least a day of walking from Askole. I heard there are plans to extend the road all the way to the Baltoro Glacier another dozen miles up the river, but this looks like a difficult undertaking. The road currently ends where it does because the bulldozer cutting the track slid off the cliff and is balanced precariously above the river.

The jeep drivers dropped us and our gear off and soon headed back. I think they were trying to make it back all the way to Skardu that night. We had a nice dinner in a cook tent and shared space in big 3-person basecamp tents that Ali had provided for us. This was nice since we could save our own small tents just for the climbs above basecamp.

June 18

In the morning we packed up our gear to give to the porters to load onto donkeys. Ideally we were supposed to put it into 25kg loads, and the donkeys would each take three of these. I carefully weighed mine and got two loads of 24.5kg. Though, in practice, it was fine to have many smaller items. The porters would just weigh it all and strap on the appropriate amount.

They are not always super careful with the gear, though, so you need to be prepared for any item to get dropped from the top of a donkey straight onto the ground. I brought a big duffle bag to put around my pack to protect it, and my other item was a sturdy north face duffle with gear inside. Some other climbers’ items were not quite as sturdy, though, and got damaged. In the future I recommend doing what Guiseppe and Titiano did, which was to bring gear in a big hard blue barrel. You can actually buy these in Skardu and they are pretty cheap. I also recommend locking duffle bags closed (or zip tying them closed), and it is easy to lock the blue barrels.

It was great having the donkeys carry our gear, so we could get by with just a small daypack with water, food, and extra layers. I was perfectly fine with this arrangement. If I wanted to carry it all in on my own it would take many trips and a lot of time and be very impractical. We were supporting the local economy giving the porters jobs, and this is the main source of income for many people in Askole. This is also standard practice on big mountain expeditions like this.

We soon started hiking up with light packs. Around the corner we passed the white bulldozer that had slipped over the edge. It’ll take some work to get that back up. The trail got narrower after the bulldozer but was in good shape. I knew from my map we were surrounded by big 6000m peaks, but unfortunately there were low clouds and we didn’t get any views. Eventually it started raining, and it would rain on and off most of the day.

We hiked up for a few hours and by mid afternoon reached Paju camp, our ending point for the day. By then the skies had cleared a bit and we got a nice view of the Trango Towers up the valley. Once the donkeys arrived we pitched camp for the night.

June 19

The next morning the weather started socked in, so unfortunately we didn’t get many more good views of the Trango Towers. We soon reached the toe of the Baltoro Glacier, and hiked up onto the moraine. Interestingly, the whole way the trail was parallelled by an electric cable. It was usually laying on the ground but sometimes supported on bamboo poles. This was apparently the cable for the cell tower at Concordia. I don’t think it provides power (solar panels at concordia provide power) but it probably transmits data.

Many parts of the cable appeared to have been cut and repaired. Sometimes an old coke bottle was slid over the cut section to shelter it! The cable often went across the trail on the ground, and it was easy to step on. I was amazed that cable could be maintained enough to be effective (though in practice we found it was in fact rarely effective).

We took a lunch break at Liligo camp, which appears to be seldom used. Soon after it started raining, and as we got higher it changed to a wet snow. This lasted the rest of the day, and was not super pleasant. We took a brief break at Khorbutse Camp, where some military guys were stationed, then pushed on to Urdukas in heavier wet snow.

Urdukas is the last place on the trek where grass and bushes grow on the edge of the glacier. With all the wet snow it was extremely muddy. There were a few other teams there and they had been waiting there a few days hoping the weather would improve before pushing on. Unfortunately we had gotten there well before the donkeys and our tents, and we huddled under an overhang trying to stay dry. Then Ishaq talked to one team and they let us wait in their dinner tent. They were very friendly, giving us hot water and tea.

A few hours later our porters and donkeys arrived and we set up camp down lower on the edge of the glacier where it wasn’t quite as muddy.

June 20

Our forecast was for continued bad weather, and our planned itinerary had us resting a day in Urdukas for acclimation. Ishaq told us the porters wanted to wait for better weather to continue, and we agreed. So we took a rest day. Meanwhile, a few other teams started hiking up the glacier despite the weather, and I think this was because they had already been waiting for three days and Urdukas and were getting impatient to start moving.

The weather cleared a little in the afternoon and I hiked up the trail a bit, before returning to camp.

(At the time it seemed like we were unlucky with this marginal weather, but I would later hear stories of climbers coming in when the weather was sunny and that meant more snowmelt with higher water levels and dangerous river crossings, so perhaps we were not so unlucky after all.)

June 21

The next morning was still marginal weather but we headed up anyways. By now the trail was covered in a few inches of snow, though a few people had gone ahead of us so at least it was easy to follow the route. We hiked past Gore I, which I think is rarely used but has a small military presence. We then took a long break at Gore II camp.

This was my first experience of trash and dirty camps on the trip, though wouldn’t be the last. There were a handful of rock walls erected for tents, and we sat down on some rocks in one to eat lunch. Unfortunately, we then noticed climbers had pooped inside the rock walls, and we found a better spot. I don’t understand this – obviously other climbers are going to want to go and use that campsite and pitch a tent there. Why not poop literarlly anywhere else? There was a designated bathroom area that would have made much more sense. Luckily we narrowly escaped sitting in the poop.

We waited a few hours and started getting concerned we might have to camp in that dirty site. The porters eventually came, though, and said we would continue to Concordia. They had a strong incentive to not delay because there was no more grass for the donkeys to eat. The porters brought hay for them, but only enough for a few days, so they had to get back to Urdukas before the hay ran out.

The porters led the way this time with all the climbers following. The snow was a bit deeper, and the weather was still socked in. We occasionally got glimpses of huge mountains towering above us through the clouds, and I bet it would be very scenic in clear weather.

This was our longest day yet and we reached Concordia shortly before sunset. There were a few other groups there and we quickly found our tents and set them up. It was surprisingly cold and windy for late June, but we were pretty high over 4500m.

June 22

The conditions continued to be socked in and we left camp in the morning on our final day before basecamp. We soon passed the Concordia cell tower, which looked very out of place that deep in the mountains. There was a huge solar panel next to it and a small building wehre I suppose the caretakers stay.

Beyond the tower the trail was flat and easy and we made it to basecamp within a few hours. Ali, Ishaq and the porters scouted out a good spot on a small ridge to the east of the trail and started setting up the cooking tent. Broad basecamp is pretty spread out, with each group setting up a different camp next to the trail. There is a band of rocks in the middle of the Godwin-Austen Glacier that camps are on, and there are melt streams on either side. The eastern melt stream is for drinking water and the western is where the outhouses are erected. So if you’re downstream from camp be careful which stream you use as a water source!

The camp is near the base of the west ridge of Broad, so it’s only a short walk to get to the base of the route. Unfortunately it was snowing lightly and the summits were still socked in, so we couldn’t actually see the summit. There were two other teams that had already been there five days, though they hadn’t made any progress up the route in the bad weather. Leila Peak expedition was up trail from us and Blue Sky (a british group) were down trail.

We each got our own big 3-person basecamp tent to sleep in, which felt pretty luxurious. Shortly after I got my tent set up I heard a loud rumble coming from Broad Peak, and I soon saw an avalanche tearing down the face. This wasn’t too surprising, since it had been snowing up there for at least the past five days. The snow ripped down the hanging glacier to the right of the west ridge and started heading towards us. I was a little nervous, but we were very far away and it seemed impossible for the snow to cover that much distance.

However, it kept coming, and I jumped behind a boulder. We were soon blasted with wind and small chunks of snow and covered in a cloud. It lasted maybe 30 seconds, then was over. The avalanche had stopped well before camp, but the cloud kicked up by the avalanche had travelled much farther. I would later see a 2ft tall crown high on the west ridge around 6300m, and this appeared to have all slide down and funnelled into the gully above us.

We would hear and see more avalanches throughout the afternoon and evening, but none as big as that first one.

June 23

The next day we took a planned rest day for acclimation. The weather started clearing and we had excellent views of K2 to the north with a small lenticular cloud on top, and Broad Peak to the east. For some reason a few teams of porters and donkeys started wandering through our camp, even though we were well off the main trail. I didn’t want random people wandering through camp since I’d heard stories of gear getting stolen from tents. Also, it seemed risky for donkeys to be tripping over our tent guylines.

So I went down to the main trail and built a shin-high rock wall across the intersection where the side trail led to our camp. I went back to camp, but still another group stepped over the wall and wandered through! This time G-Lo accompanied me down. Our goal was to make the main trail look like it was better travelled. So we meticulously stomped down the snow in and around the trail. Then I stood at the intersection to direct traffic.

Another big mule team approached and I pointed them towards the main trail. I did this for the next mule team, and I think by then the main trail looked much bigger than our side trail. For good measure I put some more rocks on my wall to make it taller and longer. That seemed to solve the problem, and our camp was much more peaceful the rest of the day.

