History's A Disaster
Bloody history and bloodier crimes. Andrew takes a weekly look at all things bloody. From natural disasters to man made atrocities
History's A Disaster
The 2008 K2 Disaster
Few mountains inspire both awe and dread quite like K2. Standing in the shadow of Everest's fame yet claiming a far deadlier reputation, the world's second-highest peak demands respect—one climber dies for every four who summit. During a fateful expedition in August 2008, that grim statistic would manifest in the mountain's deadliest single incident.
After weeks of waiting for weather to clear, an international group of 25 climbers from multiple expeditions made their summit push on August 1st. What began with perfect climbing conditions unraveled into chaos when fixed ropes at the notorious "Bottleneck" section were swept away by falling ice. As darkness fell, climbers found themselves stranded in the punishing "death zone" above 26,000 feet—where oxygen deprivation progressively impairs judgment, coordination, and eventually, survival itself.
The following days witnessed extraordinary acts of heroism alongside devastating tragedy. Sherpas made repeated rescue attempts for stranded climbers. Some survivors endured unimaginable conditions, including one who survived 60 hours without supplemental oxygen before being airlifted off the mountain. Others displayed profound altruism, like climber Ger McDonnell, who likely perished while attempting to free entangled Korean climbers rather than saving himself. By the time the mountain quieted, eleven lives had been claimed—leaving behind conflicting survivor accounts and families desperate for answers that would never fully come.
Join us as we examine what went wrong during K2's darkest hours, piecing together the fragmented stories of those who lived to tell the tale and honoring those who didn't. If you've ever wondered about the psychological and physical limits humans face in Earth's most extreme environments, this episode reveals both our remarkable resilience and ultimate vulnerability against nature's most formidable landscapes.
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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/
Nothing gets you higher than climbing a mountain, and if you want to get really high, you gotta go to K2. While it's not as tall as Mount Everest, it is a much harder climb. Roughly one person has died on K2 for every four climbers who have reached the summit. You have to climb another mountain before you can actually get to K2. At this point, you're already doing too much, as well as accomplishing more than most people ever will. So just stop and go home. Seriously, at this point in the climb, shit just gets worse, and for one expedition to the summit of K2 in 2008, shit got much worse and 11 climbers would never leave the mountain again. So what happened? I'm Andrew and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we're getting high as we climb into the disaster that befell an expedition to climb the K2 Mountain, which is in the Karakoram Mountain Range, which runs along the border of Pakistan and China.
Speaker 1:The climbing season for K2 normally runs from June to August, but shitty weather in June and July of 2008 stopped anyone from making the attempt. Since no attempts could be made, an expedition sponsored by the Norik Company made good use of the time to acclimate to the weather and set up camps higher and higher on the mountain range as they waited for the weather to clear up. By July 31st, the expedition was now made up of 25 climbers from different teams from around the world USA, norway, france, serbia, south Korea along with some Sherpas from Nepal and an international team sponsored by the Dutch company Norit, along with Pakistani high altitude porters and a group composed of solo climbers were waiting at Camp 4 for the weather to clear up so they could push on to the summit of K2. When the weather cleared on August 1st, they all decided to work together to set fixed ropes and climb the rest of the way up. The weather that day was warm and perfect for the climb. The team staggered their departure times so they didn't get crowded up on the mountain.
Speaker 1:The first team, who was supposed to go ahead of the rest and put in the fixed ropes, was supposed to head out at midnight. They did not. They chose to stay in their tents. So one of the Sherpas, pemba, along with solo climber Alberto Serran and a few of the more experienced climbers, took it upon themselves to do it. They were way behind schedule and in their rush, put in fixed ropes very early in the climb, which meant they would not have enough rope for later during the harder sections of the climb. Have enough rope for later during the harder sections of the climb, so they had to go back down to get more rope before continuing. This slowed the entire climb way down, which caused the whole group to come to a stop at the area known as the bottleneck while they waited for the fixed ropes to be secured.
Speaker 1:The bottleneck is a rock corridor 27,000 feet up, which just happens to be under an overhang of Siroc, which is a large block of ice. Climbers are exposed and have to move over 600 feet while exposed to the Siroc, which could break loose at any moment. This whole area is very steep and highly dangerous. Most deaths on K2 occur in this area. It's also the quickest and easiest route to the summit, a little more than a thousand feet away. While climbing this area, the climbers used ice screws to secure ropes up through the bottleneck and along the route they used to traverse under this rock.
