K2 or Mount Godwin Austen or Qogir; Chinese: 乔戈里峰, Pinyin: Qiáogēlǐ Fēng; other names include Lambha Pahar (“Tall Mountain” in Urdu), Qaumi Pahar (“National Mountain” in Pakistani Kashmir) Dapsang, Kechu, and Chogori, which means “The King of the Mountains.”
The mountain is the 2nd highest in the world, after Everest, and is 8611m high (28,251ft). But it is much more difficult and dangerous, even the ‘easiest’ route is not safe from avalanches and is very steep on average and the mountain has taken many lives, including those of famous climbers.
We were on our way to Chogolisa basecamp when we passed ‘Concordia’, a crossroad of huge glaciers, overlooked by giants like Gasherbrum IV, Broad Peak and K2. K2 -the ‘K’ stands for Karakoram, the range- is really impressive as the glacier is already about 4300m high, but standalone mountain doubles that height. No-one will ever conquer K2, maybe she lets people visit her for a short while…
Many times in the clouds, it just peaked out for a few moments and I could quickly take this shot of the evening light shining on the summit. Scanned from Provia slide, shot July 2004 with EOS 3.