K2Climb.net posted an update on Dodo Kopold and his team, who have been waiting patiently for another weather window to open on K2. Sadly, Dodo, Piotr Morawski, and Peter Hamor have decided enough is enough, and they'll leaving BC in the next few days.
Most of the teams have already left the mountain following the onset of bad weather over the past weekend. Since then, a blizzard has hit K2 covering the upper slopes in even more snow. Reports from the teams that turned back last weekend already reported chest deep snow near the summit, which made for slow going and incredibly exhausting to break trail.
The original plan was for Dodo, Piotr, and Peter to go up the Western Face via a new route in an alpine style climb. When that proved impossible due to poor weather, they quickly switched over to the Cesen Route and joined up with several other teams still on the mountain. That combined team became known as the K2 Express as their intent was to make a fast, non-stop run up the mountain and summit while the weather window was open. Poor weather, high winds, and exhaustion forced the team down, and the rest of the members left the mountain altogether. Now it seems they're all going home.
That leaves the Russians on the West Face, who turned back 100 meters below the summit last weekend and the Russian and Kazakh teams on the North West Ridge as the remaining K2 hopefuls for this season. However, with the massive blizzard currently dumping snow on the mountain, I expect that those teams will likely pull out as well. The forecasts are not in their favor right now.
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