No Way Down

(Viking, £18.99)

The gods were certainly angry on K2, the second highest mountain in the world, the day 29 climbers sought to reach its summit. They were a mixture of the professional and those who should not have been anywhere near the mountain. It is well known among climbers to be a death trap, far deadlier than Everest and now there were crumbling glaciers to prove its reputation as a slaughterhouse high among the clouds. Bowley takes us every hard-earned inch of the way in this story of tragedy and suspense in which 11 adventurers lost their lives.

“Everest had been overrun by a circus of commercial expeditions,” writes Bowley, “But K2 had retained an aura of mystery and danger” Among the avalanche of victims were a Norwegian climber swept off the mountain as his shocked girlfriend screamed his name; Korean climbers dangling upside down on ropes; a Frenchman deliberately sliding to his death; an Irishman leading a rescue attempt but falling victim himself to a snowfall; and the most, heroic, a Dutchman, shivering for three nights with no tent at 26,000 ft, phoning his wife in Utrecht to call for the mountain cavalry.

Of course, as always, the native Sherpas are the heroes in these disasters but again, as always, K2 ever beckons the dreamers, waiting to unleash again its malevolent force.