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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
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Travelling to the uk, you will need an electronic travel authorisation or eta. It's quick and simple to apply via the ETA app or online. You'll need to apply for your ETA before travelling to the uk. Applicants will usually get a decision in up to three working days. Everyone travelling to the UK without a visa, whether visiting or passing through, will need one. It lasts two years and is valid for multiple trips. To apply now, search UK Travel ETA exemptions Apply all you Homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to paint their door a vibrant shade of blue. Others have the need to decorate their bathroom with fish anchors and other nautical items. And because each homeowner has unique needs, GEICO helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. That way you get exactly what's right for you, even if your needs are unique. Get more with geico.
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BBC Sounds Music.
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Radio Podcasts Jehan Baig was never really that passionate about mountains. For him, they were just a way to provide a better living for his family. Back in Shimshal, a tiny mountain community in northern Pakistan, Jahan started working on the mountains as a child. He eventually became a high altitude porter, a job reserved for more highly skilled, experienced climbers. Earlier this summer, Jehan was part of an expedition that ordered him to carry equipment through what he thought looked like an obvious avalanche zone. He refused, a rare act of defiance from a porter, and so he was let go. Shaheen Beg, a fellow climber and close friend of Jehan's, gets him a job with another expedition here on K2, working for a French climber. By August 1, 2008, summit day, disaster has already struck. Shaheen has fallen sick. Now Serbian climber Dren Mandic has tumbled down the bottleneck to his death. Jehan wants to help. He makes his way down to where Dren's teammates and Swedish climber Frederik Strang are and picks up some of the ropes being used to move Dren's body. But soon Jehan slips and falls. Because he's holding onto the ropes, he's dragging everybody else down with him, including Frederick. We were pleading release the rope, release the rope. But Jehan seems out of sorts. More than just scared, he it's like he's in a daze. He's been above 26,000ft in the death zone for hours. At first, he doesn't seem to register what's being asked of him. When the message eventually gets through, though, he drops the rope. Dren's teammate, Predrag watches from above.
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He just started sliding.
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He was flying like a projectile within seconds. It's scary how fast you pick up the speed.
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And we started all yelling at him. Stop yourself. Use your ice axe. Turn around, whatever. Do something.
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Fredericks accidentally left his camera on inside his pocket. It's recording everything.
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Stop.
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Jesus Christ.
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Stop. He just could not do anything. He was so out of his mind. He was just laying down and sliding.
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Jehan's on his back, heading down feet first. He slides like this for a few moments before his spiked crampons, which you wear over climbing boots, get caught on the ice. He flipped around so he was gliding down with his head first. And that is very hard to arrest your fall if you're gliding down with your head first. If you can picture it, Jehan needs to swing his ice axe beyond his head, keep hold of it, and then pivot his body around 90 degrees, all in just seconds. It's a move even the best of climbers would struggle to pull off. Dr. Eric Meyer, Frederick's teammate, has been making his way from Camp 4 to the scene as fast as he can climb. He's watching Jahan pick up speed with horror. He slid probably 20ft past me and there was absolutely nothing I could do. Jahan continues to slide down K2, unable to stop himself. He just flew out into the void. Then he was gone. We could not believe what had happened. Now two people had paid with their lives.
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It was like a nightmare. You know, your friend just died. And then few minutes afterwards, the other guy died. What the hell is this?
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I came up here to help you guys. Everything was so meaningless. It was so pointless. Get down. Get down. Oh, let's go down. They all make the heart wrenching decision to stop the recovery of Dren's body. Prejarg and his teammates say some words of remembrance for their friend and prepare to say goodbye.
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He was wrapped up in those ropes covered with our flags. And I put my ice ax through this loop on the end of the rope and we just left him hanging there. He stayed on K2 forever.
