Sobering reality Battered Bruised on K2

Sunday 26th July and we’re still feeling & living the effects of the natural disasters on K2. Through the nights the constant reminder of the volatility of the might of K2 could be heard echoing thru the glacier valley, crushing and crashing avalanches ripping everything in its path. On Broad peak our sister seven summits team were on their final push for the summit along with a Spanish team with team leader Oscar looking to secure his final 8000mtr of the only fourteen in the world, as we watch through the night from our tents watching their head torches rise higher and higher we wished them success. Early morning news filtered through that neither team were successful experiencing huge snow drifts above camp three breaking trail in waist highly snow loaded with Avalanche risk forced them to abandon the climb after 10hours pushing ,returning to camp three exhausted…..Broadpeak looks finished for 2015. At 8am this morning Dawa our K2 expedition leader just announced a huge Avalanche struck again in the last few hours this morning that our camp three had been hit possibly destroyed by huge rock fall and Avalanche from above. Now the sheer cold facts are this, “things happen for reasons” yesterday friday 24th, and the loosing of our technical climbing equipment & tents hit in the Avalanche at advance basecamp preventing us climbing to camp two ,where in the early hours of this morning saturday 25th we would have been climbing to camp three through the black pyramid, and the sobering reality this morning is that we with out a shadow of doubt with the scale and size of the break in the serac loaded with 1000s of tons of snow ice and huge chunks of rock ,we would have been wiped out killed or extremely badly injured and rescue at the height simply impossible…..someone close was watching out for me, thank you. Early this morning the Army helicopters were called in from Skardu to remove the bad injured climber hit yesterday with us just below camp one…. For now news has filtered through camp that Russell Bryces himax team along with Garrett Maddison mountaineering team are pulling out abandoning K2 ,that two of the three big teams leaving just us seven summits to plunder over our destiny on K2. Mood in camp is quite somber with nerves running thin, Sherpa afraid to continue climbing ,mixed emotions among mountaineers ,stay & wait for another weather window or reside to the fact that K2 will see no summits success 2015. It’s been a devastating year in the world of mountaineering, seeing the greatest mountains in the world seeing no summits and could K2 now be added to this ever growing list… Mother Nature will decide and over the next few days as the jet streams move and shift our life on K2 will unravel either the climb is over or we climb on… For this morning and afternoon is back to advance basecamp 5300mts trying to salvage my technical climb gear….maybe just maybe theirs a glimmer of hope , you only need an ember. Time will tell , today for now I’m counting my lucky stars. Jason