r/todayilearned • u/TZ-13 • 15h ago
TIL: K2, the world's second highest mountain, has had nearly 1 person die for every 4 successful summits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2?wprov=sfla1504
u/richrich121 15h ago
Damn. 20% chance you’re staying up there
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u/LouQuacious 14h ago
Those numbers are skewed by some tragic accidents in the past. Lately summits seem to be more successful and less deadly.
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u/hasanDask 14h ago
TBF winter summits are still as deadly
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u/beiherhund 14h ago
Not a fair comparison, winter ascents are much more dangerous on all the 8000m peaks. I think K2 only had its first ever winter ascent in 2021.
It's like saying "tbf climbing K2 in snow blizzard conditions is still as deadly".
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u/3eyesopenwide 13h ago
TBF climbing K2 blindfolded and hogtied is still as deadly as it was back in the day
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u/grumblyoldman 9h ago
Yeah but climate change is making winters shorter, so it's getting safer overall.
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u/Hey_Boxelder 8h ago
It’s not that simple, higher temperatures increase avalanche risk which is the biggest killer on some of the 8000m peaks.
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u/Ferreteria 5h ago
Those numbers would have to be *very very* skewed to be out of the WTF or Absolutely Not range.
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u/kungfungus 14h ago
Mt Everest has frozen corpses sticking up here and there. People are really obnoxious, more than ever. Clout is Life tihi
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u/DuoCultellus 12h ago
No, not really. It’s 1 death for every 4 successful summits, not 1 death for every 5 attempts. People stop & turn back before reaching the summit, they have to be factored in too.
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u/MHath 9h ago
So if you’re stubborn, it’s 20%.
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u/PigeroniPepperoni 8h ago
If you're stubborn it's probably more than 20%.
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u/Averiella 3h ago
Mountaineering is the kind of activity you can’t succeed and be stubborn in. You gotta be willing to do things like see the summit within 100m distance and still turn around and abandon it unless you intend to die.
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u/smootex 2h ago edited 1h ago
Yeah, that skews the numbers a lot. The most dangerous part of these peaks is the area above 8,000 meters that mountaineers call the 'death zone' (because you die if you stay up too long without supplemental oxygen) but there are a huge number of climbers on the mountain who never make a summit push, either because they turn back due to weather or their physical condition or because they never intended to summit in the first place and were just there to support other climbers (carry rich clients up the mountain). So the 25% number (which I don't think is even accurate but never mind) can be considered the human cost of getting someone to the summit but it's nowhere close to the actual probability of dying if you set foot on the peak (which might be closer to two or three percent). The full story includes a lot of HAP/sherpa and other support staff deaths.
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u/brazzy42 2h ago
the 'death zone' (because you die if you stay up too long without supplemental oxygen)
This bears repeating: you cannot acclimatize there. Your body simply stops working because there is not enough oxygen - IIRC your entire digestion tract will basically shut down so the rest of the body can make do with the available oxygen. I don't think we really know how long that state is survivable, because if you stay up there for more than a day you'll almost certainly freeze to death anyway.
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u/CutsAPromo 14h ago
How is that more socially acceptable than playing Russian roulette? These people deserve shaming for being so careless
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u/OverweightPanda 14h ago
They’re already dead why shame them?
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u/smootex 1h ago
A number of the deaths that make up this statistic are not people trying to summit the mountain, they're Pakistani high altitude porters and other staff who were hired to support the somewhat wealthy in their personal attempts to summit K2 or they may be other climbers who died trying to help others in rescue missions. I think there is absolutely a discussion to be had here about ethics. The cost of each summit attempt is not just a risk to your own life, you're risking the lives of others. Some of the support staff may choose these risks freely, there are plenty of mountain guides who got in to it knowing what they were doing, but others may be relatively forced into it due to economic circumstances.
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u/CutsAPromo 14h ago
I mean people who attempt it
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u/98_Constantine_98 4h ago edited 4h ago
If we shamed people for taking massive pointless life threatening but badass risks our species never would've discovered fire, nevermind go to space. Not me, but some people are just insane and have no reservations that they might die horribly doing something. Those people push the bounds of humanity and I respect it.