June 24

In the morning we hiked up to K2 basecamp for a bit of acclimation. K2 basecamp a little bit higher than Broad basecamp, at around 5000m. It’s an easy one-hour hike up the glacier, and we soon reached the othe Alpine Adventure Guides camp for Mortiz, Corinne and Serge. They had left for ABC to scout out the Abruzzi Spur and Cessan routes, and we decided to also walk up a bit higher for some more acclimation.

Nobody had ventured above advanced base camp yet on the route, and the trail was pretty fresh in the shin-deep snow. We made it to the base of the Cessan route, but it looked like there were some crevasses ahead, so we stopped there. We saw Moritz, Corinne and Serge a bit farther ahead and it looked like they were scouting out the Cessan route.  That’s slightly more difficult than the Abruzzi Spur, but could be a better choice since it would be less crowded. However, I had only research the Abruzzi Spur in detail so we would definitely do that route.

We returned to K2 basecamp and had tea with Ishaq and their cook Honey (that’s his nickname but I never learned his real name). On the way back Andrew and G-Lo stopped to visit the Gilkey Memorial, but the rest of us went directly back to Broad camp to rest.

June 25

The weather had been sunny and calm the past few days, so we finally had enough confidence in snow stability to start up Broad Peak. The route up to Camp 1 goes through some avy terrain, and we were happy to let that settle. Two groups had already gone up to camp 1 the day before, the first groups of the season, and after talking to them we were happy with snow conditions. The groups were Pika and Luc from Bolivia and Canada, and Ben and Nico from our team.

There were no fixed ropes to camp 1, but it was just a moderate snow slope and we were fine each soloing up with ice axes. We had heard, though, that the route would get fixed soon. There was a big Furtenbacher guided team that had recently arrived in basecamp with a team of Sherpas. They were planning to fix lines the whole way from bottom to summit. They would then charge independent climbers $200 per person to use the ropes. That seemed fair to me, since it would take a lot of effort to do all that fixing, and they had to buy all the ropes.

However, none of the sherpas had ever climbed Broad before, so they weren’t familiar with the route. Ali, from our group, a high-altitude porter going with G-Lo, had climbed Broad 12 times and was probably the most knowledgeable person around about the route. Ali went and talked to the sherpas and agreed to climb with them as they fixed rope and show them the route. Because of this, the sherpas agreed anyone in Ali’s group could use the fixed ropes for free. That worked out great for us!

Ali planned to go up with the sherpas the next day to give the snow a full three days to settle. Ali was very conservative about snow stability. What this meant was most of the climbers would likely wait until June 24 to make their first trip up to camp 1 to wait for fixed lines. They would probably go up just behind the fixing team. (In general I found most people on 8000m peaks in my experience will only climb when there are fixed lines, which is a bit troubling to me since it seems like many people are not very experienced mountaineers). I’d heard camp 1 was small, and it might be competitive to find spots for our tents. But if we could go up before the lines got fixed we could beat the rush and hopefully find campsites to leave our tent.

We had an early breakfast and headed up shortly after sunrise around 5am. The route through the moraine was a bit complicated since we had to pass through some big seracs and cross two large melt streams. However, there were still a few inches of fresh snow on the rocks and ice, and we could follow the tracks from the groups the previous day. We carried with us tents and some food to stash at camp 1. Our plan was to then come back down, take a few rest days, then return. So we tried to split all the gear that needed to go up between the two trips. We started out in light hiking boots, which we would stash at the end of the morain and then change into mountaineering boots.

After about 45 minutes we reached the base of the west ridge at the bottom of a rock cliff. I’ve heard there are two main routes to reach the upper snow slopes of the west ridge. The lower-angle route weaves way around to the left on a glacier then hooks back right to gain the upper snow slopes. This route is less steep, but requires travelling parallel to the crevasses, which is risky. It also requires traversing underneath a large hanging glacier up at 7000m, which is also risky. (At least once later in the trip this glacier released and triggered a huge avalanche over the left route).

The alternative route is to go up a steep snow gully to the right of the glacier between the glacier and the rock cliff. This route is steeper but much shorter. It avoids the crevasse and hanging glacier risks, but has a risk of rockfall. This is generally only a problem in the afternoon when the sun melts the ice holding the rocks above together, though. So, if you go through this route in the morning it is generally safe. This is the route Ali recommended and the way the groups had gone the previous day, so we opted for this route.

We got to the base of the cliff and there changed into our bigger 8000m mountaineering boots and crampons. We hid our hiking boots at the base of the cliff and started up. The gully was much less steep than I had anticipated, and I was comfortable hiking up with one hiking pole and my whippet. It gradually got steeper, and then we encountered a 5m tall rock step with an icy gully to the left. There was an old fixed line on the rock step, probably from last year, but I didn’t touch it. There was no way to know what condition it was in higher up, and with this area subject to rock fall it was likely damaged.

I opted to scramble up the 3rd class rock, which was fun with positive holds and plenty of good foot placements. The Italians had brought their technical tools so they soloed up the ice.

At the top was a slightly steeper snowfield, and higher up I holstered my hiking pole and took out my ice ax. I was happy to have two tools here – the whippet and ice ax – to use dagger placements for each. We rounded the corner onto a small flat bench and found ourselves at the base of the wide snow slope below camp 1. We saw one group of three climbers far above us, and at this point the Italians pushed on ahead while I waited for Andreas, Andrew, and Marie.

Eventually Andreas and I headed up, and the slope started out gradual enough that I could just use my whippet like a hiking pole. We passed the old (unused) japanese advanced basecamp on the right, and then the slope steepened. There was a big rock cleaver directly ahead, and we saw evidence of old fixed line on the right side of it. Ali had told us this was the standard route. However, camp 1 was above and to the left of the cleaver. The groups the previous day had gone up the left side, and we were comfortable enough with snow stability and followed their tracks.

I ended up being a bit faster and caught up with the two guys who had been above us. I passed them and soon popped out at camp 1. The camp was very small, just a short horizontal section on the ridge. But it was well out of range of any rockfall or avalanches from above. There was even a rock outcrop above protecting it. We saw the two tents from Pika/Luc and Ben/Nico, plus two more tents from other groups. It looked full already, but I knew it had to accomodate more. Guiseppe and Titiano from our group were setting up their tent on what looked like the last available spot, and a lone sherpa was sitting at another spot, which he was claiming for some upcoming clients.

I quickly broke trail above camp to see if there were more options. There were a few spots that could work, but they were directly in the path of possible avalanches, so I turned back around. Back at camp I walked to a snowy spot between the tents and started to stomp it out. But the two Hungarians just popped up into camp then and they said that was their spot. I was confused how they could claim it if I was there first and I was already leveling it out. I guess I’m too nice or just didn’t want to get in an argument, so I let them have it. They looked worn out from the climb.

There were no more obvious sites, so I would have to make one. I went to the side of the Italians and started digging into the side of the slope with my ice ax. I dug in until I hit rock, then dug snow from above and pushed and packed it down. I ended up working for about two hours until I at last had a decent platform built. I managed to find a few old pickets stuck in the ice, and I would use these as anchors.

I then set up the tent and threw my extra gear inside. I was careful to put the food in the middle, away from the walls. A few years ago on Noshaq in Afghanistan I had stashed food in my vestibule near the walls for a few days, and when I returned I found birds had torn through the tent walls and eaten three pounds of my cheese! I did not want that to happen again.

Andreas soon arrived and carved out another platform on the other side of the Italians’ tent. So we had the three highest spots in the area. Andrew and Marie then arrived, and we took a short break and threw the gear in the tents. It was actually kind of tiring doing those hours of digging and platform building at 5600m. I kind of wished we’d woken up a little bit earlier to get there first and claim the spots that required no preparation. But I’ve heard doing exercise like that for a few hours is helpful for acclimation, so it was maybe for the best. I was confused where all the guided teams coming up the next day with the fixed ropes would find places to put their tents. At least we had good spots.

By early afternoon we started back down, as a few more teams were still topping out. I downlcimbed facing in on the upper slopes, then down lower walked facing out. At the base of the snow face I again downclimbed facing in, this time using both tools like dagger placements. It would have been a little sketchy with just one tool. I scrambled down the rock, again being careful not to touch the sketchy old fixed rope, then marched down the snow gully to the base of the cliff. We switched back in to hiking boots there and hiked back to basecamp in time for a late lunch.

That afternoon we saw two helicopters fly up the valley and past our camp to K2 basecamp. Zeeshan said he’d heard they were scouting landing sites so they could return bringing the princess of Qatar. She was going to be guided up K2 by Elite Expeditions led by Nims. We heard the helicopter flights cost $30,000 USD, quite an expensive scouting trip!

