Book Review: No Way Down: Life and Death on K2

By Graham Bowley

Published by Harper

Reviewed by Dan O’Gorman SC

This is an account of how a multinational group of climbers became trapped by a falling glacier at the top of K2, the world’s second-tallest mountain, in August 2008, a tragedy that saw 11 climbers die, and three climbers suffer frostbite after surviving several nights in the open, and others faced down death.

K2 is more than 28,000 feet high.  It was first conquered by two Italians in August 1954, some 52 years after the first serious attempt on K2 had been made in 1902 by a six-man expedition made up of Swiss, Austrians and Britons.  By the time of the climb in August 2008, nearly 300 mountaineers had successfully reached the summit if K2.  However, that mountain had also been the subject of many earlier disasters such as those in 1986, when 13 people died from storms and avalanches over the course of the summer, and in 1995 when another seven climbers were killed in a single storm.  Further, a massive slab of snow had loosened in 2006, crushing four Russians.

The author, a journalist at the New York Times at the time, was inspired by the charisma of the adventurers who had stepped into a world the author did not initially understand.  The author interviewed many of the August 2008 climbers and their families along with mountaineering experts who had spent time on K2.  The accounts provided by many of the August 2008 climbers contradicted one another and it was clear that memory had been affected by the pulverising experience of high altitude, the violence of the climbers’ ordeals and, in a few instances, possibly by self-serving claims of glory, blame and guilt.  This book is based on hundreds of interviews with the many dozens of people involved directly or indirectly with the tragedy.  Some of the most crucial aspects of the tragedy turn on points of conflict between the accounts provided with the result that the truth of what actually took place in these snows on K2 in August 2008 at 2800 feet may never be known.

This publication traces the final days of the 11 people who would never return from K2 and a number of agonising days of those climbers who did survive but who suffered serious injuries.  It is very well researched and captures some of the agony and ecstasy that must surely accompany such a dangerous sport generally and climbs such as those in August 2008 in particular.