K2 Disaster: Alone in the Death Zone

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0:58It is the evening of August the 1st, 2008. In the northernmost reaches of Pakistan, along the 500-mile fault in the Earth, where the Indian subcontinent smashes into the rest of Asia, we'll find a vertical world of ice and rock. The vast Karakoram Range. With over 60 peaks exceeding 7 ,000 meters, the Karakorum contains the greatest concentration of high-altitude mountains anywhere on the planet. And of these, none is taller or mightier than K2. Straddling the border with China, the world's second-highest mountain looms imperiously over the snow-capped peaks that surround it, an immense slab of glaciated granite puncturing the troposphere.

1:49Due to its exposed northern location, K2 is notorious for its severe and unpredictable weather. For much of the year, the mountain remains shrouded in a mantle of freezing mist, pelted by blizzards and raked by high-velocity winds. As a result, K2 has acquired a fearsome reputation among mountaineers. In 1953, an American climber named George Bell, reeling from his failed attempt to reach the summit, described K2 as a savage mountain that tries to kill you. And indeed, it can sometimes seem as if K2 possesses a will of its own, its slopes forever shifting and rearranging themselves with great roaring avalanches and thunderous rock falls, as if the violent, tectonic forces that created this mountain are still reverberating.

2:47But tonight, the slopes of K2 are quiet. A day of fair weather has passed into a still, clear evening, and from base camp to summit, a heavy silence hangs in the thin alpine air. For the eight climbers picking their way down the sloping snowfield east of the summit, these are good conditions to make a descent. A rare window of calm. And then, the mountain wakes up. At about 8 p.m. local time, a massive chunk of ice detaches itself from the lip of a hanging glacier a few hundred feet below the summit. A terrifying roar thunders in the darkness as several tons of broken, fragmented ice go shrieking down the slope.

3:34Though it misses the climbers on the snowfield, the falling ice crashes directly across the marked route they intend to follow, obliterating everything in its path. The fixed ropes, the ice screws, the route markers, all are swept away in the deluge. By the time it stops, the icefall has erased everything that the climbers are relying on to get down, leaving them stranded. Dutch climber Wilco van Rooyen is one of them. Imagine you're coming back from the summit, convinced that the ropes are there. That it's just a matter of clicking into the ropes, following the lines and get back and you can't find the ropes.

4:21Nobody could have imagined that your rope would be gone. Normally a rope is breaking and then you You see some flaps hanging, you fix it and you go on. But in this case, the rope was all the way gone. We were trapped.

4:46Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet 40-year-old mountaineer Wilco van Royen. In the summer of 2008, Wilco is leading an expedition up one of the world's most iconic mountains, the colossal K2. Things are going to plan until the descent, when a massive icefall leaves the climbers stranded without fixed ropes.

5:28Oblivious to what exactly has happened, Wilco and his fellow climbers will spend hours searching for the ropes, all the while running down the clock on how long their bodies can safely exist at this extreme altitude, the so-called death zone.

5:45There is a limitation for every human being because we can't survive at an 8 kilometers as high. There is a lack of oxygen, you will die. The only question is, what kind of period can you survive? Soon, it won't be just the dizzying altitude that Wilco is contending with. Besieged by cold and plagued by dehydration, the Dutchman's situation will go from bad to worse, when a hasty decision robs him of one of his senses, and he is forced to make a drastic, death-defying choice. It was to be or not to be. So for me, you know, it was not a rational decision. It was just my gut feeling, you know, that I knew if I don't take action right now, I'm done.

6:29I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Real Survival Stories.

6:50The End

7:02It's July the 30th, 2008, 17 ,000 feet above sea level. In Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains, amid an amphitheater of sawtoothed granite ridge lines, a collection of tents stands on a snow-flecked plateau of shingle and moraine. This is K2 Base Camp, the staging post for those attempting to conquer the world's second tallest mountain. On this summer's evening, Base Camp is busier than usual. Weeks of bad weather have prevented any summit attempts on K2, which has caused a backlog of frustrated climbers. Eight separate expedition teams have converged on base camp, where they can do little but sit and wait and hope conditions improve.

