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

Everest and Nanga Parbat had been climbed in 1953; K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, had turned back the Duke of the Abruzzi's party in 1909 and the expeditions of 1938, 1939 and 1953, the last of which lost Art Gilkey on its slopes. Ardito Desio, a professor of geology in Milan who had seen the mountain in 1929, obtained authority for a preparatory journey in 1953 and an expedition in 1954, under the patronage of the Club Alpino Italiano, the National Research Council, the Military Geographic Institute and the Italian state. The American Alpine Journal called it the most massive assault on any major peak in the history of mountaineering. The summit came on the last day of July with the oxygen carried up by Walter Bonatti and the Hunza porter Amir Mahdi, who spent the night before in the open, and the argument about that night lasted fifty years.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Skardu

    27 April 1954

    At the end of April 1954 the Italian expedition to K2 gathers at Skardu, on the Indus, after a flight from Rawalpindi put off several times by bad weather, and its loads start up the valleys towards Shigar, the Braldu and the Baltoro on the backs of hundreds of porters.

  2. Up the Baltoro

    May 1954

    From Askole, the last village, the caravan climbs by Jula, at about 3,150 metres, and Payu, at about 3,400, to Urdukas, at about 4,100 metres beside the Baltoro glacier. Snow falls for days; at Urdukas the porters refuse to go on, and when the sun returns on the fresh snow, snow-blindness spreads through the column.

  3. Base camp

    28 May 1954

    Desio goes up to the foot of K2 on 15 May to choose a site for base camp, and heavy snow returns. For about ten days the climbers, the Hunza high-altitude porters and the few Baltis who stayed carry the loads up from Concordia in relays, and base camp, at about 5,000 metres on the Godwin-Austen glacier below the Abruzzi Spur, is established at the end of May.

  4. The death of Mario Puchoz

    21 June 1954

    On 21 June Mario Puchoz, a guide from Courmayeur, dies at Camp II, at almost 6,000 metres. The expedition doctor, Guido Pagani, diagnosed a fulminant pneumonia; it is now believed that he died of high-altitude pulmonary oedema.

  5. Camp VIII at 7,627 metres

    28 July 1954

    On 28 July Camp VIII is set up on the Shoulder of K2 at 7,627 metres, by the height Italian accounts give; Desio's own article put it just below 7,770 metres. From it the summit pair, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, are to pitch the last camp, Camp IX, higher up, at a place which by Bonatti's account was agreed on the evening of 29 July, and the oxygen sets for the summit, still below, are to be carried up to them there.

  6. Bonatti and Mahdi in the open

    30 July 1954

    At dusk on 30 July Bonatti and Mahdi reach the place where Camp IX was to be and find no tent. They shout; by Bonatti's account a light flickers above, and a voice asks whether they have the oxygen and tells them to leave it and go down. The tent stands at the end of an icy traverse they cannot cross in the dark, and they spend the night in the open at about 8,100 metres, with no tent and no sleeping bag.

  7. The summit of K2

    31 July 1954

    At 6 in the evening of 31 July 1954, by the American Alpine Journal's report, Compagnoni and Lacedelli reach the summit of K2, 8,611 metres, a short snow ridge running north and south. They plant an ice axe carrying the Italian and Pakistani flags.

Outcome

Compagnoni and Lacedelli on the 8,611-metre summit at 18:00 on 31 July 1954, breathing the oxygen that Walter Bonatti and the Hunza porter Amir Mahdi had carried to about 8,100 metres; Mario Puchoz dead at Camp II on 21 June; Mahdi's toes lost to frostbite after a night in the open; and fifty years of dispute, settled by the Club Alpino Italiano's report of 2004, which confirmed Bonatti's account.

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 and the Hunza porter Amir Mahdi spent in the open below them.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring