Mountain · Pakistan, China
Gasherbrum II
Gasherbrum II is 8 035 metres high and the thirteenth highest mountain on Earth, and of the fourteen peaks above 8 000 metres it is usually called the friendliest to climb.
Picture credit: Syed Hasan Shabbar (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Adha65 (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Gasherbrum II?
Gasherbrum II is part of the Baltoro Karakoram.
You will find it in: Pakistan, China.
Summit: 35.758° N, 76.653° E
The story behind it
The usual route up the south-west ridge is a long walk over snow and ice rather than a climb up rock, which is why Gasherbrum II is often the first eight-thousander somebody tries. It is also the one people try to go up quickly: in 1997 the climber Anatoli Boukreev went from base camp to summit alone in about nine and a half hours. In winter the mountain is a completely different animal, and it took until 2 February 2011 before anyone stood on top in that season — Cory Richards, Denis Urubko and Simone Moro, without bottled oxygen. Like its bigger neighbour, it once had a number instead of a name: the surveyors of India called it K4.
Find it on the globe
Gasherbrum II is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is Gasherbrum II the easiest eight-thousander?
It is one of the two usually named, along with Cho Oyu, because the normal route is snow and ice rather than steep rock. That still means weeks of walking in, thin air and real risk.
Where is Gasherbrum II?
In the Karakoram, on the border between Pakistan and China, right beside Gasherbrum I at the head of the Baltoro glacier.
What is a winter ascent?
Climbing the mountain in the coldest months, when the wind is strongest and the days are shortest. Nobody managed it on Gasherbrum II until February 2011, more than fifty years after the first ascent in summer.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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