At least 9 climbers reported dead on K2 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- At least nine climbers were reported dead Sunday on K2, the world's second-highest mountain, after an ice avalanche crashed down the mountain, sweeping away fixed ropes and leaving some mountaineers trapped in the dark.

Several other climbers were missing, prompting a desperate rescue effort on K2, a peak in northern Pakistan near the border with China that is regarded as more dangerous to climb than Mount Everest.

Jim Whittaker, of Port Townsend, who led the first U.S. ascent of K2 in 1978, said the challenge with climbing K2 is the heavy and unpredictable snow.

"It has these tremendous snowfalls, so you get these tremendous avalanches," he said.

The catastrophe cast a pall over the international climbing community and caused one mountaineer to report on a Web site from Base Camp: "There's a taste of death in this place."

A total of 22 people, mostly foreigners, in eight different groups scaled K2's summit on Friday, said Nazir Sabir of the Alpine Club of Pakistan.

As climbers made their way down Friday, a chunk of an ice pillar snapped, breaking fixed ropes on the area of the peak just below the summit, known as "The Bottleneck," according to expedition organizers.

The region is known as the Death Zone because climbers' bodies begin degenerating from a lack of oxygen at such a high altitude.

Reports were conflicting. The Alpine Club placed the casualty figure at nine and said several climbers remained missing. Everestnews.com compiled a list of 11 casualties, while another climbing Web site, K2climb.net, reported only one body had been found.

The difficult terrain on the Himalayan giant makes it nearly impossible to carry out a large search-and-rescue mission, so it may take days or even weeks to get precise details.

Mohammed Akram, vice president of the nonprofit Adventure Foundation of Pakistan, said one rescue team dispatched Sunday had reached a Dutchman and an Italian suffering from frostbite and were helping them down toward a camp at an altitude of 21,325 feet.

He said helicopter crews spotted survivors but could not pluck them to safety because the air is too thin for them to operate so high.

Although K2, at 28,250 feet, is not as tall as Everest at 29,035 feet, it is considered tougher to climb because of unrelenting bad weather and steep and difficult terrain from every approach. Climbers must be adept in rock and ice climbing, as well as general mountaineering.

"It's one of those mountains where, once you've climbed it, you don't ever go back," said Ed Viesturs, a climbing icon who lives on Bainbridge Island. "For every step you go up, it tries to bring you down."

Chris Warner, an American who climbed K2 last year, said "The Bottleneck" was the deadliest place on the mountain; the fall from there down the south face is some 9,000 feet.

"You can see how for people who were exhausted, it would have been nearly impossible for them to descend without the ropes," Warner said.

Whittaker, however, said it could be done.

"If there's no fixed rope they could still descend. They could still rappel," he said. "They have to remember the summit is optional. To get down is mandatory."

Whittaker, now 79, was the first American to summit Mount Everest, in 1963.

The toll from the K2 avalanche is the highest from a single incident there since at least 1995, when seven climbers died in a fierce storm.

But this could rank as the deadliest climbing episode since the 1996 Mount Everest disaster -- during which eight people perished -- made famous by Jon Krakauer's best-selling book "Into Thin Air."

About 280 people have summitted K2 since 1954, when it was first conquered.

Staff reporter Sharon Pian Chan contributed to this story, which was compiled from The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post.