June 26

We took a rest day and washed clothes and read. Unfortunately we heard one of the basecamp staff from another camp had died in the melt streams between camp and the route. It appeared he had taken off his shoes to cross in the afternoon when the water flow was high. He appeared to have slipped on the ice and gotten dragged down into a moulin downstream. We vowed to be careful to cross at the known safe locations on ice bridges, and to try to only cross in the morning if possible.

While we were resting Ali went up with the sherpas and they fixed ropes all the way to camp 2. They were really fast, and Ali was back to basecamp in time for lunch. It sounded like a bunch of other climbers had moved up that day immediately behind the sherpas. I was pleased to be slightly ahead the wave, which hopefully meant we could find tentsite in higher camps.

June 27

For our second rotation we planned to spend a few more days up high, so we loaded up more food and gear in our packs. We headed up around sunrise this time, 4:30am, though were still behind other groups. Now that there were fixed lines up the mountain we expected the route to be much more crowded, and it was.

Ali had taken the sherpas up the steeper snow gully route, and the fixed lines started at the base of the rock cliff. We ditched our light hiking boots here and put on harnesses and crampons. This would only be the fourth time I’d used fixed lines, so it took a little getting used to. I’d used them around 14000ft camp on Denali to get up the ice face to the ridge. Then I’d fixed my own ropes with Dave and Susan on our climb on the west face of Mt Nirvana in Northwest Territories. That was to haul big wall gear up an overhanging section of a rock face, so we’d needed two ascenders each, one for feet and one for hands. Then last year I used some fixed ropes on Khan Tengri.

But these trips never had crowds, unlike Broad Peak. I had to learn a bit about etiquette with lots of people using fixed ropes. First, it’s standard practice to have multiple climbers on the same rope at the same time. In fact, if there is a person behind you providing tension on the rope that makes it easier to push your ascender up. If you are going up you have right-of-way when meeting someone coming down. You stay clipped on while they unclip and go around. Ideally they have two caribbeaners attaching them to the rope so they can unclip one at a time when passing to always stay connected.

When descending it would be great to be able to rappel, but this is rarely possible on a crowded route with one fixed line. If anyone is coming up they will tension the rope and make rappeling impossible. Most of the route on Broad is relatively low-angle terrain, though. So the technique for descending is to clip two caribbeaners to the rope, then wrap the rope once or twice around one of your arms and slowly walk down facing downhill. I call this arm-wrap descending. You really don’t want to slip, since you’ll slide the whole way down to the next anchor point (I heard of one or two people doing this accidentally). But if you’re careful it’s a quick and effective way to descend. The second caribbeaner is for use in passing other climbers or transitioning between ropes at an anchor point. This allows you to always be attached to the rope.

We started up the fixed lines just behind a big guided group of sherpas and clients. It felt kind of weird using a rope on a slope we had just climbed unroped with ice axes a few days earlier. But the slope was steep enough that you wouldn’t want to slip, and it would be silly to not use a fresh and trustworthy fixed line that had just been installed. I would hate to get injured from slipping right next to a fixed line that I hadn’t clipped.

I soon got the hang of sliding the ascender up. I started out with one hand on the ascender and one with my whippet, but I soon realized it was kind of pointless to have the whippet. It was much more efficient to just holster the whippet and use the rope. I did want to bring the whippet up, though. Just in case the ropes got cut or we wanted to go higher than the fixed lines I might want two tools. So I would always bring my ice ax and whippet up and down the whole route as backup.

When we reached the lower-angle snow slope the guided team let us pass, and this time we made faster progress. We reached camp 1 around 7am and stopped to wait for the rest of the crew. Now there were somehow twice as many tents in camp 1! Climbers had dug out platforms below the ridge in two lines of tents. It looked a little precarious to walk between the tents on the slope and I was happy with our spot.

However, just as I got there Guiseppe and Titiano were heading up to camp 2 with their tent. There were four climbers who had claimed their spot and were setting up another tent. But, to my dismay, they were walking around with their crampons on right next to my tent! I inspected my tent and, sure enough, there were several fresh holes in the side at foot level.

“Please take your crampons off!” I pleaded. “You just poked holes in my tent!”

“No we didn’t”, one guy replied.

I pointed to the big hole and to the guy standing right next to it wearing crampons. “Yes you did!” I replied.

I’m certain they wouldn’t want holes in their tent. I really wish they could be more considerate of other peoples tents. Unfortunately this would not be my last time encountering inexperienced mountaineers doing things like this.

I spent a while carefully applying duct tape to the inside and outside, and hoped it would hold in the inevitable winds. We inspected Andreas’s tent and it also had big holes in it. No doubt it was from the same group. The frustrating part is there’s no safety reason to be wearing crampons there. The terrain next to our tents was relatively flat, not slippery or icy, and not exposed. They were simply being lazy by not removing their crampons.

Our goal for the day was to tag camp 2 and sleep at camp 1. This followed our general strategy of climbing high and sleeping low. I’ve found it works well if I always tag a high elevation and then sleep lower before I actually sleep at the higher elevation.

By around 9am we started up for camp 2. G-Lo and Ali were heading up with me and Andreas. G-Lo had tagged camp 1 with us and he and Ali were planning to move directly to camp 2 to sleep that night. That had the advantage of not trying to find a spot in camp 1 where space was very limited, though it might be more difficult to get a good night’s sleep.

The terrain above camp 1 was a moderate snow slope that would be fine to do with just an ice axe, but we of course used the nice fresh fixed line there. The trail was broken and progress was easy.

Immediately above camp I saw two or three tents pitched in the flat but avalanche-prone places I had avoided the previous day. I think the climbers were desperate to find a spot since the main camp 1 was very full, but it seemed very risky to me. Interestingly, there was another climber that climbed up really quickly behind me and started yelling at me in some foreign language and pointing down at my tent. He was really mad. It appeared he thought I was leaving my tent in camp 1 but not sleeping in it.

This is perfectly acceptable practice on a mountain. Climbers are making rotations up and down for weeks acclimating, and it is standard practice to leave a tent in a camp if you are planning to come back to it in the future, even a few days in the future. He would just need to find another spot. There were plenty of spots just below camp 1 along the ridge if he was willing to break trail a little bit and level out a spot. But I was in fact planning to sleep in my tent in camp 1 that night. I explained to him in english that I was just tagging camp 2 and returning to camp 1 tonight to sleep.

He seemed to understand this, and then aplologized. We were above camp 1 at another one of the sketchy avy-prone flat places that didn’t have a tent in it. He pointed to that and asked if that was open. I shrugged and said I don’t know but that it looked risky from avalanches. He went back down to get his gear and I think he pitched his tent there anyways.

We continued up the route, which wove through some rock outcrops as the terrain got steeper. Eventually it got steep enough that I actually appreciated having the fixed rope. We had reached the avy crown from the June 22 slide and the snow had slid off enough that ice was exposed underneath. Our route hugged the rock outcrops, but was a bit steep and icy in places.

Higher up we passed G-Lo and Ali and eventually reached a flat area of the ridge around 6000m. Here were a few Elite Expedition tents set up, and then they had set up wands and roped off a few more flat areas that didn’t have tents. The wands had Elite Expedition flags on them. This seemed a little out of line with standard mountaineering etiquette. In general, you can claim a spot by setting up a tent. But just putting up wands to claim a spot is not very nice to other mountaineers who might actually want to sleep there that night.

We continued higher and soon reached the official camp 2 location at 6200m. It was a lower-angle part of the ridge that was melted mostly down to rock and scree. Amazingly, we saw a dozen yellow Kailas tents set up in the main camp area! There was no way that many climbers were ahead of us in acclimation schedule and already sleeping at camp 2. I walked around and they were all empty, except for one sherpa standing around. There were a few empty platforms, and I started to put my gear there, but he said they were his. (I wanted to help G-Lo and Ali get a spot for the night for their tent).

It appears what happened is the Fuhrtenbach guided team sent their sherpas up to camp 2 and set up a tent for each client just to claim the spots, even though the clients wouldn’t be there for days. They then left a sherpa there to guard a few more prime spots so no independent climbers would put their tents there. They have many extra tents, so for each client they set up a tent at each camp simultaneously, and the tent stays there the whole climb, never getting moved. So the spots are effectively claimed for the season. (In contrast, independent climbers without so many extra tents will generally only have a spot claimed for a few days before they move the tent up higher).

I understood the spots with tents were claimed, but I was still kind of frustrated that I couldn’t even use a spot that didn’t have a tent on it. I went a bit below the main area and found a few old platforms. I was going to be nice and not try to claim one before we actually had a tent to set up. But G-Lo and Ali were indeed planning to sleep there that night. So I went to the biggest platform and started hacking away at the snow and ice with my ice ax.

I got a pretty big spot cleared out by the time they made it up, and we got their tent set up. They let us stash a little bit of gear there so we could lighten our load the next day when we actually moved up to sleep.

