Dubai: UAE-based adventurer Adrian Hayes successfully scaled K2, the world’s second highest mountain on Saturday, six decades after its first conquest in 1954.
Hayes, believed to be the first UAE resident to reach K2’s summit, was on his way to Base Camp on Sunday afternoon after the exhausting climb on Saturday night. The news was confirmed by Abu Dhabi-based Professional Sports Group to Gulf News on Sunday.
The Saturday summit came almost a year after Hayes had to abort his first K2 summit attempt in 2013 after a deadly avalanche wiped out Camp 3, killing two of his co-climbers, father and son Marty and Denali Schmidt.
Reports of an extended good weather window from July 22 until the end of the month paved the way for Hayes and other climbers to reach the peak this year.
“I am thrilled to have got up there,” Hayes said from Camp 4 at 7,800 metres. “It all fell into place this year. I had a strong feeling that I would get up, but that’s not taking anything away from how tough this was. It was sustained, dangerous and treacherous and it’s been an exhausting 16-hour climb.”
“I have the utmost respect for everyone who has climbed it and those that have attempted it,” he added.
Known to many as the ‘Savage Mountain’, K2 stands just 200 metres short of the world’s tallest peak, Mt Everest, at 8,611 metres. But its unpredictable and harsh weather has earned it a reputation of being more deadly.
For every four who succeed in reaching the summit, one dies in the pursuit, mostly during the descent.
But the weather cooperated with Hayes and the team of climbers this year. In his July 20 blog, he said beginning July 22, they would be given six days of very low southwesterly winds, zero snowfall, sunshine and mild temperatures of around -15 degrees Celsius on the summit days of July 26 and 27.
“Above all, however, it is the extended time frame of this window which is the most encouraging. We appear to have reserve days [to push to the summit] in case of problems,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes added his recent feat to a long list of achievements, including conquering the world’s “three poles” – the North and South Poles and the highest mountain, Mt Everest, in the shortest period of time (one year and 217 days), earning him his first Guinness World Record in 2008.
His second Guinness World Record was achieved for the longest unsupported snow kiting journey — a 3,120-km vertical crossing of the Greenland icecap that took 67 days in 2009.
