K2 2004: K2 South: the summit attempt has begun: Italian expedition Everest/K2 2004 expedition

K2 2004 - 50 years later

The weather has improved on the Baltoro glacier. This morning the K2 2004 climbers have begun the critical phase of the ascent: the summit attempt is expected for the weekend.

The critical phase of the K2 2004 expedition – seeing the climbers attempting the final leap towards the summit - has begun today.

The weather forecast, worked out for us by NimbusWeb (the Italian Weather Society website), showed to be reliable again and this morning, with the weather slowly but firmly improving, the first groups of climbers have left towards the high camps, according to the strategy defined during the past days.

Silvio Mondinelli, Mario Merelli, Adriano Greco, Ugo Giacomelli, Alex Busca, Massimo Farina, Michele Compagnoni, Karl Unterkircher and Walter Nones have left heading directly to camp II. Tomorrow they will climb to camp III aiming at setting up the “South Col” tent, left - still disassembled – at an altitude of about 7500 m. At the daybreak of Saturday 24 the nine climbers will leave towards the summit.

Marco Confortola, Paolo Confortola and Stefano Zavka are climbing with them too, but they are going to stop at camp I. The day after they will head to the lower camp III, the little high altitude tent set up at 7350m. They will spend the night there and on Saturday morning they will follow the nine climbers of the first group towards the summit. Once reached the summit, the climbers of both the groups will try to come back directly to the base camp, without stopping at the intermediate camps for the night.

Nadia Tiraboschi and Pierangelo Maurizio have left this morning, too. The two are going to spend the night at camp I and to climb to camp II tomorrow, joining there with the group leaving tomorrow morning. Giuliano De Marchi, Enrico Lazzeri, Leandro Giannangeli, Sergio Minoggio, Tarcisio Belḷ, Marco Forcatura and Gianpietro Verza compose the last wave of climbers going up to camp II tomorrow. On Saturday, the group will climb to camp III and on Sunday they will attempt the summit.

copyright Italian expedition Everest/K2 2004 expedition Expedition

 

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