INTERVIEW-K2 survivor recounts fatal mistakes, numbed panic

"We wasted precious time by cutting rope from the bottom and bringing it up," van Rooijen recalled bitterly, as his co-climber Cas van de Geval lay in a nearby bed, his frostbitten feet swathed in bandages.

ROCK AND ICE

Van Rooijen, who had scaled Mount Everest without oxygen and attempted K2 twice before, said he slept there "without sleeping bag, food and water" knowing they had to get down before the cold and lack of oxygen took its toll.

A towering pyramid of rock and ice, the steepness of K2's slopes are daunting for the most experienced climbers.

More than 70 people have died climbing the peak, a good many of them at the Bottleneck, where a wrong step can send a man hurtling off the South Face, where his body is unlikely to be ever recovered.

"If you can't go down you have to climb up," van Rooijen said. "So in such a difficult situation, you are taking more risks; you're climbing more technical slopes and finally you make a little mistake and you're gone."

As team leader, he appeared haunted by the panic that gripped some of his fellow climbers.

"People were running down but didn't know where to go, so a lot of people were lost on the mountain on the wrong side, wrong route and then you have a big problem."