The view was great from camp 2. We could see K2 standing proud to the north, then across the valley we could see Pastore Peak, a peak some climbers use for acclimation (it’s less than 6500m so considered a “trekking peak” and you don’t need a separate permit for it). Then to the south we could see Concordia.

Enkhbat made it up and found a small platform just below ours to put his tent. His strategy was to descend to basecamp that day, then return later to camp at camp 2. He headed down shortly after getting his tent set up.

Andrew and Marie soon made it up and we hung out a little longer, but then headed down around 1pm. 

The ropes were clear of climbers at that hour and we could make quick progress rappelling down. I was in the front and we made it to the snow slope above camp 1 around 2pm. 

[Note – if you are my mom reading this skip to the June 27 section now]

The snow coverage looked different than in the morning, and I realized that the top few inches had slid off. Lower down the ascent route was covered in chunks of icy debris. 

I talked to two climbers at a rock outcrop and they said it had just slid 20 minutes earlier, but everyone was ok. 

I would later piece together that around 130pm a descending climber had triggered a loose wet slide. Unfortunately, Enkhbat was descending then and got knocked over and tangled up in the rope. He slightly injured his leg in the process but was otherwise ok. The avalanche then hit two of the tents pitched at the base of the slope. These were the tents I had been concerned about earlier as pitched in a risky area. 

Climbers were in and near their tents at the time and one got completely buried face down in shallow snow. Luckily it was shallow enough that his yells were audible.

Enkhbat and the other climbers heard him and were able to dig him out after about 4 minutes of burial. 

He turned out to be uninjured, but rattled. He would abort his climb and head home. The climbers dug out their tents and then descended to the main camp 1 location.

I got down to the main camp 1 shortly after all this had occurred. This location was safe and unaffected. I started melting snow at my tent and then Andreas arrived. 

The displaced climbers started looking for a place to set up their tents, and two of them went up below a rock outcrop but 100ft above my tent. They started digging out a platform and throwing snow down, but the snow they threw slid directly onto my tent!

“Stop!” I yelled, jumping up from the stove and waving my hands. I was amazed. They had just narrowly escaped their tent getting buried by an avalanche and now they were throwing snow down that might bury another tent! The slope was too shallow to slide naturally, but they could still throw enough down to damage my tent. 

They paused, clearly understanding me, moved a little higher (but still above my tent), and started throwing more snow. This snow also hit my tent. 

“Stop!!” I yelled again even louder, waving my hands. I started climbing up to take matters into my own hands. They saw this and finally quit. 

I don’t understand this behavior. There were perfectly fine places just down the ridge from camp 1 that were safe and could be leveled out without risk to other climbers and without much effort. The climbers came down and wandered around a bit more. Then it appeared they found some guided climbers with extra space in tents they could squeeze in with. 

We resolved to only move between basecamp and camp 2 in the morning hours before the snow warmed up in the afternoon sun. Though, after that slide the snowpack was mostly cut down to the underlying ice, which wouldn’t slide. 

While waiting for sunset another climber, Pika, said he had stashed some fuel bottles in his tent and now noticed they were empty. Apparently, someone else had slept in his tent while he was back in basecamp and used his fuel! 

He had enough spare, but this was disturbing. We kept in mind from then on that nothing in tents was safe and anyone might decide to use our tent if we weren’t in it. 

We finished melting snow and crawled into our tents for the night. I was happy that would be our only night at camp 1. 

June 27

The next morning we got up at sunrise, packed up the tents, and were soon moving up. I noticed there was still one tent pitched in the danger zone above camp 1 below the slide path. They had built a knee-high snow wall above the tent that apparently was there to protect them from an avalanche.

I was amazed how they thought this could protect them. It wouldn’t do anything to stop an avalanche. I got the sense they were dangerously inexperienced to be on a mountain like this. 

We jugged up the fixed lines and made it to camp 2 in about two hours. G-Lo and Ali were hanging out at their platform and luckily a small one above them was still unclaimed. 

I dropped my pack and started hacking away at the snow and ice with my ice ax. It actually took quite a lot of work. When I dug as much as I could the platform was still not quite big enough, so I started piling rocks up. The whole process took about two hours but eventually I had an acceptable platform. 

Andrew and Marie made it up and G-Lo let them use his tent that night since he and Ali were heading down. 

They were hanging out next to the tent when I heard Andrew yell. I looked down and his pack was rolling down the mountain!

It went down to the left of the fixed line, bounced over a cliff, and was gone. It had some important gear inside and it appeared his trip was likely over. He could make it down fine and still had his sleeping bag to spend the night, but going up was out of the question. 

A few hundred meters below us the terrain leveled out onto a glacier, which then turned into a hanging glacier above a cliff. Andrew went as close as he dared on the fixed line and said he saw some gear way below. 

I thought it was way too risky to try to retrieve. We had brought up a 60m and a 30m rope for the upper mountain in case there were no fixed lines, but the gear was at least 300m down nontrivial terrain. That gear was not worth risking our lives for, I thought. 

Pika soon came up and Andrew talked to him. Pika is a mountain guide from Boliva and very experienced. He thought we might be able to scrounge up enough rope from other climbers to tie together that it could reach. Pika had 100m and I had 90m of my rope, so we needed around 100m more. 

Andrew asked around at camp 2 but nobody else had rope. Apparently, all the other climbers in camp were completely relying on sherpas to fix lines for them to the summit and hadn’t brought rope themselves. 

Pika said he’d heard, though, that one group had brought a 200m length of static line that they’d left in camp 1. That group had abandoned their climb after the avalanche so the rope was available. 

It was suggested that I go down and get it but I really didn’t want to. That would be a very nontrivial amount of effort for a mission I thought was too dangerous to be trying anyways. 

Pika and Andrew decided we should give it try with the 190m we had and see if he could at least recover something. Pika’s plan was to tie the ropes together and lower Andrew down from an anchor. I was skeptical about how we would pass the knots through a belay device, but Pika said he’d done it before and it works if we lower off a figure eight. I reluctantly agreed to help since Pika sounded confident. 

By this point it was early afternoon and we were worried about loose wet slides below. So we planned to do the recovery mission the next morning. Pika said 730am so that was the plan. 

Andreas and I had hoped to climb up and tag camp 3 the next morning to stay on schedule, but that sounded difficult if we also wanted to recover Andrew’s pack and descend to basecamp before noon when it started getting dangerous. 

We decided to just leave early the next day, around 330am, then climb as high as we could and turn around in time to help out with the 730am mission. 

Lucky for us the sherpas had recently fixed line to camp 3, so we wouldn’t have to pitch out any icy sections. 

Andrew and Marie planned to stay in camp 2.

June 28

We left on schedule in the morning and soon passed by all the guided group tents. Above was a steep icy slope that I would have definitely pitched out, but there were two fixed lines on it. I put my jumar on the new one and clipped my backup caribbeaner on the older one. 

At the top of the ice we followed a ridge that had a few more tent platforms. At times the route traversed above some exposed slopes on the right, and these sections had five fixed lines. They must have been left over from previous years. I think in previous years perhaps only the crux sections were fixed.

Above the rocky ridge we reached an even longer ice slope. It wasn’t steep, and if it had been pure snow it would be no problem with just an ice ax. But it was very icy and I appreciated the fixed lines.

Around 6700m the slope angle eased and it changed to snow. We saw a north face tent pitched and this was from Ben and Nico. They were on a different acclimation schedule than we were, and their strategy was to make more day trips up to this main camp. To get down they would paraglide, and this was a good launching site.

We made it little beyond their tent to around 6800m where the slope angle increased again, but then we hit our turnaround time. 

We took turns rapping down and luckily there were no climbers ascending. We made it back in an hour by 730am right on schedule. 

Pika had made it to our camp by then and was getting ready. We soon all moved down to the lower end of the fixed lines. I gave Andrew a radio so we could communicate, then Pika slung a few horns and started lowering.

Andrew found a few small items on the way down but told us the pack and important items were far down below on the glacier. Unfortunately the ropes didn’t reach, but he was tantalizingly close.

Andreas noticed below camp on a mellow section were two fixed lines, one from last year and one from this year. He figured we could untie the old rope, use it for this project, then return it. If any climber came up in the next hour they’d still be perfectly fine using this year’s fixed line. And since it would just have to hold Andrew’s body weight it would probably be ok. 

I was nervous about this but went along. We harvested that section and a few other discarded sections we found in camp. We tied them all together with EDK knots, which don’t get stuck as easily as other knots in cracks. 

Pika lowered to the end of the ropes and Andrew made it to within 10m of the gear. He radioed that the terrain was flat enough that he was ok unroping and retrieving the gear. This meant going unroped on the glacier and I didn’t like it. 

Andrew untied and was able to get his pack. Somehow his jacket was still missing, though. He looked around a while and I was getting more nervous so I asked him to get back on the rope. The jacket must have gone in a crevasse since it was gone. 

