The Italian K2 expedition

Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli · 1954 CE · Earth

The Italian K2 expedition — Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli · 1954 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Make the first ascent of K2 by the Abruzzi Spur, with a scientific programme in the Baltoro under the geologist Ardito Desio.

Historical context

After Everest in 1953 and Nanga Parbat the same summer, K2 was the last of the great prizes, and Italy wanted it as a nation. Ardito Desio, a geologist who had seen the mountain in 1929, obtained the permit ahead of the Americans who had nearly climbed it in 1953, and ran the expedition with military discipline and a budget to match. The summit came on the last day of July with the oxygen carried up by a man who was not allowed to use it, and the argument about that night lasted longer than any of the climbers' careers.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Skardu

    27 April 1954

    On 27 April the expedition lands at Skardu in a DC-3: eleven climbers, a doctor, a film-maker, the geologist Ardito Desio as leader and sixteen tons of stores.

  2. Up the Baltoro

    May 1954

    Five hundred Balti porters carry the loads up the Braldu gorge and onto the Baltoro glacier, striking twice for pay and losing days to snow-blindness.

  3. Base camp

    28 May 1954

    Base camp is pitched on 28 May at about 5,000 metres on the Godwin-Austen glacier, at the foot of the Abruzzi Spur, beside the cairn the Americans raised to Art Gilkey.

  4. The death of Mario Puchoz

    21 June 1954

    On 21 June Mario Puchoz, a Courmayeur guide of thirty-six, dies at Camp II of what the doctor calls pneumonia and is now understood as pulmonary oedema; he is buried on 27 June beside the Gilkey cairn.

  5. Camp VIII at 7,627 metres

    28 July 1954

    On 28 July Compagnoni and Lacedelli establish Camp VIII at 7,627 metres on the Shoulder, and Desio names them the summit pair; the oxygen sets are still two camps below.

  6. Bonatti and Mahdi in the open

    30 July 1954

    On the evening of 30 July Bonatti and Mahdi arrive with the oxygen at about 8,100 metres and find no Camp IX where it was promised; they shout into the dark, hear Lacedelli tell them to leave the bottles and go down, and spend the night sitting in the snow.

  7. The summit of K2

    31 July 1954

    At about 18:00 on 31 July 1954 Compagnoni and Lacedelli reach the summit of K2, 8,611 metres, after eleven hours from Camp IX, and photograph each other with the Italian and Pakistani flags on an ice axe.

Outcome

Compagnoni and Lacedelli on the 8,611-metre summit at about 18:00 on 31 July 1954; Mario Puchoz dead of oedema on 21 June; Amir Mahdi maimed by a night in the open at 8,100 metres.

Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli

The two guides who reached the top of K2 on 31 July 1954 for Ardito Desio's national expedition, and whose summit was argued over for fifty years because of the night Walter Bonatti spent in the snow below them.

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