An exciting chronicle from the tragedy-ridden history of climbing K2, the world’s most difficult and unpredictable mountain, with the bestselling writers of Zero Shortcuts to the Top

At 28,251 ft, the world’s second-tallest mountain, K2 thrusts skyward out of the Karakoram Selection of north Pakistan. Climbers regard it as the best achievement in mountaineering, with good reason. Four times as deadly as Everest, K2 has claimed the lives of seventy-seven climbers since 1954. In August 2008 about K2: Life and Death within the World’s Many Dangerous Hill eleven climbers died within a thirty-six-hour period on K2-the worst single-event tragedy in the mountain’s history as well as the second-worst in the longer chronicle of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges. Yet summiting K2 continues to be a cherished goal for climbers from all over the globe. Before he encountered the task of K2 himself, Ed Viesturs, one of the world’s leading high-altitude mountaineers, considered it as ‘the holy grail of mountaineering.’

In K2: Lifestyle and Death for the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain, Viesturs explores the exceptional history of the mountain and of these who have attemptedto conquer it. At exactly the same time he probes K2’s most remarkable sagas so that they can illustrate the lessons discovered by confronting the fundamental questions elevated by mountaineering-questions of risk, ambition, loyalty to one’s teammates, self-sacrifice, and the price tag on glory. Viesturs understands the hill firsthand. He and renowned alpinist Scott Fischer climbed it in 1992 and were nearly killed within an avalanche that sent them slipping to almost certain death. Luckily, Ed managed to get into a self-arrest placement with his snow ax and stop both his fall and Scott’ s.

Concentrating on seven of the mountain’s most dramatic campaigns, from his own troubled ascent to the 2008 tragedy, Viesturs and Roberts crafts an edge-of-your-seat narrative that climbers and armchair travelers alike will find unforgettably convincing. With photos from Viesturs’s personal collection and from traditional sources, this is the definitive account of the world’s greatest mountain, and of the lessons that may be gleaned from battling toward its elusive summit.