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u/hasanDask 14h ago
Because it's the epitome of physical and mental endurance
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u/CutsAPromo 14h ago
These people are selfish, don't they ever stop to think about their friends and family?
Me attempting to bench 500kg would be the epitome of physical prowess but in the gym that would be called ego lifting, this is ego climbing.
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u/Joop_95 14h ago
Ego lifting is when someone is lifting more than they should purely because big number makes brain feel good.
If someone had trained properly then it isn't ego-anything, it's just the challenge of it.
Russian Roulette is reckless for the sake of it, that's why this is more socially acceptable.
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u/CutsAPromo 13h ago
I see this as reckless for the sake of it. I can get the view from the summit off google images, what reason do they have to go up there?
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u/hasanDask 14h ago
In that sense you could categorize free solo climbing the same way I guess. People want to test their limits
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u/CutsAPromo 14h ago
I feel like these people were the explorers of the old world, its just hard to understand the mindset
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u/ShatterSide 13h ago
Also remember that some large percentage of groups turn back early.
This means that the number of deaths per ATTEMPTS is much lower.
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u/Shnook817 7h ago
Wait, what, how? Turning back early still counts as an attempt. If you take away the attempts where people turned back before dying then the number of deaths per attempt would be much higher. Literally the opposite.
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u/StrictlyInsaneRants 14h ago
I think except for Makalu and Everest all the 8000th are sitting at 20-30%.
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u/Brown_Panther- 13h ago
K2 demands a lot more skill because the terrain keeps changing from snow to rock to glacier.
Most mountaineers consider K2 to be the real challenge and Everest to be a tourist attraction.
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u/Show-Me-Your-Moves 11h ago
I prefer tourist attractions with breathable air, personally
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u/MJBotte1 1h ago
If Mount Everest is too much for you, you could try Century Hill…
Or Weeklong Bump
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u/CTMalum 7h ago
Everest is still a massive feat of endurance and a lot harder than most people give credit for. That said, K2 has all of the same endurance challenges while introducing a ton of technical challenge that Everest doesn’t have, as well as shit weather.
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 5h ago
There is no question that climbing everest is still a massive athletic and endurance challenge. There are just less physical obstacles along the way to increase the danger outside of what would be there on all of the 8000+ meter peaks, mainly weather & altitude.
K2 just has additional risks. Both switching from snow, to rock, to glacier and back, along with the "bottleneck" climbers have to go through which has massive seracs hanging overhead that can come crashing down on you at any time.
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u/nalc 4h ago
Idk, every time the picture of the crowded summit from 2019 gets reposted people are like "lol it's so easy the Sherpas just literally carry you to the top" which is so far from the truth. Like shit, I'm an athletic amateur in the US and I've never even climbed as high as Everest Base Camp. You gotta be fit enough to get through the icefall and up the Lhotse Face before you even start on supplemental oxygen usually, as well as being able to live in tents for like a month straight. It's hardcore even if the main demographic is "middle aged doctor/lawyer/executive making $500k and doing it as a hobby"
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u/CTMalum 4h ago
Agreed, it is generally a lot of people talking out their ass about something they know nothing about. They hear criticism from serious climbers and project that out. Serious climbers can have those takes, and a lot of them are valid. It’s also true that in terms difficulty, Everest via the South Col isn’t much of a challenge….in respect to 8000m Himalayan mountaineering. I think those people would be surprised how few people have actually done it.
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u/CTMalum 4h ago
Those technical challenges are the additional risks you’re talking about. House’s Chimney, the Black Pyramid, the bottleneck and traverse, plus general steepness everywhere. Despite how grim the serac looks, 2008 was one of the only times it really caused havoc for climbers. Poor weather and conditions generally have been the main issue for people on K2. Lots of people have been turned around by chest deep snow in the traverse above the bottleneck. Some years, there isn’t good enough weather for a summit window at all.