7:49Among those anxiously checking the forecast is Dutch mountaineer Wilco van Rooyen. When there is no opportunity in the weather, sometimes K2 is never being climbed. Not every year, like Mount Everest, because the snowfall is heavier. So there are many years that K2 haven't been climbed, because, you know, there was not a window in the weather system.

8:14Wilco walks to the edge of camp and looks north, through gaps in the swirling cloud, towards the looming bulk of K2. The mountain's south face is an almost perfect pyramid of ice, shaded black in areas where huge fists of granite punch through the snow. Wilco is 40 years old. He has spiky silver hair, glacial blue eyes, and a single hoop earring that glints in his left ear. He is the leader of an international expedition team, which has been stalled here at base camp for almost three months. They've spent some of that time prepping routes and making practice climbs on lower peaks. But there's only one real reason they're here.

8:58And with July almost over, the truth is unavoidable. They're running out of time to summit K2. Most of accidents happened in August, so we said to each other, we won't climb in August, you are too late, the humidity is getting higher and higher, the avalanche danger, etc., etc. At just over 8 ,600 meters, or 28 ,000 feet, the summit of K2 sits squarely in the path of the subtropical jet stream. a fast-flowing vortex of air that circulates year-round and batters the mountain with brutal hurricane-force winds. In July, the jet stream shifts north, providing a brief window of relatively temperate weather for climbers to make a dash for the summit.

9:47This year, the strong winds have persisted longer than usual, creating the backlog at base camp. The climbing teams must be on their toes, poised to take advantage of even the slightest uptick in the weather. But seizing that opportunity is a delicate balancing act. Warmer temperatures can bring their own set of dangers, increasing the risk of icefalls, collapsing snow bridges and avalanches. As they near August, the window of opportunity shrinks. Soon, it will slam shut altogether. But just as Wilco and his team are beginning to resign themselves to disappointment, the forecast suddenly improves.

10:29In this case, it is unbelievable. Our weather forecast man predicted on the 31 of July, would it almost be hardly no wind on the summit. That was our last and biggest opportunity in this three months. So all the teams knew, okay, we have to go on the 31. Action stations. In the pre-dawn darkness of the 31st of July, Wilco and his team join the 30 or so other climbers embarking from base camp to the next waypoint. Wilco has made two prior attempts to summit K2. Both were unsuccessful. Now, as dawn breaks over the Karakoram, you can only hope that it will be third time lucky.

11:23Wilco van Rooyen grew up in Utrecht, a picturesque canal-lined city in the Netherlands. It's an ironic part of the world for a mountaineer to call home. With over a quarter of its surface sitting below sea level, the Netherlands is one of the flattest countries on earth. It required childhood trips to Switzerland to spark Wilco's passion for mountaineering. I was raised in an average family. My father was a hard-working man, two older sisters, and my daddy had a passion to go every year to the mountains. We went to the Swiss Alps. We didn't do extreme things, just, you know, walking till approximately 3 ,000 meters or whatever.

12:06Inspired by these family holidays, young Wilco continued to nurture his newfound passion back home. He joined mountaineering groups in the Netherlands, meeting like-minded Dutch climbers and signing up for guided expeditions in the Alps. It wasn't long before he was getting his professional qualifications. I did my primary course and advanced courses. Finally, I became an instructor, met my best climbing buddies, actually. And the most important one is Kas van der Gevel. I climbed actually all the difficult north faces in the Alps, like Eigen North Face, Grandes, Jurasas, Mataroren.

12:45Alongside his climbing partner, Kas van der Gevel, Wilco completed some of the most iconic routes in European mountaineering. but he always had his sights set on bigger challenges. In 1995, aged 28, he joined an expedition to Asia to explore new routes of the notoriously difficult K2. It was his first experience of a mountain of that scale and it ended disastrously. Wilco was almost killed by a rockfall and had to get airlifted off the slopes. When I was in the hospital, the only thing I was thinking, I had really, really bad luck. And everybody was telling me, no, you were really lucky because you're still alive.

