Around 1,400 international climbers are attempting Pakistan’s tallest peaks during this blockbuster climbing season, including hundreds on the 8,611-metre (28,251-foot) K2, the second-highest mountain in the world.
According to Raja Nasir Ali Khan, the tourism minister for the Gilgit-Baltistan province, “It is a record number.”
Five of the 14 mountains in the world that are higher than 8,000 meters are found in this nation, and summiting them all is regarded as the pinnacle of mountaineering.
Karrar Haidri, secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club, told AFP that 370 climbers will attempt K2, often known as “the savage mountain,” as part of one of 57 trips scheduled for 23 Pakistani peaks this season.
Besides being far more technically difficult to climb than Everest, weather conditions are notoriously fickle on K2, which has only been scaled by 425 people since 1954.
More than 6,000 people have climbed Everest since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the top in 1953 — some of them multiple times.
Haidri said climbers this year include 90 women — including at least two Pakistanis aiming to become the country’s first to scale K2.
Russian Oxana Morneva is leading a team on the mountain, having failed in her own attempt in 2012 when she was forced back after injuring her knee.
“My rope was broken by falling rocks,” she told AFP.
She said she had no apprehension about returning.
“When we go to the mountain we have to be peaceful inside, and we have to know what we are doing,” she added.
Around 200 climbers will attempt to scale the 8,051-metre Broad Peak, while similar numbers will try Gasherbrum-I (8,080 meters) and Gasherbrum-II (8,035 meters).
A 36-year-old Norwegian climber, Kristin Harila, is also aiming to reach the world’s 14 highest mountain summits in record time.
Having already climbed seven peaks of over 8,000 meters, Harila hopes to match, if not beat, Nepali adventurer Nirmal Purja’s ambitious six months and six days record.
The summer climbing season that started in early June lasts until late August.
