The five days of snow squalls and frigid winds have blown themselves out, with the wind now blowing down valley. This morning the sun returned to K2.

Don and Bruce are headed to ABC. If the route to C1 looks safe, I will join them this afternoon. If not, I will meet them there at 5 a.m. We want to get back on the route as soon as possible, but the threat of avalanches flowing over the bottom of our route gives us pause.

Our route has two main dangers and countless zones of technical difficulty. The dangers: rockfall and avalanches. During storms and immediately following, the threat of avalanche isn't high, it's guaranteed. But once they run, the danger shrinks. Rockfall only seems to be a danger if the sun shines too strongly, releasing frozen-in-place stones that can whistle (if small) or tumble (the big ones) right down the route.

As you can imagine, timing is critical through the lower gauntlets. But once we are established on the route itself, we think we are on the safest line on the hill.

Speaking of gauntlets: you missed a doozy of a conversation. We spent at least an hour discussing the name of this new route. Most routes on K2 are named for their geographic feature, although a few are commonly called by some proper noun. The SE Spur is the Abruzzi route. The SSE Ridge is the Cesen Route. The SSW Ridge is called the Magic Line. But the West Ridge, North Ridge, NE Ridge, etc seem argument enough that K2's routes should be named for geography, as is the tradition.

A simple look at the map and the directional name was clear: SE. But whoa, when it came to deciding whether we are climbing a face, a buttress, a pillar, a spur, a rib, a ridge or an arête... well, things got confusing. We are climbing a giant face, nearly 8000 feet tall, but we are following a thin, vertical, series of rock outcrops that bisect the face. And after about 5000 vertical feet, the snowy face fades into the Black Pyramid. From that point on, we'll be on rock, perhaps layered with snow. 

A dozen permutations, consultations with geomorphologists, soothsayers and one tossed dart later: we are climbing the Direct SE Buttress.

Bruce just crackled over the radio. The avalanches seem to have run. In a few minutes I will shoulder my pack and hike to ABC. We are headed to Camp 1 tonight. Tomorrow the battle to Camp 2 resumes. 

Joel and Chris S will be updating the site daily. Hopefully they will be able to report a lot of progress now that all three of us are healthy and climbing together.

Chris Warner