In 1980, Pete Boardman attempted the ascent of K2 with Joe Tasker (who took this picture) and Dick Renshaw. K2 is called ‘the Savage Mountain’: its climbing history is one of ‘avalanche, frostbite, desperate retreat and tragedy,’ Boardman explained, before adding his own story in the Observer on 15 February 1981.
The trio were running low on food and fuel and dogged by bad weather: it started snowing on their last-ditch third attempt on the summit. They pitched a tiny tent on ‘a precipice that sheered away 10,000ft below us.’ As they slept, a violent avalanche buried them.
Boardman managed to free himself, discovering Renshaw hanging off the cliff edge, held only by tent fabric, and Tasker ‘deeply buried and inert – unconscious, possibly dead’. He revived, but as they regrouped in deep shock, another avalanche struck.
Escaping again, they retreated in the teeth of the storm, but things got worse. Visibility shrunk, the trio were lost, weak, freezing and intermittently delirious. Each had moments of weakness, and each helped the others in turn: ‘Strength passed between us like a baton in a relay’. They repaired the tent and used the last of their gas to make tea, but ‘Our chances of surviving the descent were 50:50.’
They beat the odds inch by perilous, slow, inch, ‘knowing that one slip would pull us all off’. On the way, they faced more avalanches, a fraying rope, waist-deep snow and bone-deep exhaustion. ‘Transcending time, space, fear and suffering,’ they finally reached the safety of base camp. The sun came out and their porter, Ali, brought them three blue flowers: ‘a gentle gift which symbolised our return’.
The trio were soon back on the mountains, but there’s a tragic postscript: on 17 May 1982, Boardman and Tasker disappeared, attempting the northeast ridge of Everest. They were 31 and 33.