13:27So I broke my bone in my face. I broke my arm. I lost one and a half liters of blood. So everybody was saying, it could have been your death, you know. And of course I said, yeah, it could be. But never in my mind I was doubting, you know, that I would go back. Wilco's accident merely galvanized his desire to someday return to K2. But in the meantime, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to sharpen his skills. I did, you know, the three poles, North Pole, South Pole, Everest, got the Explorers Grand Slam, so climbing all the highest mountains of all the continents and skip to the North and South Pole.

14:05And then I thought, okay, now I'm ready to go back to K2.

14:13This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Get your tickets now for the Dog Stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Out there, just kill or be killed.

14:55Jacob Elordi. There are people out there. They need our help. Josh Brolin. Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Ow! Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17, not admitted without parents. By 2006, Wilco had become one of the world's most accomplished mountaineers and adventurers. Eleven years had passed since his first failed attempt to climb K2. By every metric, he was now a much stronger and more skilled climber. And yet, Wilco's second attempt to summit K2 also failed. He attributes this to a lack of cohesion among the expedition members.

15:38It wasn't a success because we were not a real team. We were a bunch of individuals. And then I realized, okay, you know, if I really want to go back again, then I should invest, you know, in a real team. By 2008, Wilco had resolved to give it another go. This time, he would carefully assemble the team himself, handpicking a crack squad of elite climbers, people he knew and trusted. Among the members of Wilco's current team are his longtime climbing partner, Cas van der Gevel, Irish mountaineer Gerard McDonnell, and Pember Gil-G, a vastly experienced Nepalese Sherpa. This is a team with serious pedigree.

16:23And yet... I knew that it was not automatically guaranteed that I would come back from this mountain, because K2 has still statistics on one on four. So, you know, if you're climbing with eight people, probably you have a big chance of losing two people.

16:43Though 800 feet shorter than Everest, K2 is considered far more difficult to climb and at least six times more deadly. It is steeper, more isolated, and due to its more northerly location, exposed to more extreme weather with harsher winds and colder temperatures. The fatality statistics bear this out. As of 2008, for every four people who reach K2's summit, only three will make it back down alive. Any climber must come to terms with this very real risk of death, particularly if, like Wilco, they have families waiting for them back home. If you say goodbye at home, for me in that case, you know, to my wife and my boy of seven months, You have to write at least a letter to make sure that if you are not coming back from this mountain and your boy or my boy in this case, that he can still read this letter and hopefully he will understand why his daddy this was doing.

17:43And it's not easy because when I'm on the airport and saying goodbye to my wife, it's not so easy because you don't know if you're coming back. But of course you do it because you have a lot of experiences, you have the best budgets, you have the best meteorologists, the best climbers. Ultimately, all any climber can do is prepare. For Wilco, preparation is about learning the scope of his capabilities and measuring those capabilities against any hypothetical setbacks. There is a limitation for every human being because we can't survive at 8 kilometers height. There is a lack of oxygen, you will die.

18:22The only question is, what kind of period can you survive? Is it one day, two days, three days? You try to do it in one day. That's okay, but what will happen if it's not successful in 24 hours? So when I was training, I tried to imagine what can happen on this mountain if things are not according to plan. And I can guarantee you, expeditions are never according to plan.

19:00It's the early hours of August the 1st. Wilco and his team are making their way up the wind-blasted southeast flank of K2. In darkness, lit by headlamps, the climbers pick their way along the shoulder, a steadily rising, mile-long ridge of thick snow bounded on both sides by precipitous drops. The men advance cautiously, skirting around crevasses, prodding the snow with their ice axes to test the ground. The going is slow, and made even slower by the crowds of climbers in front of them. With around 30 people en route to the summit, this is one of the busiest climbing days in K2's history. By the time Wilco and his team finally reach the top of the shoulder, night has given way to a morning of bright sun and blazing skies.

