Dave Watson skis K2

On August 4, 2009, Dave Watson became the first person in history to ski down the "most difficult mountain on Earth".

In doing this, Dave realized a dream that many of the world's best skiers would not even consider.  "As challenging as the skiing was, the climb to get up there was much more difficult. K2 is a really hard mountain."

In 2008, Watson travelled to Pakistan to ski K2.  He acclimatized on the neighboring Broad Peak (Earth's 12th tallest mountain) and skied from an elevation of 25,000 ft. on Aug 2nd.  This proved to be the only weather window of the season.  After the Broad Peak descent, Dave moved his base camp over to K2 where he spent another 4 weeks hoping for a break in the weather to attempt skiing K2.  This break never came and Dave and his partners were the last to leave the mountain, never getting a chance to climb high on the "King's" slopes.

Check out Dave's Website:

http://www.k2tracks.com/k2-ski-expedition-2009/

Dave hoped to return to K2 in 2010 but in June 2009 when a friend called and invited Watson to join him for an incredible price, the invite couldn't be turned down.  Two weeks later they were on a plane headed for Pakistan.  They arrived in base camp on July 6 and less than a month later Dave was leading and fixing ropes up the fabled "bottleneck" at over 8,300 meters.  On the wind protected slopes above the bottleneck, the snow deepened with every step until it eventually stopped progress.  Dave was out front breaking trail for 4 1/2 hours until the call was made by the other members of the summit team to turn around.  "It was getting late, 3 pm and the snow was chest deep. Progress was very slow. Breaking trail in those conditions at 8,400 meters was very tiring and there just wasn't enough manpower to get the job done.  The weather was good but we weren't sure how long it would hold.  When my partner started signaling me to turn around I knew that was it.  It was time to ski."  Despite the presence of some of the world's strongest high altitude climbers, no one would reach the summit of K2 in 2009.

Dave then climbed down 50 meters to meet up with his partner and have a cup of coffee from his thermos.  As all of the other climbers were rappelling down the ropes in the bottleneck, Dave was going through a mental checklist preparing for his historic descent.  "I wasn't thinking about the skiing, being so tired and covered in ice from the trail-breaking. I was on auto pilot just to get ready for the skiing: pack off and clipped in, change my frozen gloves, skis off pack.  The snow was so hard I couldn't jam the skis in, I had to tie them off. Next was take the crampons off, overboots off, put them in the pack, clean the ice off of the boots, put the skis on, adjust the length of the poles, ice axe on the pack, buckle the boots, zip up all the zippers on the suit, pack on and unclip from the rope."

Read it all at Dave's Website:

http://www.k2tracks.com/k2-ski-expedition-2009/