Mistakes on mountain led to tragic deaths
Dutch expedition leader hits out at advance party for rope errors
A Pakistani army paramedic helps treat Wilco van Rooijen, the rescued leader of the K2 expedition team team, at a hospital in the northern Pakistani town of Skardu. He has blamed an advance team for putting ropes in the wrong position
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A survivor of the devastating ice avalanche that killed 11 climbers on K2 -- including Irishman Gerard McDonnell -- angrily recalled yesterday how tragedy unfolded on the world's second-highest peak.
Expedition leader Wilco Van Rooijen, a Dutch climber who was airlifted to a military hospital in Pakistan after surviving the accident, said that poor preparations had contributed to one of the worst ever mountaineering disasters.
He suggested that advance climbers laid ropes in the wrong places on the world's second highest mountain, hampering the climb of several teams of mountaineers and ultimately contributing to deaths of three of the climbers on his team.
"Everything was going well to camp four, and on summit attempt, everything went wrong," said Mr Van Rooijen from his hospital bed in the northern Pakistani town of Skardu.
"The biggest mistake we made was that we tried to make agreements.
"Everybody had his own responsibility and then some people did not do what they promised," the 40-year-old said, singling out another team for only bringing half the length of rope they were supposed to.
"With such stupid things, lives are endangered."
Calamity
But calamity hit, as it so often does on K2, on the descent after summiting. Mr Van Rooijen described the terror of the climbers' night and a "whiteout" -- where a cloud had descended -- that left them virtually blind.
He said he saw one climber dangling from a rope as his companions tried to save him.
"There was a Korean guy hanging upside down. There was a second Korean guy who held him with a rope but he was also in shock, and then a third guy was there also, and they were trying to survive but I had also to survive," he said.
They declined his offer of help and it is unclear if they were the same three Koreans who died. Two other Koreans made it back to the base camp, which lies at about 5,000 metres above sea level. The accident was caused by a huge serac, or column of ice, falling into and sweeping down a treacherous gully known as "The Bottleneck", 350 metres below the summit.
As team leader, he appeared haunted by the panic that gripped some of his fellow climbers after the incident.
Screaming
He said he was screaming for people to work together, but many failed to react, apparently locked in their own personal struggle for self-preservation.
"Everybody was fighting for himself and I still do not understand why everybody were leaving each other."
"I didn't have time to start discussion, the only thing I had to do was to go down because if you go down you have more oxygen, you have more chance to survive."
Mr Van Rooijen (40) was evacuated from the mountain alongside fellow Dutchman Cas Van de Gevel, but Pakistani rescue teams were forced to suspend their efforts to save an Italian mountaineer who is still struggling down the mountainside.
Marco Confortola was reached by three Pakistani and one American rescuer, who raced up the mountain to bring him to Base Camp
"Marco [Confortola] is being accompanied by four rescuers and most probably, he'll be brought tonight to the Advance Base Camp (ABC), that is at an altitude of 6,000 metres," Sultan Alam, a Pakistani guide, said from K2 base camp.
Mr Confortola's feet were in "very bad" shape but he appeared to have saved his hands, said Agostino Da Polenza, head of the Ev-K2-CNR mountaineering group in Italy, after speaking to the lost climber by satellite phone.
The climber also described his ordeal to his brother Luigi on the phone.
"Up there, it was hell. During the descent, beyond 8,000 metres, due to the altitude and the exhaustion, I even fell asleep in the snow and, when I woke up, I could not figure out where I was,'' Mr Confortola said.
Fredrik Strang, a Swedish survivor, spoke of a sense of foreboding after a Serbian climber and a Pakistani plunged to their deaths on the ascent.
Several expeditions were making the ascent at the same time last Friday, because bad weather had forced them to wait throughout July for the right conditions.
The Pakistani Ministry of Tourism released a list of 11 climbers believed to be dead: three South Koreans, two Nepalis, two Pakistanis and mountaineers from France, Serbia and Norway, as well as Co Limerick climber Mr McDonnell.
It was not clear how they all died. At least two fell on their way up the mountain, before the avalanche.
K2, which lies near Pakistan's northern border with China, is regarded by mountaineers as more challenging to conquer than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak. K2 is steeper, rockier and more prone to sudden severe weather.
Chris Warner, an American who climbed K2 last year, said the 'Bottleneck' was the deadliest place on the mountain. "You can see how, for people who were exhausted, it would have been nearly impossible for them to descend without the ropes," Mr Warner said. (© The Times, London)
- Nico Hines, David Lister and Kamran Haider
