Watching this tense video is a real “Will it? Won’t it?” nail biter. It captures the moment when an avalanche caused by a serac splitting off above the camp of a team of K2 climbers causes an avalanche that threatens to engulf their tents.
The team includes Italian climbers Federico Secchi and Marco Majori, who spent the summer climbing Broad Peak (26,414ft) and K2 (the world’s second-highest mountain at 28,251ft) without supplemental oxygen. The plan was for them to summit each then ski down both in their entirety. They both managed that on Broad Peak, but bad weather meant only Secchi conquered K2 (at the very end of July) with Majori having to turn back frustratingly close to the peak. The ski descent was abandoned, even though Secchi had his skis with him.
They have been home a while now, posting pics and vids from the adventure on Instagram, and one of them revealed the moment the serac sent the avalanche their way.
In this video, a serac breaks off above them, shatters and turn into an ice avalanche that powers down towards their camp. Luckily it runs out of its most destructive potential before it reaches them and leaves them engulfed in a cloud of ice particles.
“I made this video inside my tent where I was resting and I was woken up by a loud bang,” says Secchi. One of his team mates adds in the comments, “After the video the tent was full of snow.”
Seracs are house-sized glacial columns that occur above the crevasses of a glacier that are prone to collapsing, and mountaineers need to be very wary of them and other elements of avalanche safety. A serac collapse on K2 in 2008 killed 11 mountaineers. It looks like the Secchi / Majori team pitched camp a sensible distance from the danger. Certainly the guy in the distance to the left of the video towards the end doesn’t seem particularly worried.
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