Concordia: Throne Room of the Mountain Gods Part-1

Concordia: Throne Room of the Mountain Gods Part-1 

It is considered one of the longest and one of the bleakest treks in the world and takes a never-ending hike of a whole week to reach the cradle which holds no fewer than four eight-thousand meter peaks commonly known as 8000ers, in one place. Home of the
longest glaciers on Earth after the polar caps and hot bed of some 40 of the 50 tallest peaks in the world, the place is none other than Concordia, the Base camp of K-2.

K-2, also known as Chogori (King of Mountains) in local dialect or Mount Godwin-Austen, is the second highest mountain (8611 meters) in the world and is considered deadliest in the climbing circles. Nestled in the remote mountain range of Karakorum in the
northern region of Pakistan, bordering the Chinese territory, the mountain poses the ultimate challenge for the mountaineers and climbers from all over the world. Also called as the “Mountain of the Mountaineers” and “Mountain of Mountains” by the famous climber
Reinhold Messner, K-2 has caused higher number of deaths than any other mountain in the world. One out of four climbers who attempts to climb the mountain has lost his life in the process.        

Starting from the northern town of Skardu in the Gilgit-Baltistan province of Pakistan, it takes almost a day to reach the end of a rugged track which can only be treaded via four-wheel driven jeeps to remote village of Ashkole-the last human settlement.
Rest of the journey from there onwards, is all on foot. Trekking for another six days over the treacherous landslides, steep hills, glaciers replete with deadly crevasses, one is finally able to reach the land of the giants.

As the former climber and now a successful Scottish entrepreneur Mick Jackson recalls, “And at that point you turn left and there’s K2, this almost mythical beast, rising in the distance," he says. “I got a sense of dread the likes of which I never could
have imagined."

K-2 was first located and documented by the Surveyor General of the British Empire, Sir Thomas Montgomerie in the concluding years of the 19^th century. During his survey of the remote mountainous region he had the first glimpse of the giant rock
while standing on the Mount Haramukh in the Karakorum 210 miles to the south. The two prominent peaks that he sighted were thus named K-1 (now called Masherbrum) and K-2. As he complied his survey report Montgomerie wrote,

“… just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last.”

And while many have lost their lives in attempts to peak the mammoth natural structure, K-2 and the adjacent peaks at Concordia, continues to attract thousands of tourists and climbers from all over the world to this date.

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Posted by Naveed A Bari on Nov 16 2011. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry