K2 in the black summer

Wanda Rutkiewicz · 1986 CE · Earth

K2 in the black summer — Wanda Rutkiewicz · 1986 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Climb K2 by its normal route, the Abruzzi Spur, in a party of four, without outside help or bottled oxygen.

Historical context

In the summer of 1986 nine expeditions were based on the south side of K2, many of them after the unclimbed Magic Line, and no woman had yet stood on the summit. Liliane and Maurice Barrard, a French couple who billed themselves as the world's highest couple and climbed without Sherpa help or bottled oxygen, came with Michel Parmentier and the Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz to climb the normal route, the Abruzzi Spur, without outside help; Liliane had been the first woman on Nanga Parbat in 1984. By the end of the season twenty-seven people had reached the summit and thirteen had died.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Skardu

    1986 CE

    The French expedition of Liliane and Maurice Barrard, four climbers who mean to climb K2 by the Abruzzi Spur without outside help or bottled oxygen, reaches Skardu, on the Indus, on the way to the Baltoro; in Rawalpindi Maurice has lost the expedition's funds, passports and airline tickets.

  2. Concordia

    1986 CE

    At Concordia, where the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers meet, the French party turns north up the ice towards K2, in a summer when nine expeditions are based on the mountain's south side.

  3. Base camp and the storm

    June 1986

    From base camp on the Godwin-Austen glacier the four climb to about 7,000 metres in early June, then come down to wait out nine days of storm, and on 18 June set out again for the summit. On 21 June an avalanche on the Magic Line kills the Americans John Smolich and Alan Pennington, the summer's first dead.

  4. The bivouac at 8,300 metres

    22 June 1986

    Four days after leaving base camp, on 22 June, the four bivouac at 8,300 metres in a two-man tent, without sleeping bags and without bottled oxygen.

  5. The first woman on K2

    23 June 1986

    At 10:15 in the morning, local time, on 23 June 1986 by one account, 10:30 by another, Wanda Rutkiewicz, who has gone on ahead of the others, reaches the summit of K2, 8,611 metres, without bottled oxygen: the first woman and the first Pole there. Liliane Barrard, the second woman, Maurice Barrard and Michel Parmentier follow.

  6. The Barrards lost

    24 June 1986

    On the morning of 24 June Parmentier goes ahead to melt water at Camp III, at 7,900 metres; Rutkiewicz, following, looks back to see Liliane and Maurice Barrard descending slowly, apparently exhausted. They are never seen again.

Outcome

Wanda Rutkiewicz on the summit at 10:15 in the morning, local time, by one account, on 23 June 1986, the first woman on K2, with Liliane Barrard the second soon after; Liliane and Maurice Barrard lost on the descent the next day, the third and fourth of thirteen deaths on the mountain that summer.

Wanda Rutkiewicz

The Polish engineer who was the first woman on K2, on 23 June 1986, at the start of the summer that killed thirteen people on the mountain, and who vanished on Kangchenjunga six years later chasing all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks.

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Sources

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