Andrew got back on the rope and started jugging up. To speed the process up Pika built a 3-to-1 pulley system and we both started hauling. 

It was pretty tiring work. I breathed a first sigh of relief when we had pulled up all the sketchy old fixed line and Andrew was completely on our good dynamic rope. Eventually Andrew made it up and I breathed another sigh of relief. 

It was amazing how much help Pika gave us just to be nice. Andrew had recovered enough gear that he could continue the climb. 

From then on we were ultra careful with gear at camp 2. We made sure to clip our packs to the tents so they couldn’t roll down.

It was 10am by then and we needed to head down before the snow softened. We left most of our gear stashed in my tent and G-Lo’s tent and soon started down. 

Andreas and I were very efficient descending so we went first. We made it to camp 1 in an hour and just kept going. It was safest to get down as soon as possible before rockfall danger started. 

We made it down in another hour, switched into our light hiking boots, and at last walked out of the danger zone. 

We were back to basecamp for lunch and were soon joined by Andrew and Marie. 

June 30

We rested the next day in basecamp. It was remarkable that the weather had been sunny every day for the previous week and was predicted to stay clear for the next week. Chris made it sound like this is unusual based on his experience forecasting for this area.

I had a birthday coming up July 1 and Titiano had just had one, and we both happened to be in basecamp that day, so the cook staff very kindly made us a delicious birthday cake which everyone shared.

July 1

Our schedule was to do one more rotation up to 7000m, then rest in basecamp and wait for a summit window. Ali said some people skip that last rotation and go straight for the summit. 

This was tempting to me, especially since I was worried the perfect weather wouldn’t last long enough for our target summit day. If we went directly for the summit in the next push we knew the weather was supposed to be clear. 

We discussed this, but concluded that, given that our bigger objective was K2, it still made sense to go slowly enough on Broad to get thoroughly acclimated. It might seem nice in the short term to get an early ascent of Broad, but if that meant not being acclimated enough to climb K2 then it was definitely not worth it. We had plenty of time to get both even with all the planned rotations on Broad.

So we decided to stick to the planned schedule. We left camp at the usual time around 430am just as it was getting light out. We then made it to camp 1 by 7am and camp 2 by 930am. 

We had a lot of extra time but didn’t plan to go higher that day since another night at camp 2 would help with acclimation. So we mostly admired the view and melted snow. 

G-Lo and Ali joined us later and they were bringing a separate tent up -a high mountain tent from basecamp that was for general use of the whole team. They planned to eventually leave that set up at camp 3 and anyone in our group could use it as long as we coordinated in advance.

Andreas had brought his ultralight two-person tent and we planned to bring that up to camp 3 and leave my slightly larger tent in camp 2. Marie also had a two-person tent she was bringing for camp 3. 

We enjoyed an excellent sunset view of K2 before going to bed. That day happened to be my birthday. 

July 2

We left around 6am the next morning carrying up sleeping bags, extra food, and ropes. I left a little bit of food in camp 2 for use on the summit push. 

We jugged up to our previous 6700m highpoint then continued up a much steeper snow slope. At the top around 6900m we found Giuseppe and Titiano’s tent set up on a rock outcrop. 

This was where the fixed ropes ended, but was still a little below the normal camp 3. We broke trail above there and soon reached a low-angle section at 7000m. Interestingly, there were a half dozen old tents standing that were clearly left over from last year. I thought we might get lucky and be able to use one, but it turned out they we all ripped open and filled with snow. They were all very faded from UV damage.

There were two big yellow Kailas tents set up from the guided team and one small green first light tent likely from independent climbers.

Camp 3 was large enough there was no risk of running out of campable spots. It was big enough for everyone. 

I was the first one up so I picked out a good spot and dug out a platform big enough for two tents. Andreas came and we then set up G-Lo’s tent and Andreas’s tent. I then worked on the important task of digging a toilet. I spent an hour making a good snow wall and digging a deep narrow trench in the ice. It’s important to get this built as soon as possible before people start going everywhere. 

Before working on the third platform Ali told us he would just sleep in a Kailas tent. He knew all the sherpas guiding for Fuhrtenbach and he said they were ok with Ali and his friends using their tents when they weren’t occupied. 

So Ali, G-Lo, and Andrew each got personal big Kailas tents. Andreas and I shared the group tent and Marie took Andreas’s tent. 

This would be the highest I’d ever slept, beating my previous record from Noshaq Afghanistan when high camp was around 6800m. 

Unfortunately, I found I have a bit of trouble sleeping that high. I think that’s not uncommon. I did manage to get a few hours of sleep that night

July 3

Our schedule had us descending straight to basecamp the next day, but Andreas and I wanted to get a bit more acclimation in. So we planned to get up earlier than everyone else and climb up a few hundred meters above camp. We wanted to be back in time to get to basecamp before noon to beat the rockfall, though.

I ended up sleeping in a bit more than anticipated and we rolled out of camp by 4am. There were no fixed ropes so we roped up since it was a glacier. 

The snow was firm and we made quick progress to around 7200m. I think that was the highest anyone had been so far since there were no tracks above us. It was tempting to keep going, but we wanted to get down before rockfall time so we turned around there. 

Back at camp everyone else was already heading down so we quickly packed up. Our plan on summit push was to spend a night at camp 2 first, so we took down our sleeping bags. I stashed my down jacket, though, since it was really only cold enough for it above camp 3. 

I also stashed my bivy sack and vapor barrier liner. I used these to keep my sleeping bag dry from tent snow and from my perspiration. 

We made good time back down, and dropped off sleeping bags in camp 2. Below camp 2 we passed Giuseppe, Titiano, Ben, and Nico all moving up. They were actually planning to summit the next day! I was happy, though, with our decision to do another rotation to improve acclimation. Those guys weren’t planning to go for K2 afterwards so it made more sense for them to take advantage of the good weather and go get the summit. 

We also passed dozens of guided clients and sherpas moving up to camp 2. They planned to sleep at camp 3 the next night then go for the summit on July 5. The sherpas would fix lines starting the night of July 4 and hopefully fix them all the way to the summit. 

Everyone would be using oxygen, and this explained how they could start acclimating after us and still summit before us.

We made it back before the sun heated the route in time for lunch as usual. 

That evening Ben was still getting over some sickness so decided to paraglide back to basecamp. Giuseppe and Titiano stayed in their tent at 6900m. Nico went up to 7000m to sleep in the group tent. 

Unfortunately Nico somehow dropped his sleeping bag down the mountain and was without a bag. I had stashed my down jacket in the tent, so that helped him get through the night. Though, I imagine it was still very cold. 

July 4

We took a rest day the next day while Giuseppe, Titiano, and Nico pushed for the summit. They left a bit after sunrise when the temperature was warmer and took turns breaking trail up to the 7900m col nine hours later. 

Near there Titiano had to turn around while Nico and Giuseppe continued to the summit, including soloing the 20m crux rock step. 

They radioed down around 4pm that they’d reached the summit, the first summitters of the season. They then descended to camp 3 by dark.

They had timed the summit well, since that would be the last perfect weather day for a while.  

July 5

We took another rest day and watched the guided groups in the distance. The upper mountain was cloudy, but with binoculars we could occasionally see climbers between camp 3 and the col.

Guiseppe, Titiano and Nico all made it down that day and we had a celebratory summit cake. 

We later heard the sad news that a high-altitude porter had died on the summit ridge that day. Apparently, the sherpas were fixing lines just past the col but the porter was not clipped to the line and broke through a cornice onto the china side. 

The sherpas quit fixing lines then and everyone turned around to descend. Nobody continued past the fixed lines, which ended shortly after the col. The clients and sherpas would descend to basecamp over the next few days, and I’m not aware of any returning for another attempt. 

July 6

Chris forecast bad weather for July 6 and 7 but a potential window July 8. July 9 the jet stream was supposed to hit and then there would be a week of bad weather.  So we decided to go for a July 8 summit attempt. Andreas and I would go directly to camp 3 one July 7. Marie would move up to camp 2 on July 6 then meet up with us on July 7 at camp 3. Andrew, GLo, and Ali would take a few more rest days and reassess the weather. 

We gave Marie a radio and she headed up in marginal weather early that morning.  I was happy to be hanging out in the comfort of basecamp. 

Marie made it safely to camp 2 that night and stayed in G-Lo’s tent while we packed for our climb.

July 7

Andreas and I headed up at 430am as usual and made it to camp 2 by 930am. We picked up our sleeping bags, continued up higher and caught up to Marie in marginal visibility. A few other climbers were heading up but just for an acclimation rotation, not to summit. 

We made it to camp 3 by early afternoon and threw our gear in our waiting tents. The camp was deserted, and it appeared everyone had descended the previous day.