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Before turning back. Frederick says they radio the news about Jehan to the other climbers, but no one actually answered our calls. No one answered the stream of climbers. They continued unabated towards the summit. I'm Natalia Melman petrizella from the BBC. This is extreme peak danger episode 4 summit fever. Above the bottleneck at nearly 27,000ft. Far above the catastrophe unfolding below. A Sherpa climbing guide from Nepal is with the group, pressing ahead up the Mountain. His name is Pasang Lama.
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Pasang means I was born on a Friday. You know, people's name is given by Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
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Pasang is from a village called Hongang, which, which is near the border of Tibet. It's a tiny place tucked far away in the mountains, without a lot of economic opportunities.
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Our community is very poor community, you know, very remote area. And then there is no government facility, and then no schooling, no proper food, no health, and then no transportation.
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While he was a teenager, there was a Maoist uprising in Nepal. So Pasang and his family moved to Kathmandu, Nepal's capital city, for their own safety. They all shared a tiny one bedroom apartment. While Pasang went to school.
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Like seven, eight people, we were living in one small room.
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Unfortunately, his family couldn't keep up with the cost of his schooling.
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My parents were uneducated. They don't have money. When they don't have money, you cannot go further for the college.
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So Pasang turned to a career in mountain climbing.
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I see so many guys with this climbing carrier. Oh, I can carry on.
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Pasang would go on trip after trip, helping his family to make ends meet while he built up his climbing credentials.
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You can see the different places. You have something like a freedom.
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Also, when 2008 rolls around, he accepts a role working as a Sherpa on K2. The tradition of hiring Sherpas to work on mountaineering expeditions goes back decades. In 1953, a Sherpa by the name of Tenzing Norgay climbed alongside Edmund Hillary, and together they become the first people to summit Mount Everest. This incredible achievement gave Sherpas, a small ethnic group from Nepal and Tibet, a huge amount of press attention. You can hear how journalists at the time wondered if it was all a little too much for Tenzing.
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What a bewildering experience it must all be for the Sherpa Tenzing to be carried from a remote mountain village and plunged into a welter of official receptions and speeches.
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Back then, there was both a kind of fetishization and condescension around the Sherpa community. They're sometimes exoticized as having a God given gift for mountaineering. And some studies do show that the blood oxygen levels of ethnic Sherpas do make them exceptionally well suited for high altitude. But it was also suggested they needed the guidance of Westerners. A 1954 New Yorker article about Tenzing says, westerners say that many another Sherpa, if properly led, could have climbed Everest. Pasang Lama isn't an ethnic Sherpa. He's A bote, a group of people who come from high mountains. This is considered a lower caste in Nepal, where your social standing is assigned from birth depending on which group you're born into.
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In Nepal, people used to tease you, oh Bhote, Bhote. That's why we changed our Bhote to Lama. You know, Lama is little bit respected caste.
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Pasang uses the title of Sherpa to describe his job. Like a lot of Nepalese mountain guides.
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Sherpa is known as a one post. You know, like cook, potter and kitchen boy.
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Pasang has been hired alongside several of his cousins. All of them are working for the Korean team which is led by Kim Jae Soo. But most people know him as Mr. Kim.
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Mr. Kim, he is very good fortune because he he is a person who respect Sherpa.
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Mr. Kim originally came from a background pretty similar to Pasang's.
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I started climbing when I was 17 years old. I grew up in poverty. I didn't even have the money to buy equipment.
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Unlike Pasang, Mr. Kim was able to continue climbing through the support of elders in his community who helped fund his trips. Eventually, he was financially stable enough not only to pay his own way, but to pay for other climbers too. Mr. Kim and Pasang have taken very different journeys to arrive at this point. Here on K2, they're both talented climbers. But while one is doing this for passion, the other is just trying to make a living. If Mr. Kim achieves his summit goal and cements his place in the history books as someone who took on the mighty challenge of K2, he can hang up his climbing boots for good if he wants. Whereas Pasang would soon be on to the next job, making another client's sky high dreams come true. But for now, Mr. Kim is Pasang's boss. And despite what's just happened, Mr. Kim wants to continue climbing towards the summit along with everyone else.
