1986 K2 Disaster

The 1986 K2 disaster refers to a period from 6 August to 10 August 1986, when five mountaineers died on K2 in the Karakoram during a severe storm. Eight other climbers were killed in the weeks preceding, bringing the total number of deaths that climbing season to 13.

The first casualties of the summer occurred on an American expedition. Like many others that summer, the team hoped to be the first to summit via the technically demanding and yet-unclimbed Southwest Pillar, also known as the "Magic Line". Team leader John Smolich and Alan Pennington were killed in an avalanche on 21 June. Pennington's body was pulled out by climbers who had witnessed the incident, but Smolich's has yet to be found. The rest of the team left the mountain shortly after the accident.

On 23 June, French climbers Liliane and Maurice Barrard reached the summit, just 30 minutes after their teammate Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first woman to summit K2. Both Liliane Barrard and Rutkiewicz were climbing without bottled oxygen. As darkness fell, all three, along with team member Michel Parmentier and two Spanish climbers, Mari Abrego and Josema Casimiro, had to make an emergency bivouac not far from the summit itself. While all six made it through the night, the Barrards disappeared at some point during the descent. Liliane's body was recovered three weeks later, but Maurice's was not found until 1998.

Polish climber Tadeusz Piotrowski fell to his death after a successful summit of the central rib of the south face on 10 July. Six days later, Italian soloist Renato Casarotto fell into a crevasse, after an unsuccessful attempt at climbing the Southwest Pillar. He was rescued from the crevasse, but died shortly thereafter. On 3 August, Wojciech Wróż, part of a combined Slovak-Polish team that successfully summitted the Southwest Pillar without using bottled oxygen, slipped off the end of a fixed rope and fell to his death. On 4 August, Mohammad Ali, Sardar for a South Korean expedition, was killed by falling rocks on the Abruzzi Spur. Difficult weather conditions caused many other injuries and near-fatalities throughout the summer.

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