Thursday, August 5, 2010

K2 2010 Summit Bid Update: back in C4...may try again tonight!

From stu in the usa office
7am on August 6th, local K2 time

Just off the phone from Fabrizio who let us know that most of the climbers who set off this am are back in C4 after finding the snow and wind and poor visibility combined to make the climbing too slow and difficult. At the time he called, Gerlinde and Fredrik were still climbing up and in the region of the bottleneck. I could hear the sounds of the tents being lashed by strong winds and Fabrizio said they he felt they were in at lest the 35-40km/hr range. They began climbing in the snow which fell lightly from 11pm to 4:30am and made visibility very difficult. The winds rose during this time so as the snow fall lowered the winds were picking up and causing the fallen snow make route finding very difficult.

Fabrizio and the rest are safe in their tents which are well dug in and tied down. They have sufficient food and fuel to remain for a day and try again tonight for a summit on the 7th. The forecast is not promising but the plan is to see how the conditions change over the next 5-6 hours and then decide whether to descend or try again.

Wish Gerlinde and Fredrik good luck!!

We’ll have any updates as they arise!

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