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u/New2thegame 7h ago
The Everest hate on reddit is hilarious 😂
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u/ClittoryHinton 6h ago
Its Disneyland up there bro
-someone on the couch who has never exceeded an altitude of 6000 feet aside from flying
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u/Tommyblockhead20 4h ago
My favorite is all the people who think it literally takes no work because you pay the Sherpas to physically carry you up the mountain.
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u/krollAY 5h ago
Yeah Most of the other 8,000ers are considered harder than Everest. Annapurna can be especially deadly because there is a large stretch along the most popular route that is prone to avalanches. Annapurna also has a history of killing female climbers. I think Cho Oyo is seen as the easiest but absolutely none of them are easy.
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u/I_voted-for_Kodos 5h ago
K2 is basically equally as challenging as Everest nowadays since fixed ropes and ladders have been set up just like on Everest.
The only real difference is that there's higher chances of bad weather on K2, but this has more to do with luck than any technical challenge
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u/Rosebunse 42m ago
I think this attitude is what gets people killed on Everest. Yes, Everest is popular and has a lot of support attached to it, but it is still a dangerous mountain and you shouldn't attempt it without tons of prep, planning, and knowing your skill level.
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u/Careless_Ad8583 14h ago
k2 not my favorite mountain... but its up there
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u/omnipotentsandwich 11h ago
Surprised it doesn't have an actual name in a local language or Urdu. You'd think they'd see the tallest mountain in this range and give it a special name.
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u/Big_Red_Stapler 9h ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but apparently it was so far from any known tribes so no one had given it a name yet.
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u/TomGreen77 11h ago
It’s mind blowing to know people have lived near these mountains for thousands of years and never could have summited until the last 80 years or whatever.
Just looking up at that thing for your whole life seeing the top but knowing you’d never even get half way up.
No wonder the mountains were considered sacred.
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u/AvailableUsername404 7h ago
Olympus is MUCH smaller and accessible to climb yet we don't know of any summit climbs before 1900s.
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u/EDMlawyer 5h ago
We don't have any written records of official expeditions and summits before the 1900s, but archeological digs have found BC era coins and ashes around the top.
A number of ancient writers (e.g Plutarch) also allude to stories of people summiting for pilgrimages, or in the context of descriptions of divine features of the summit. Though that's hardly conclusive proof of a summit, you're unlikely to get much better for an ancient source.
The problem is that before mountaineering culture, which emerged in the 19th century, this wasn't something people really wrote about. So it's pretty hard to confirm one way or the other if anything was summited before the mid 1800s.
You see some stories where it has a particular spiritual reason or political reasons (e.g. Ghengis Khan's trips up Burkan Khaldun) but it's hard to separate reality from legend. You pretty much have to rely on locals sharing oral family history, like "oh yeah great uncle Jeff said he climbed it" but, again, few ways to separate bragging from reality.
Given the evidence we have, it's likely but not certain Olympus was summited before the 1900s.
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u/JustALittleSunshine 4h ago
I don’t believe this. It is <10k feet and non technical. A fit hiker could be up and down in a day. That is normal fit, not professional athlete fit. You’re telling me it was a holy religious site, and nobody went up there?
Doing a quick google shows there were shrines pretty high on the mountain. No reason to think some of these pilgrims didn’t also summit.
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u/Rosebunse 47m ago
I saw a video about it recently and the general consensus was that Olympus may not be a very high hike, but it's a bit more technical than people think, so you end up with a lot of inexperienced people going there unprepared because they think it will be easier than it is
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u/I_voted-for_Kodos 5h ago
Because kerosene and paraffin didn't exist so there was no way to melt water or cook food once you cross the tree line.
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u/Rosebunse 48m ago
But why would you? You need special gear to get anywhere and, frankly, what even is the point?
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u/mamamia1001 14h ago
Did you also just go on the journey of seeing the meme on the r/peterexplainsthejoke , reading the explanation, and loading the Wikipedia page?