It had been snowy and windy July 6, and now all the tracks above camp 3 were covered. We would be breaking trail on our own, but at least we had the ascent plates. We knew the sherpas had fixed line from camp 3 to the col, but unfortunately it was all covered in snow. So we planned to rope up and bring crevasse rescue gear, since we might not be able to find their route.

The route above was crisscrossed with crevasses and seracs, and I suspected it would be difficult to navigate in the dark with no track or fixed line to follow. So we planned to start up around sunrise to allow us to navigate in the daylight.

We went to bed early that night, and enjoyed a nice sunset over K2.

July 8

We were up and moving shortly before sunrise, around 4am. We all three roped up on my 60m rope, and I brought a rock rack to lead the crux. I didn’t want to solo it like Nico and Guiseppe had.

Marie ended up not feeling well and decided to return to camp while Andreas and I continued. The snow was firm enough that we didn’t need our ascent plates and could continue just with crampons. Soon the slope steepened and I used my whippet and ice ax as dagger placements.

But as the sun started coming up I spotted a piece of rope poking out of the snow. It was the fixed lines! If we followed those we could go on a route we knew worked to get to the col and we could save a lot of time. We would need any advantage we could get breaking trail all the way just by ourselves. Clearly no other climbers would be joining us that day.

The line was buried, though, and took considerable effort to extract. But it still seemed worth following and clipping in to. We soon reached the crest of the steep slope and stopped for a break. The snow had been firm up to there and we hadn’t needed our ascent plates. We naively assumed conditions would stay firm, and it seemed like the ascent plates were just unnecessary weight. We were already carrying a lot of extra weight with the rope, pickets, and rock rack, so we made the fateful decision to ditch the ascent plates there.

I led up a bit higher, and within 15 minutes the snow softened and I was sinking in to my shin. I lamented that we’d left the ascent plates, which would have been perfect in those conditions. We could have gone back to get them, but we optimistically assumed it was only an isolated soft patch. So we continued up.

The soft snow ended up continuing. We took turns breaking trail and it was very tiring. Breaking trail uphill with a heavy pack is tiring enough at low elevation, but we were at 7500m by then without supplemental oxygen, and it was much more difficult. If we had just had one or two more people it would have made a huge difference, but it was only us two.

We took turns frequently, and the person in front had to both break trail and dig out the rope. We crossed a few crevasses, though, and I was happy to have the added security of the fixed line. Now I wished we had started earlier, though in the dark we might not have never found the fixed line.

The route faces west, so we were in the shade most of the morning, but when the sun came over the col at 9am it started getting hot. By 11am we reached the base of the final steep snow slope. I had heard this is steep enough to turn into an ice climb in icy conditions, though now it still had deep snow.

It was impossibly slow breaking trail up the steep snow, and I realized we had to be clever about how we did it. Blindly powering up would sap all our energy and take forever. I knew underneath the snow somewhere were tracks from the guided party, and the snow should be denser there. So I would poke around with my whippet until I felt harder snow underneath, then break trail there. It wasn’t always the most intuitive location, and the fixed line had enough slack that the rope location alone wouldn’t tell us where the tracks were. But once I found them it made a huge difference.

We took turns employing this strategy to make progress. Sometimes I also used the knee-clearing technique where I first dig snow out with my hands, then clear with my knee, then stomp down with my foot. This distributes the effort a bit and is quite effective.

Eventually we reached a rocky cliff at the top of the steep snow slope. The cliff was just barely below the col. I was periodically checking in with Zeeshan over the radio, and I radioed him to tell him we were approximately at the col. He said he knew because he was watching us through binoculars.

Andreas led traversing left at the base of the cliff, following the fixed lines. But the lines didn’t go quite to the col. Instead, they went straight up through a steep gully that accessed the summit ridge more directly. There was a spider web of old ropes in the gully, and Andreas started up. We didn’t know if there was some unknown difficulty in the col, but this route apparently worked.

I waited until Andreas was up and off the ropes, then started up. This was a very steep scramble on loose snow and rock, and I clipped multiple ropes just to be safe. I eventually pulled myself up on a boulder and scrambled around on snow to gain the ridge. It was around 1pm by then.

Andreas was already on the ridge but conditions didn’t look good. While it had been sunny all morning, we were now stuck in a whiteout and the wind was ferocious. I started to get cold very quickly. I looked to the right and could only see maybe 50ft, as the fixed line disappeared into the snow and whiteout along the ridge.

This storm was unexpected and not good news. We thought about waiting it out to see if conditions improved, but that would also be risky. Nico had told us it was approximately 3 hours to get from the col to the summit breaking trail, which we would be doing. And we would also plan to pitch out the crux rock step, which could take some time. If we headed up in a lull, but then the storm started up again, it would be very risky to be caught on the ridge with no shelter above 8000m. That sounded to me like a recipe for frostbite.

Last summer I had gotten frostbite climbing Pik Pobeda in Kyrgyzstan, and since then I have been extra conservative with decision making in the mountains.

With both of us getting colder in the wind it was an easy decision to bail.  I rapped down the rope, and Andreas soon followed. Once below we traversed to the edge of the cliffy section, then took turns rapping down the face. By now we were engulfed in clouds with low visibility as the storm descended.

We made it down to the bottom of the steep section, then I radioed Zeeshan to tell him our change of plans so he didn’t worry about us. We made quick time descending, and were back down to camp 3 by 5pm.

Of course, by then the storm had passed over and it was sunny again. But I was still satisfied with our decision to bail, given the information we had at the time. The forecast had been accurate all day except for those few hours in mid afternoon.

I radioed basecamp to say we were staying at camp 3. I was exhausted from all the trail breaking at such high altitude. Ben got on the radio then and said he and Titiano were planning to go for the summit that night. They were currently at the 6700m and 6900m camps and would be passing through camp 3 around 2am. We were welcome to join if we wanted.

I really wished they would have instead helped us break trail that day. With four people we would have been twice as fast and maybe beat the storm. But I think Titiano was still recovering from his previous Broad attempt and Ben had still been recovering from his sickness, so the timing just didn’t quite work.

I was torn. I knew I was probably too exhausted to just sleep a few hours and then turn around and go all the way back up to 8000m. But the trail was freshly broken (by us) and progress should be fast to the col. However, the forecast was worse, with the jet stream coming in some time that afternoon and marking the beginning of a week of bad weather. It was a bit concerning to me that the wind might start early. But if we started very early and were fast maybe we could beat it.

I told Ben I was 50/50, and would see how much rest I could get that evening. If he saw me standing outside the tent at 2am I was joining, but otherwise I’d not join. Andreas was not interested in joining.

I optimistically packed my bag and left it outside the tent, then ate some dinner and tried to get to sleep around 7pm.

July 9

I set my alarm for 1:30am, but when I got up I realized I was not quite ready for another summit push. I probably needed at least one rest day before something like that. So I semi-reluctantly went back to bed.

We got up at sunrise and packed up. This time we left the sleeping bags in the tent, since we would come back directly to camp 3 on our next attempt. We headed down on our own, but then below camp 2 we encountered a big guided group heading up. It was Elite Expeditions. I was very surprised. Chris had told us the jet stream would be hitting K2 and Broad that afternoon and stay for a week with snow and high wind. The next week sounded too dangerous to be attempting the summit. Elite Expeditions must have had a different forecast, though.

Lower down we met Andrew, G-Lo, and Ali taking a break at camp 1. They said they were planning to summit on the 11^th. I was surprised again, and told them what Chris’s forecast was. But they had a different forecast and were trusting that. I still trusted Chris.

We wished them good luck and headed back down to basecamp by lunch time as usual.

I later heard Titiano and Ben had made excellent time up to the col in our tracks, then Titiano turned around at the crux rock step. Apparently, it had gotten very cold and windy by then and he was worried about frostbite.

Ben had continued up solo. He had used a thin rope left by Nico on the crux to provide a little bit of security climbing up, then had broken trail to the summit in high winds. He was the third person to summit that season, and descended back to the 6700m camp and paraglided down to basecamp.

July 10

As we expected, the weather was snowy and windy on the upper mountain. Elite Expeditions, Andrew, G-Lo, Ali, and some other climbers all descended instead of pushing for the summit.

We heard Elite Expeditions was going to move over to K2 to prioritize that instead of sticking around to give Broad another shot. I think a lot of clients were getting guided up both peaks (with oxygen), and would plan to return to Broad after doing K2.

July 11 – 15

The weather was bad as forecast for the next few days, either snowing all the way down to basecamp or windy up high on the mountain or both. So we mostly hung out in basecamp reading books and eating a lot of food to recover from our summit bid.

One day we hiked up to K2 basecamp to try to learn some information for our K2 attempt. We talked to Marie’s friend Krisli at Madison Mountaineering and Dawa at Seven Summit Treks. It sounded like teams were planning to summit K2 on July 22, which looked good in the long-term forecast.

Nico, Titiano, and Guiseppe all decided to hike out rather than wait a week for good weather. Ben wanted to stick around to go for a speed ascent of Broad, then stay and climb K2.