19:53It took, of course, much longer than we anticipated because, you know, of this traffic jam. So we moved on. The weather was brilliant. It was unbelievable. There was hardly no wind, you know, the sun was shining. Eventually, the shoulder rears up into a steep couloir known as the bottleneck, a near vertical gully of snow and ice sandwiched between two stacks of dirty broken rock. As Wilco and his team near the base of the bottleneck, their progress grinds to a halt. Wilco glances up. What he sees is disconcerting. An ugly tailback of maybe 20 or so climbers All funneled into the narrow cleft at the base of the gully Waiting their turn This shouldn't be happening Last night, an advanced team of Sherpas and local guides Went to establish fixed ropes along the length of the bottleneck To allow the following teams to pass through quickly Evidently, this advanced team was delayed They haven't finished setting the ropes and now the rest of the climbers have caught up with them.

21:07Not only that, but it seems certain individuals are less confident with the techniques required to scale this obstacle, slowing everyone down. In the so-called bottleneck, you have to climb a steep ice wall actually with two ice axes. But with all respect, I won't mention the names, but there were climbers, they really couldn't climb with the two ice axes fast enough through this difficulty. So it took a while and you can't pass each other, you know. So they were holding up the rest. As they tried to keep warm at the base of the bottleneck, Wilco lifts his gaze to what sits directly above it. The Serac.

21:50The blunt, protruding edge of a hanging glacier, jutting out above the galley. A tottering, teetering shelf of suspended ice some 600 feet thick and over half a mile wide. Over the decades, as the glacier inches forwards, huge pieces of ice have cleaved off the Serac and tumbled down the bottleneck, smashing away anything or anyone in their path. In recent years, the Serac has been quiet, with no reports of icefalls. But as Wilco gazes up at it now, gleaming in the morning sun, this giant frozen edifice appears precariously poised, looming ominously above the climbers below.

22:40Over the course of the morning, some climbers turn back, spooked by the delays. After all, the later it gets, the likelier it is they'll be descending at night, when the dangers multiply tenfold. Even some members of Wilco's own team call it quits, but he holds his nerve. At last, the congestion in the bottleneck clears, allowing the rest of the climbers to pass through. They continue all day, slogging up the final 1300 feet until eventually… Finally, we reach the summit after 17 hours of climbing. With the sun just beginning to set, Wilco stands on the pinnacle of K2, the mountain that has thwarted him twice before.

23:26The view from the summit is spectacular, hundreds of jagged peaks stretching away in all directions. Wilco uses his satellite phone to call his wife at home in the Netherlands to tell her the good news. Then, after snapping some triumphant photos, Wilco and his three remaining teammates, Cass, Gerard, and Pember, turn their attention to the long way down. Scaling a mountain is just halfway. That's a big, big difference with trail running or marathons, because then you can give everything till the finish line, but on a mountain you have to go back as well. With daylight fading, Wilco and the others begin the descent.

24:10Within moments, evening darkness has swallowed them. As they trudge across the immense snowfield that comprises the final summit push on K2, the members of the team drift apart. Each man retreats into his own world, focused on the lonely task of getting down the mountain in one piece.

24:35Several hours later, Wilco reaches the Traverse, a horizontal climb along an ice wall that leads to the top of the bottleneck. But when he looks for the fixed ropes installed by the advanced team, he can't see them. Strange. He stands there, his headlamp a solitary beam in the blackness, squinting into the gaping void below. Imagine you coming back from the summit, convinced that the rogues are there, that it's just a matter of clicking into the rogues, following the lines and get back, you know, in the middle of the night, and you can't find the rogues. Wilco backtracks and veers off to the right.

25:15Maybe he's just disoriented. He trudges east across the snowfield until he spots a headlamp. Coming closer, he sees that it belongs to a climber from a different team, an Italian named Marco Confortola. He is with Wilco's teammate, Gerard McDonnell, but the Irishman is in a bad way, suffering from the effects of the cold. Wilco consults with Marco, who suspects they must be in the wrong place. Even if an avalanche had damaged the ropes, there would still be some trace of them. Loose, tattered strands flapping in the wind. They can't just have disappeared. Nobody could have imagined that your rope would be gone.

25:58Normally, a rope is breaking and then you see some flaps hanging. You fix it and you go on. But in this case, the rope was all the way gone. We were trapped.