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Mr. Kim was telling me, pasang, now I want to go.
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Pasang can't really say no to a client, not without potential repercussions. And there's even more of a concrete economic imperative for him to keep going up. For every member of an expedition group, a climbing Sherpa can guide safely up to the summit and back down again. They get a bonus.
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You can get $1,000. Some people give like a $1,500. Sherpa work more harder, you know, to get the clients on the top. Their whole family is depending on that money.
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Mr. Kim is not the only one with the summit still on his mind. Most of the other Climbers have also resumed their ascent, leaving Dren and his teammates behind without, as Pasang sees it, a passing glance. Pasang finds this kind of shocking, as do I. For all that talk about community and bonding, they just keep going.
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Everybody is in their own way, you know, like climbing. People were not even looking down. What the hell people are doing.
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It's about 12pm on August 1, Summit Day, approximately two hours after the deaths of Jahan Beg and Dren Mandich. All the traffic in the bottleneck has finally started moving, and climbers from seven different teams are working their way up the mountain again. They're now just a few hours from the top, but even after they've cleared the bottleneck, the climbers still have to get past an area called the Traverse, a section Lars Nessa of the Norwegian team is nervous about.
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The traverse part is objectively the most dangerous part of the climb.
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The Traverse is a really steep area of K2, and to pass it, you need to inch along a thin ledge, all while face to face with the huge ice cliff looming over you, known as the Serac. Currently, it's pretty packed with all the climbers who have made it through the bottleneck. The Norwegian team is near the front of the line.
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We had no idea what had happened to Dren.
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That radio message Frederik said he sent Cecilia says her team didn't hear it. They don't know Dren is dead or that Jehan also died trying to recover his body. Cecilia and her teammates are trying to decide what to do. There's been hours and hours of delays keeping everyone in the death zone longer than they anticipated. Add to that the confusion with the rope placement and missing equipment, and now a fellow climber has fallen.
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She turn around. This is crazy. There has already been things happening that day that shouldn't have happened. But again, we're looking up and we can see the summit there. We're so close.
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There is a name for this kind of thinking. It's called summit fever.
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The closer you get to the summit, the harder it is to turn around.
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It's what happens when desire overtakes reason, when you rationalize away all your doubts, no matter how big.
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There are so many reasons to continue. It's been a dream for so long. We were such a good team. The weather was perfect and we felt strong.
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It's like a kind of compulsion, an inexorable force pulling them further and further up the mountain. They're also watching all the other climbers continue. If they're going for it, why not us? Cecilia and her team discuss it over and over again. But each time they decide to push their mounting worries to the side and to keep climbing. But by the time they're about halfway across the traverse, it becomes too much for one member of the Norwegian team.
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Eisttein decided to turn around because a lack of water and lack of energy. At that point, Lar and me continue.
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But while Cecilia and her teammate Lars are still doing well, her husband Rolf is struggling. He's captured on a recording by one of his fellow climbers, a hard date for me, today was not a good day. You mean with a small accident or conditional, also personal condition?
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He was clear that he didn't want to go for the summit, but still he wanted to continue with his team and his wife and climb a bit higher.
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The Norwegian team is using bottled oxygen. You're probably imagining a big, bulky metal canister being dragged through piles of snow. But it's a lot more compact, small enough to fit in a backpack. It's fed through a system that only releases the air when you breathe in, so nothing gets wasted. That oxygen is delivered through what's called a nasal cannula, a small tube with two points that go into your nostrils. You might have seen them on hospital patients. Depending on who you talk to, using bottled oxygen can be kind of a fraught subject. Despite the fact that its use on the mountains goes back as far as 1922, a lot of climbers refuse to use it. They claim it's just not in the spirit of the sport, that it lessens your achievement. But of course, not everyone agrees with that. The Korean team are all using oxygen, including their leader, Mr. Kim. Using supplemental oxygen simply helps to maintain body temperature and makes breathing a little bit easier.
