American Charlie Houston is a legend in the history of K2 expeditions even though he, too, failed to summit. At one point he got so delirious, he started waving his revolver at other members of the team. Crowley had malaria and spent most of the time in his tent with a high fever. Eckenstein, the leader, had a bad respiratory infection. But as the expedition proceeded, it started falling apart. They thought they would go to the Himalayas and knock off K2 in a couple of days. In those days, nobody had a clue about what it was going to be like. He wanted extreme experiences where he pushed himself to the limit.Ĭrowley and Eckenstein made the first attempt on K2 in 1902. He liked climbing by himself or with his partner, Oscar Eckenstein. The kind of mountaineering he liked was the dangerous kind. But although he’s most famous for the sex, drugs, and poetry-and for getting his face onto the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band-in his youth he was an ardent mountaineer. There is no doubt that he was fascinated by the occult and Eastern religion. Some people call him a Satanist but that isn’t quite correct. Tell us about 666, a.k.a “The Beast,” Aleister Crowley.Īleister Crowley is famous for being an occultist.
The first attempt on K2 was surely the most bizarre. There have been several years recently in which nobody managed to climb K2 because the weather was so bad. And the weather is terrible and unpredictable. It’s within the death zone, defined as above 25,000 feet. There’s a shoulder at about 24,000 feet when it flattens off briefly but that’s about the only respite. Climbing Everest you have stretches that are steep, then it flattens off. It is about 800 feet lower than Everest, but the topography is much tougher. It’s so deadly because of the combination of elements. After being stretchered off K2 with frostbitten feet, American climber George Bell famously wrote: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” Why is K2 such a deadly place? I actually think it’s very poetic because it sums up a mountain that is very bare, very austere, a perfect pyramid.
But K2 is so remote even today – it’s 75 miles from the nearest village – that there wasn’t an agreed local name. Later, they went back and asked local people, “What’s this mountain over here called?” Then they would give it a local name, like Gasherbrum or Kanjut Sar. The surveyor would get the altitude of a mountain, write that down as K1 and the next one would be K2, K3, and so forth. When they were doing the original survey, they gave all of the mountains K numbers. It’s called K2 because it’s found in the Karakoram Range to the northeast of the Himalayas on the border of today’s Pakistan and China. The British wanted to work out in particular where the border was between Kashmir and China, as there was a fear the Russian Empire would extend southwards. It was first surveyed as part of the British Survey of India in 1856, by T.G. Most mountains have resonant, poetic names like the Matterhorn or Everest. Talking from his home in London, Conefrey explains why K2 brings out the best and worst in climbers, what climber Charles Houston meant by the term “The Brotherhood of the Rope,” and how the first man to attempt K2 ended up on the album cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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