Eventually the bad weather was forecast to end around July 16/17, with an excellent window the 18^th and 19^th. Andreas, I, and Marie decided to go for the summit July 18^th.  That would give the snow about two days to stabilize before we headed above camp 3, which should be sufficient. Then after summitting we could rest a few days while the first wave of K2 climbers summitted K2, and we could hopefully go for K2 shortly after July 22 when the crowds had cleared out. Ben would wait until the 19^th , after we had broken trail, to go for a speed ascent from basecamp to summit in one push. His breaking trail would not help with getting a fast time.

Our original plan had been to wait until we got down from submitting Broad to tell Ali to start the process of applying for K2 permits. But Andreas and I had already seen how we performed at nearly 8000m on our first attempt up Broad. We had been breathing fine, even when breaking trail, and the summit was only about 150m higher than we had gotten. So we would very likely be fine on K2 also.

We decided we had enough confidence in ourselves that we could give K2 without oxygen a shot. There was no reason to wait until after summitting Broad, since that might add unnecessary delays. So we told Ali to go ahead and pay for the K2 permits and start the process.

Marie had already done G2 without oxygen last summer, so she also went ahead with the K2 permit. And Ben had done fine on Broad so also went ahead with the permit. We hoped we could get the permits in time to capitalize on the next weather window after the main wave of climbers came down from K2.

For our Broad attempt this time it absolutely had to be more people than just me and Andreas breaking trail. That was way too much work and was too slow.

All the guided groups appeared to have moved over to K2 or gone home for the season, so we needed to team up with some independent groups. We went over to the British team at Blue Sky and they said they could join.

But, we’d heard they changed their plans a lot so we needed someone else too. We went to Leila Peak team and many of them were planning to summit on July 19. But we wanted to summit on the soonest possible day to give us more time to rest up for K2.

One climber, Bartek from Poland, agreed to join us on July 18. Also our friends Pika and Luc were planning to summit July 18. So we would almost certainly have extra help breaking trail.

This time we would do a few things differently to learn from mistakes on our first attempt. All three of us would actually bring the ascent plates this time. Also, since Andrew was going up later he would lend his ascent plates to Pika.

This time I would just bring my 30m rope and an even lighter rock rack to save weight. I would leave the rope fixed on the rock step so Andrew, G-Lo and Ali could use it the next day. And all other climbers would be welcome to use it also, of course. If we wanted to rap the step we’d need my 60m rope, but that was kind of heavy when breaking trail. We would also not bring the pickets, since we could clip into the fixed rope up to the col, and that was the end of the glaciated terrain.

July 16

The weather was snowy and windy in the morning but improved in the afternoon, marking the start of the next weather window. Marie headed up that morning at sunrise, since she wanted to stop at camp 2 for a night before moving to camp 3. She would meet Andreas and I at camp 3.

We heard that famous mountaineer Dennis Urubko was going for the summit that day. He had moved to camp 3 July 15 and broke trail solo above camp 3 that morning. I was surprised, since it seemed unlikely the snow would have stabilized by then and the weather was very marginal. I later heard he made it to the col and turned around in bad weather. It sounded like almost the exact same experience that Andreas and I had. I also heard his time from basecamp to camp 3 and camp 3 to the col were almost the exact same times that Andreas and I had made. This gave us confidence that we were moving at a good speed.

July 17

We left camp at 430am as usual and met up with the British and Latin American teams at the base of the fixed lines. The British were planning to summit July 19, and the Latin Americans the 19^th or 20^th. We passed them on the way to camp 1, and also passed a Polish group going for the 19^th and some other independent climbers.

We checked in periodically with Marie on the radio and she said something a little cryptic like “your tent is damaged but exists”. I was concerned since I’d heard of climbers sneaking into other tents that weren’t theirs. I also remembered the weather had been very windy the past week. I had secured my tent very well, though, tying the vestibule closed with sections of scrap fixed line and completely zipping everything closed. I used big rocks to anchor the vestibule, and put big rocks in the tent for weight, so there shouldn’t have been a problem.

However, when we got to camp 2 I noticed my tent was in very tough condition. The vestibule was ripped nearly completely off! The internal poles were sticking out the sides, having ripped holes in the corners. The ventilation vents on the top, which I had carefully zipped shut, were opened. When I opened the entrance it was partially filled with snow.

All evidence pointed to the fact that some other climber had used the tent and left the vestibule and entrance unzipped before the storm. There is no way the wind could have untied the knots I tied to secure the vestibule. And there was no other way snow would have gotten inside. Also, it was not possible for the wind to unzip and open the ventilation vents – that can only be done from the inside!

I was furious at the other climbers. There was an empty platform just below my tent they could have easily used! I don’t really have a problem with them sleeping in the tent if they are considerate, but I do have a problem with them being too lazy to zip it back up and leave it the way they found it when they leave. In the future I will put a lock on my tent entrance on 8000m peaks.

I carefully repaired the new holes and damage as best as I could with duct tape, re-anchored the tent, picked out a few items of my food, and zipped it back up.

We continued up the familiar route, and caught up to a guided seven summit treks team around 6500m. They were also planning to summit July 18. In fact, they planned to leave from camp 3 that night around 9pm. There were four sherpas who were planning to break trail, and they would all have supplemental oxygen.

This was excellent news for us. They were already planning to break trail, and were leaving much earlier than we wanted to. So we would likely have a broken trail at least part of the way. We would likely catch up to them eventually, though, and could take over trail breaking duties then.

We also passed two Czech women climbing up who were planning to summit July 18. So it seemed like we’d have plenty of help this time with trail breaking.

We met up with Marie at camp 3 by early afternoon and started melting snow. The camp had a lot more activity this time, with a lot more tents set up.

By 7pm we managed to get to sleep, and around 9pm the guided group started up as planned.

July 18

Andreas and I were up and moving by 1:30am, accompanied by Karolina and Bartek. Marie, Pika and Luc had started a few hours earlier.

We followed the tracks of the guided group and soon found the fixed lines. It was much colder this time than I remembered from our previous attempt, and I had trouble keeping my fingers and toes warm. This was likely because it was still dark and because I was not using supplemental oxygen. I’ve heard that if you don’t breathe supplemental oxygen you are more susceptible to getting frostbite, and I wanted to be very careful to avoid this.

I would stop very frequently to shake my feet to warm my toes and to do the “penguin dance” to warm up my fingers. This made me fall behind a little bit. My hands got really cold gripping the ascender, so I tried to minimize the amount of time touching it. I would quickly push it up, then release and just climb without it until I needed to push it up again.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling these effects. At about 7400m Karolina said she was turning around because she was having trouble staying warm. I can understand this, but I was confident I could keep myself warm.

By sunrise we caught up to Luc and Marie, then shortly afterward caught up to the guided team as they were breaking trail up the final snow slope.

We soon climbed up to the col, and met Pika and Bartek taking a break there in the sun. This time the sky was clear and the wind was low. It looked like it was turning out to be an excellent summit day as forecast.

The guided team was resting and we thanked them for their hard work breaking trail. They said they needed to take a break, and I volunteered we could take over. I said we could fix a rope on the crux rock step, but didn’t have enough rope to fix any more sections.

The sherpas had a little bit of rope, but not enough to fix much of the route. I think their plan was to short rope the clients. Though they said this was their first time climbing Broad Peak so they were a bit uncertain about the route.

This was our first time also. I took over then, clipped into the new fixed rope along the ridge, and started breaking trail. In front of me I saw huge cornices on the left with views into China, and a rock cliff on the right dropping 1000m or so into Pakistan. Above I saw an intimidating rocky peak, and I knew this was the first false summit.

Broad peak is notorious for climbers turning around at the false summit and still claiming they have summitted. I’d read that the peak you see from the col is approximately the false summit, and to get to the true summit you have to descend to another col and climb back up. It adds about an hour and is not technically difficult, but many climbers are too tired by then to add the extra effort and just call the false summit good enough.

I’d read that in 1994 famous mountaineer Hans Kammerlander, Messner’s climbing partner, got so frustrated with people falsely claiming to have summitted that he left a piece of red and purple climbing rope attached to a ski pole on the true summit and asked returning climbers what they had seen up there (source: summitpost.com).

I followed the fixed rope to the base of the crux rock step, and then it ended. Nico had said he’d left a 20m rope on the crux that didn’t quite reach the bottom. I saw the rope, and it was very thin. I probably wouldn’t trust it with body weight, so was happy to use my own rope.

Pika was close behind and volunteered to lead up if I belayed him. I was planning to lead it myself, but he’s a guide in Bolivia and probably more experienced than I am, so I was ok with this. I tied in to the anchor at the end of the fixed line and belayed him up on my 30m glacier rope.