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There's nothing disgraceful about using supplemental oxygen.
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It's not against the rules.
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There are no rules in mountaineering. No one has the authority to judge.
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I gotta say, I think that with a sport like this, anything that makes it more accessible and the impact on your body a little less brutal has got to be a good thing. But I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm not a climber, just a fan of making movement accessible and, you know, breathing. Although it's probably worth pointing out that there is a downside to using oxygen, because if you run out too soon, the withdrawal can be worse than if you'd never used it at all.
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I didn't need that much oxygen, so a lot of time I turned it off.
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Once they're finally through the traverse and over the huge serac they come to a vast snowy field. It's the final section before you arrive at the summit. And it's here, after switching oxygen tanks with Cecilia that Rolf decides to stop being an experienced climber. He knows it's not a good idea to push his body too far, even if it means giving up the chance to stand on top of K2. Rather than go back down to Camp 4, Rolf says he's going to wait here. He gives Cecilia and Lars his best wishes.
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He tells both me and Lars, you look strong. You have to continue. It doesn't feel good to leave him there. But it's just maybe one and a half hours to go to the summit. I really want to go up there. I feel strong. I'm so curious how it looks like a little bit higher. After a while I can hear Larry, I'm here. You have to come up. See this. Excluding Puestos Italias, Portulo licencia, all you.
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In the early evening of August 1, 2008, Lars Nessa is approaching the sharp ridge of K2's sun. It everything has been leading up to this moment. Cecilia is right behind him.
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It's amazing to reach the summit. Lush is up there. He's dancing.
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Lars and Cecilia are standing or I'm sorry, dancing at 28,000, 251ft above sea level. I imagine the two of them at this moment, their chests heaving, their heartbeats pounding in their ears as they scan the horizon, just trying to take in the raw beauty surrounding them.
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You feel like you're on the top of the world because you look down at other massive 8,000 meter peaks. You're on the highest one of all. All around me there are glaciers and mountains as long as I can see. And the sky is this warm blue color. And I can see the summit of the mountain I'm standing on as a big shadow towards China.
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All the months of waiting, all the hours and hours of climbing, all the pain and breathlessness they had to push through. It's all led to this perfect moment.
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It was like pinch my arm really. Am I up here on the summit? It's really a dream. Come True. I was glad I could enjoy it with my good friend Lar. He was so happy. He was dancing around with this rabbit hat.
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It's a fluffy white hat with pink floppy ears and a Velcro strap that goes under your chin.
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He just borrowed it from Rolf. He wanted to bring that all the way to the summit because Rolf couldn't carry it himself.
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The pair of them pose together for photos, eyes bright and smiles wide. It's around 6pm the sun is beginning to set, sending shoots of golden light all across the horizon. Mr. Kim, the leader of the Korean team, has also made it to the summit. He's joined by his teammate, Go Mi Young. She's one of Korea's top mountain climbers, a trusted friend of Mr. Kim, I imagine. She and Cecilia take a moment to congratulate each other. Mr. Kim has his camera with him. He snaps a photo of Cecilia and Go Mi Young standing next to each other. If I only keep it in my memory, it'll become just a personal memory. But if I record it, it could become history. Mr. Kim is right. History is being made at this very moment. While Lars is the first Norwegian man to make it up, a worthy accomplishment. Cecilia and Gomie Young are only the 10th and 11th women ever to summit K2. Mountain climbing has always been kind of a boys club, which is worth stepping back for a moment to think about. Jennifer Jordan, the climber and journalist, spent months researching the first women who summited K2. It was tough going at first. Nobody had written their stories. I was like, oh my God, they've been ignored. They're not even footnotes. Jennifer would eventually go on to write a book telling the stories of the first five women to make it to the top of K2. The first was a Polish climber named Wanda Rudkiewicz. And Wanda was a total badass. She went into K2 on crutches with a broken femur, the largest and most painful bone in the body on a broken leg. Wanda heaved and climbed her way up K2's steep slopes. And on June 23, 1986, she took her first steps onto the summit. She did like this spinning kind of arms outstretched, ballet dance. Apparently the best place to throw some serious shapes is on the top of a mountain. Who knew? This was an enormous achievement. It brought a lot of attention to Vonda, some of it really negative. She was criticized all the time. She was second guessed. And a lot of it, I think, came from just how damn strong she was. And the men, not appreciating their incredibly difficult, manly, dangerous pursuit Being absolutely crushed by a woman. Vonda was far from the last female climber to come under this kind of scrutiny. Alison Hargreaves was a British climber. In 1995, when she was just 33, she summited Everest. And then her eyes turned to Pakistan.