Speaker 1:While they were waiting to continue up the mountain, many of the climbers took to the rocks to take a break as they waited. During the wait, one of the Serbian climbers, dren Mandic, unclipped his rope and attempted to pass another climber. He slipped and slid down the mountainside. They all breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped and stood up to wave at the group now high above him. Then he slipped again. He fell another 600 feet down the cliff. When his Serbian teammates came down to help and reached him, it was already too late. Dren had died from head injuries during the fall. The Serbians wanted to take his body all the way back to base camp, but compromised when the others talked them out of it and settled on going back to Camp camp, but compromised when the others talked them out of it and settled on going back to camp 4 to bury him. During the descent, jihan Bagh, one of the porters from Pakistan, slipped and nearly took out the entire group, taking the body down. He was clinging to a rope that had become entangled in the group and was endangering everyone as he slid down, picking up speed, before he finally released the rope and disappeared over a cliff.
Speaker 1:After the accident, the decision was made to continue on to the summit. It was getting late in the day and they had to go 600 feet from the top. One of the Norwegian climbers, rolf, unhappy with the way the climb is going, backs out and turns around to head back to camp by 3.30 that afternoon. Alberto would be the first one to reach the summit, well ahead of everyone else. It would take over four hours for the rest of the climbers to reach the summit. The Italian team would be the last of the 18 climbers to reach the summit, at just after 7.30. But now that they reached the top, the easy part was over. Now they had to get back down, and the sun is setting. Alberto would be the first to make it back down safely, followed by the Norwegian team, who would meet back up with Ralph on the climb back down to the fixed ropes.
Speaker 1:Within 15 minutes of reaching the ropes, darkness descends, and if it wasn't bad enough that they were in what's called the death zone, with the sun going down, they would have to rely on helmet lamps to see in the dark. Now this death zone is any area above 26,000 feet. The oxygen is so thin that it is not enough for anyone to survive for an extended length of time. While in the death zone, you're constantly being deprived of oxygen, which fucks with your brain, making it hard to think and make decisions, and the longer you're there, the worse it gets. Your body literally starts to break down and fill with fluids, your brain and lungs swell up, which makes it hard to move and harder to breathe and eventually you'll cease to function at all. And if you get fucked up bad enough and no one thinks it's safe to help, you get left behind to die.
Speaker 1:Now, as the Norwegians traversed under the Serac, ralph led the way. He was 80 feet in front of the rest of the group. As they moved, the ground rumbled and shook. Ice breaking loose, slid down the mountain and struck Ralph, sending him falling down the mountainside. The rest of the Norwegians Ralf, sending him falling down the mountainside, the rest of the Norwegians, including Ralf's wife, had to watch helplessly as he disappeared into the darkness. With no time to grieve, they had to work their way slowly down the slopes to reach Camp 4 without the use of the fixed ropes. The avalanche of ice from the Serac had wiped away the fixed ropes.
Speaker 1:The rest of the climbers near the summit had to make their way down slowly to above the Serac and regroup. They were tired and exhausted from the climb up. There was a panic and a moment of fear as the group looked around for the fixed ropes. They were nowhere to be found. There was a growing fear that they had gotten lost in the dark and were on the wrong side of the mountain when they could not find them. So they made the decision to stop there and rest for the night.
Speaker 1:During this descent, one of the climbers, cass, chose to keep going. After passing one of the French climbers, he came to the end of the line and continued to climb down, using his ice axe and crampons to descend. As he was going down, the mountain rumbled and Hughes, the Frenchman he passed, went sliding down past him out of control. Pemba and two of the other Sherpas in the group also decided to make for Camp 4. They left behind the remaining eight climbers as they made their own descent down safely. During the night.
Speaker 1:The remaining members of the Korean team had become entangled in their ropes and were hanging off the side of the mountain. A small avalanche of ice had knocked them down and sent them sliding to a small shelf of ice. They were left hanging there, still attached to an anchor point above them. They had survived the fall but were injured and trapped. They refused to go any further.