He quickly made it up the pitch, holding the old rope but not putting any gear in. I would have definitely put a few cams in but Pika must be a very confident climber. From below it looks like an easy snow slope on the left side, but this is likely a cornice and we stayed away from it.

At the top it sounded a bit tricky to find an anchor, and by this time all the independent climbers and the guided group had caught up to us. Bartek got a little eager and just started soloing up, but by then Pika had a good anchor in place.

The rock step is a little tricky since it is kind of like a fin. This makes it tricky to lay a fixed line along the crest since it will just blow off in the wind. We decided the best strategy was to let it go along the face on the Pakistani side, which would require a short traverse at the base. The traverse would end directly below the good anchor point.

We took turns climbing up. The traverse was a bit sketchy since we had to leave slack in the rope, so if you slipped you’d slip pretty far. But the footholds were big (probably Washington 4^th class), so I thought it wasn’t a problem. Then the vertical part was low 5^th class but no problem with the fixed line.

Soon Bartek, Andreas, and I made it up. Luc and Marie would follow later. But, surprisingly, the guided team turned around there. I think some of the clients were nervous about the sketchy part on the crux and that there would be no fixed lines above the crux. I would certainly be nervous guiding someone with limited experience in that kind of terrain. I would personally only go with very experienced partners up there.

It was interesting that the six climbers without supplemental oxygen were continuing while the eight climbers using supplemental oxygen were descending.

Andreas, Bartek, and I took the lead from there. There were occasionally small fragments of old fixed line, but for the most part we were on our own. We took turns breaking trail and tried to stay as far away from the cornices as we could while also avoiding the cliff on the right. It was tricky at times but we made it work.

Trail breaking was much more tiring up there above 8000m than it had been on our previous attempt, and I was thrilled to be in a team of three instead of two. We each basically got to rest in the back 50% more time than before, which was very significant. I think we did a good job distributing the effort.

To get to the rocky false summit I at a few times had to use two tools – whippet and ice ax – as dagger placements, then we found some old fixed line near the summit. We would generally clip into multiple lines and not weight them, since they weren’t super trustworthy but would still likely hold body weight.

At the top of the first peak we saw another peak reasonably close, and naively thought that was the summit. In fact, I would say there are two false summits along the ridge. We went up and over this summit, then up and over the next one. Past that we could clearly see the true summit in the distance. It turns out this is actually visible from the col, though it is far enough to the left that it is deceptive that it is actually taller than the rocky false summit.

The terrain from this last false summit to the true summit is actually the least exposed and least-corniced of the ridge. It’s really just a casually low-angle walk. I appreciated bringing my whippet, which helped me balance while trail breaking in the low-angle terrain.

By 1pm we crested the summit. It was unmistakably the highest point on the ridge, and we stopped to take a bunch of pictures. The skies were mostly clear and the winds low. It was a perfect summit day.

K2 stood out in the distance, and we got great views into China and back down to basecamp. I wanted to radio down to basecamp, but unfortunately the battery had died.

I remembered on my previous big mountain – Pik Pobeda – we hadn’t bothered to take summit pictures of each other since it was so cold, and I’d regretted that. So this time Andreas and I made sure to spend the extra minute and take a summit shot of each other. I also got a selfie shot of all three of us.

After about 10 minutes we headed back to warm up. The whole ascent I had been warm enough with my down jacket on but no down pants. In fact, I had a few times been warm enough to take the down jacket off, which was surprising.

Bartek strapped his skis on and skied down directly from the summit while Andreas and I hiked down. We met Pika and Luc near one false summit, then Marie was in the col between the false summits. It looked like they had plenty of time left and good weather so should have no problem summitting.

We followed our tracks back down, and I was a bit more relaxed in this direction. Nobody had poked through a cornice on the way up, so it was very likely if we followed our tracks exactly on the way down we would be safe.

Bartek was much faster, and blasted ahead, but Andreas and I soon rapped down the crux and took a short break at the col. I was getting low on energy and tried to eat a granola bar, but just threw it back up. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and wasn’t able to keep anything down. I’ve discovered this effect seems to only happen above about 8000m for me, and it can be problematic to get calories in. This was a good lesson to learn from before climbing K2.

We rapped down from the col and continued down the fixed lines. It seemed we were the only ones on this section of the route since the guided team had descended much earlier and nobody else had come up. So we could rap all the lines we wanted.

I started slowing down from the lack of calories, and Andreas reached camp 3 much earlier. I finally staggered back to camp in the late afternoon. It was much more crowded now with many teams planning to go up that night. Lots of climbers congratulated us, and they were very pleased to hear that we had fixed a rope on the crux and broken trail to the summit.

I cooked up some dinner, which I was able to eat at this lower elevation, and we packed up our gear. Andrew and G-Lo were in camp and looked strong. They planned to go up that evening also. Ali was feeling sick and would wait at camp 2.

Shortly before sunset Andreas and I were all packed up and heading down. We wanted to get as low as we could so we could get a better sleep. Andreas was moving much faster than I was, and we ended up just making it down to camp 2 before deciding to sleep there for the night.

We were hoping to sleep in G-Lo’s tent since it was bigger than mine, but we noticed someone was already in there. We naively thought it was Ali, but it turned out to be some other random climber we didn’t know. That was a little frustrating, since there was still an empty platform next to G-Lo’s the climber could have used. But we crawled into my smaller tent.

I was coughing a lot, and I think it was from dehydration. I probably need more water above 8000m than I had expected and I didn’t drink enough. This was another good lesson to learn from before climbing K2.

I later learned that Pika and Luc had summitted shortly after us and made it to camp 3 in the evening. Marie had summitted later and descended solo. She broke through a cornice on the descent on the summit ridge but miraculously landed on a ledge a few meters below. She was able to climb back up but had injured her back. She made it down to camp 3 later that night.

July 19

Around 1:30am I saw someone passing and it was Ben! He was moving fast on his speed record attempt. He was gone before I thought to yell out any words of encouragement to him.

We got up at sunrise and packed down my tent. I needed to leave a few items that Marie had stored in my tent, so I had to rouse the random climber in G-Lo’s tent and throw the items in there. It seemed a little weird that the climber didn’t say anything at all to me. I’d think he would at least say thank you for letting him use the tent, even if he didn’t speak English.

The route was surprisingly empty as we descended. I think July 19 was the major summit wave, and I was happy to have avoided it.

By now camp 1 was much more melted out, and it looked difficult to find enough snow for water there. This also meant rockfall below would be more dangerous with the route melted out. We ended up catching up to a few climbers from the seven summit treks team, and we all agreed to stay close together to minimize rockfall risk.

We got down safely, then hiked back to basecamp. The basecamp staff were excited to see us back safely, and put Hawaiian lei necklaces around our necks.

Amazingly Ben was already down! He had summitted in just 7 hours 28 minutes from the bottom of the fixed lines. (He built a big cairn where he started his timer). He then flew directly off the summit down to basecamp, and was there an hour or so before us. This is the new fastest known time to summit Broad peak, and undoubtedly the fastest time to descend from the summit. I think he’s the first person to paraglide from the summit.

Over dinner we discussed many conflicting accounts of what had occurred during that day, based on radio check ins and talking to other groups in basecamp. It was a crowded day with a lot going on, and I was happy to have avoided that, as we had planned. The highlights of July 19:

-Andrew and G-Lo had made it to around 8000m near the false summit but had to turn around before reaching the true summit.

-A British climber descending from the summit had slipped and fallen on the Pakistani side between the true summit and the rocky summit. He did not survive.

-An Italian climber, Francois, had started with Ben and was also trying for a fast single-push ascent. He saw the British climber fall and turned around there before reaching the summit.

-One climber was too tired to descend and had spent the night in an open bivy at the col after summitting. He needed help down to camp 3 and requested a helicopter rescue. But the helicopters won’t fly above 6500m, so the rescue could only happen from camp 2. I never saw a helicopter going up there, so I think the climber was helped down on foot.

-Marie needed a bit of extra time getting down after her injury, so ended up spending a few days coming down.

-Denis Urubko summitted.

-As before, no ropes were fixed beyond the one we left on the crux.

Over the next few days Marie, Andrew, G-Lo, and Ali all made it down to basecamp. We celebrated with a big chocolate cake the cook staff made.

Unfortunately, we later learned our friend Luc had got frostbite on all his fingers when he summitted July 18. He would later need a helicopter evacuation.

Interestingly, of the first ten summits on Broad Peak this season, seven were from our team! All summits I heard of through July 19 were from independent unguided teams. I heard that a few more parties made it up on the 20^th, one from seven summit treks, and a few more guided climbers made it up later in July with sherpas fixing ropes the rest of the way to the summit.

Andrew and G-Lo would soon pack up and hike out along with a team of five German climbers who were also in our camp.

Meanwhile Andreas, Marie, Ben and I stuck around to rest up for our next mountain, K2. (Link to K2 trip report).

 

 

 

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