I caught a bit of it, and was in two minds really. Awesome physical achievement, but the idea of persuading my team to go against an assessment of dangerous conditions at K2 to carry on with what is, in the grand scheme of mountaineering, a completely arbitrary quest, turned me off. They got away with it, obviously, but most expedition leaders would have settled for ‘the mountain will still be there next year’.

I’m always suspicious of of these kind of ‘challenges’, but I guess that’s what happens when pretty much all the firsts in mountaineering have been claimed.

I’ve got no problem with making a personal choice, but he needed his team to take the same risk, perhaps more, to lay the foundations for his achievement. They (all experienced high altitude mountaineers) had already assessed the conditions before he got there, decided that the risk wasn’t justified.

If what is an arbitrary challenge starts overriding sensible mountaineering assessments, that makes me a little uncomfortable. They got away with it, I guess, so all’s good.

I think it was because his team had spent time on the most dangerous section of the route, fixing ropes, which then made it less risky for others to follow.

I don’t know how his supporting team had made their technical judgement on the state of the serac, but they’d come to that conclusion by themselves.

Ah, maybe I misunderstood the thrust of the argument at that point.

The queue on Everest was depressing.

Hasn’t there been a queue on Everest for years, because of the nature of the mountain and short weather window needed to summit? (And from pics I’ve seen, there doesn’t look like a lot of space on the top!)

Well worth reading his (Nims) book too – ‘Beyond Possible’. Gives a lot more detail (Netflix documentary was great though!).