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Well, I've got another trip in another three weeks for an attempt on K2. It's not so high, but maybe a.
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Little bit more difficult.
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So that'll be fun.
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Alison had two young children at the time, something the press obsessively noted in their headlines about her endeavors. One prominent UK journalist even said, what is interesting about Allison Hargreaves is that she behaved like a man. She put danger first and her family a poor second. Mountains over Motherhood. I mean, I don't know what the percentage is, but a huge percentage of male climbers are fathers. You show me the headline that says mountains over fatherhood. It's horrifying. I mean, as a mother and someone who works and does plenty of athletics, it's pretty disgusting, but also totally predictable. It enrages me that rather than being celebrated for their achievements, both Vonda and Allison were essentially punished. Punished for daring to carve out their own tiny spaces amongst these huge mountains, for not behaving the way women should behave. She wanted that one last summit bid because she wanted to go home with something more than just a failed attempt, so that she wouldn't have to necessarily go back for the next season of climbing. But after summiting K2 in 1995, Allison Hargreaves would never make it back home.
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Alison Hargreaves, mountaineer and mother of two, has been killed whilst descending K2, the muscle 8000 meter peak in northern Pakistan.
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And so Alison Hargreaves, at the time one of only five women to have ever summited K2, is added to the list of deaths on descent. The descent is the most dangerous part of any mountain climb. Cecilia knows this.
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You have been out there climbing for so many hours.
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Hours.
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You've been in really high altitude and that's when you're tired. You're more exposed to make mistakes, to.
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Add to the danger, Cecilia and Lars are hours behind schedule.
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We had imagined that we probably would be on the summit at least six hours earlier. And now it's so late. It's going to be dark in just an hour or two because we can see the stars slightly showing up on the sky. So our celebration on the summit can't be very long because we have to get back down past.
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Cecilia steals one final glance at the view taking in all those vast mountain ranges stretching out as far as she can see. And then she turns around and begins her own descent under an ever darkening sky with her teammate Lars by her side. The two of them have no idea what awaits them.
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I could hear the cracking and falling of ice. That's when I feel this earthquake in my whole body.
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That's next time on Extreme Peak Danger. Extreme Peak Danger is produced by Lee Meyer and Amalia Sortland. The editor is Joe Wheeler with additional production from Keith Kenyoung park sound design and mix by Nicholas Alexander. Original music by Adam Foran. Our theme music for Extreme Peak Danger is by Silverhawk AKA Cyril Poirier and Adam Foran. Our production managers are Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. Story development by Amalia Sortland. Our commissioning editor at the BBC is Dan Clark. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers. And I'm Natalia Melman Petruzella, your host and executive producer. Extreme is produced by novel for the BBC. In Northern Ireland from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers, men and women accused of passing information to the police.
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And the British Army.
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But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA was himself an informer.
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A secret British army agent with the codename Steak Knife. These were police agents identifying other agents. Just how was one man allowed to.
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Lead a double life for so long?
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It's not like James Bond. It's not a black and white situation.
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When lies are still being told to this day.
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Who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start. And I'm with the IRA Steak Knife. Listen now on BBC Sounds.