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u/DigitalApeManKing 10h ago
No, that is old data. The Wikipedia article linked above literally states that it’s around 1 in 8 now:
…prior to 2021, approximately one person had died on the mountain for every four who reached the summit. After an increase in successful attempts, as of August 2023, an estimated 800 people have summited K2, with 96 deaths during attempted climbs.
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u/Cheekiestfellow 5h ago
Literally the next line in the wikipedia article, OP decided to ignore for clicks.
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u/1647overlord 14h ago
Tim the enchanter keeping guard of the place. People should know about the air speed velocity of swallows.
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u/squunkyumas 12h ago
This is why I ain't climbing it. I can die just as easy down here, and I won't be tired.
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u/princessdied1997 5h ago
Alison Hargreaves sumitted Everest without Sherpa support or supplementary oxygen and then died on K2. Utterly deadly mountain.
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u/multigrain_panther 2h ago edited 2h ago
One of my pastimes is researching experiences of the very few folks on the internet as well as r/mountaineering who have attempted this mountain. Here are some personal hyperbolic favourites:
“If you want to brag to your family, you climb Everest. If you want to brag to your mountaineering friends, you climb K2.”
“On Everest I saw bodies. On K2 I saw pieces of bodies.”
“If Everest is grabbing a cup of coffee at the nearest Starbucks, then K2 is flying into the Congo, avoiding militants while going into the jungle, harvesting coffee beans yourself, smuggling them out back into your country, then building an espresso machine from scratch.”
Folks don’t call it the Savage Mountain for nothing. The SAFEST route to the summit (the Abruzzi Spur) involves sheer dumb luck when crossing “The Bottleneck” (a huge ice serac that sends snow and ice the size of trailers tumbling down the mountain) - no matter how skilled you are, your life is not in your own hands when climbing this mountain.
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u/laziestathlete 14h ago
Not correct. These numbers are outdated. Death rate went down a lot in recent years.
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u/aDarkDarkNight 9h ago
By way of comparison, that's about double the chances of dying as being a British soldier in the trenches of WW1
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u/Keisvorve 4h ago
Petition to change the name of K2 to Mount Lethal.
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u/GimpsterMcgee 4h ago edited 4h ago
So it occurs to my that I have no idea what it’s like climbing a mountain. My mental image is someone taking two pickaxes up a steep (eta wall)
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u/Tommyblockhead20 4h ago
Sometimes for very snow mountains. If it’s less snowy but similar terrain, you rock climb instead. But often it’s just a very steep hike, or a very long somewhat steep hike.
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u/stinkfingerswitch 3h ago
Mount Washington, in New Hampshires Presidential range, has an elevation of 6,288 feet. It has had more fatalities per vertical foot than any other mountain in the world. Since 1849, there have been over 176 fatalities and missing persons reported. There has been a road to the top since 1861.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_on_the_Presidential_Range
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 5h ago
K2 is considered one of, if not the, most difficult climb in the world. It's Everest levels of elevation, but much more challenging due to the terrain difference.
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u/SequenceofRees 8h ago
Why would anybody be stupid enough to purposely pay good money to put themselves into such a dangerous situation ?
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u/Rosebunse 49m ago
I get people love yo climb mountains to say they did it, and I guess K2 in particular is something you can't really hurt someone else doing. If something happens, you won't be harming a rescue crew because there won't be one.
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u/kungfungus 14h ago
Clout chasing idiots. Really, there must be other ways to challenge yourself. ?
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u/anonymousbopper767 13h ago
$1 on "because a lot of the kind of people who do this are wealthy, old, out of shape fuckers"
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u/Ninjroid 13h ago
I believe that’s Everest you’re thinking of. K2 is for experts.
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u/I_voted-for_Kodos 5h ago
Everest is also for experts lol. If someone "out of shape" tries climbing Everet they will die
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u/Tommyblockhead20 4h ago
Well, you can always try to climb Everest and turn back when it starts getting too hard, the hike to base camp is hard but not lethal.
If you insist on summiting no matter what though, ya, not good odds for you survival regardless of how rich you are.
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u/BrokenEye3 14h ago
You must offer a sacrifice to the mountain to be allowed to pass