Speaker 1:By daybreak, everyone at Camp 4 could see the remaining climbers above the top of the Serac. Attempts were made to call them by radio, but they got no response. The radio had not been turned on. Now this group was convinced they would find the fixed ropes once it was light out. They searched and searched, but to no avail. One of them, wilco, started to panic and feared he was losing his vision to snow blindness, which would have been damn near a death sentence at that height. No one would be able to help him. So, without thinking or a second thought, he started to make his own way down. As he made his descent, he passed three of the South Koreans hanging in the group. One of them had lost their gloves in the fall and borrowed a spare pair. The Koreans refused to move any further, fully expecting someone to come rescue them. Wilco would continue on his descent and eventually become lost. He ended up stopping and calling his wife on his satellite phone and would end up being trapped on the mountain for another night.
Speaker 1:Down at Camp 4, the South Korean team leader Kim was trying to arrange a rescue mission for his lost Koreans. The others had to tell him that that was just not possible. The team was only getting weaker in the high climate and physically taking them off the mountain was impossible, and it was time to move down from Camp 4. But Mr Kim was persistent and ordered the two Sherpas, with the Korean team, to rescue the three Koreans. By this time two of the climbers, marco and Jer, had reached the three Koreans. One of them was seriously injured. The snow around them was covered in blood.
Speaker 1:Marco, one of the Italians, contacted Camp 4 with a radio he had found with their Koreans and requested help for them before attempting his own descent down. Jer refused to go down the mountain and climbed back up, possibly to attempt to release the anchor points holding the Korean team. Trapped. During Marco's descent, he would barely miss getting hit in another avalanche of ice that came down behind him. The two Sherpas sent up by Kim would find him alive but unconscious, at the base of the bottleneck. They could not stop to bring him down and no one else would volunteer to go up, so Pemba took it upon himself to go. While he was there with Marco, another call came in over the radio. The Sherpas had reached the top of the bottleneck and were just beneath the Serac. They had found the three missing Koreans, but another climber had been hit by ice and fell. It was unclear which climber fell, but it is believed to have been Jer.
Speaker 1:After the call, the wind picked up, causing more ice to break loose. Two more bodies came falling down and stopped not far from Pemba. It was two of the Sherpas from the Korean team, pasang and Jumik Boat. They were cousins. One had been trapped on the mountain, the other had been sent out to rescue them. Neither survived the fall. The rest of the surviving climbers would eventually climb back down to camp four and slowly work their way down to the other camps.
Speaker 1:By August 4th, the Pakistani military had been called in and launched a rescue operation. Cass, wilco and Marco were all airlifted by helicopter off the mountain. Cass and Marco had made it to camp too. When they were picked up, they would have to pull the coordinates from Wilco's satellite phone to find him on the mountain in order to get him out. He had survived for 60 hours in the death zone without oxygen before being rescued. Everyone except one of the porters was accounted for.
Speaker 1:Maharban Karim was believed to have been suffering altitude sickness and stumbled onto the Serac during an ice fall and disappeared Later. In the hospitals. Marco and Wilco would lose all of their toes to frostbite, but they would eventually return to climbing, while Marco was one of the first ones off and able to speak to the press. His story would become the official story of what happened, even though his story would go on and constantly change over time on what exactly happened on the mountain.
Speaker 1:Every single other survivor would have different versions of what happened, which left many of the families of those that died with questions, and it wasn't until Pemba stepped up that they would get answers to some of them.
Speaker 1:The main ones asking the questions was the family of Jer McDonald, who had refused to come down the mountain.
Speaker 1:After speaking with Pemba, it is now believed that he refused to leave so that he could help the Koreans. He was the only one still up there that could have helped free them from the routes they had become entangled with and led them down under the Serac where they met up with the rescue team before ultimately losing his life to an icefall. And that was the K2 disaster of 2008. With all the different and often contradictory stories of what happened, we will probably never know the truth of what exactly happened on the mountain that day, but either way, the fact remains it is the single deadliest accident to happen on K2. Thanks for listening and if you enjoyed the show. Please consider leaving a rating or review on your app of choice, and you can reach the show at historyisadisaster at gmailcom with questions, comments or suggestions. And don't forget to follow the show on social media like Facebook or Instagram and share the show, because sharing is caring, and if there was more caring in the world, maybe history wouldn't be a disaster. Thanks and goodbye.