K2 Trivia
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47 free K2 trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This K2 trivia quiz covers the second-highest mountain on Earth and the deadliest of the great peaks. The easy questions are the ones any mountain fan can manage: how high it is, which range it belongs to, which countries share it and why it is called the Savage Mountain. From there the set explains the odd name: the British surveyor who labelled it K2 from 130 kilometres away, the local names that never stuck, the Godwin-Austen alternative the Royal Geographical Society rejected, and the mathematician who named K3 surfaces after its beauty. The harder end is for mountaineers: Aleister Crowley's 1902 attempt, the Duke of the Abruzzi and the spur that bears his name, the 1953 Belay and the Gilkey Memorial, Lacedelli and Compagnoni's 1954 summit and the Bonatti-Mehdi oxygen controversy, the 1986 and 2008 disasters, the Bottleneck seracs, Wanda Rutkiewicz's first female ascent, the Magic Line and Polish Line, the never-climbed East Face, the 1986 measurement that briefly made it taller than Everest, and the ten Nepali climbers who finally stood on top in winter at minus 40. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for K2, its expeditions and its climbers before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Mount Everest, Himalayas and Mountaineering quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01K2 is Earth's second-highest mountain, so which peak ranks third?
Kangchenjunga
Kangchenjunga, at 8,586 m, stands just 25 m lower than K2; its first climbers in 1955 stopped short of the top to honour a promise that the sacred summit would stay untrodden.
Q 02In which mountain range does K2 stand?
The Karakoram
The Karakoram gave K2 its name: the K stands for the range, and K2 was the second of its peaks that a British surveyor logged in 1856.
Q 03Which Norwegian climber finished all fourteen eight-thousanders in a then-record 92 days by summiting K2 in July 2023?
Kristin Harila
Kristin Harila and her guide Tenjen Sherpa topped out on 27 July 2023, the season's one good weather window, alongside more than a hundred other climbers; the old record had stood at just over six months.
Q 04Which climber's remark that 'it's a savage mountain that tries to kill you' gave K2 its famous nickname?
George Bell
George Bell said it after the 1953 American retreat, in which he fell on the ice, froze his feet and lost a teammate; the expedition's own account came out the next year as K2: The Savage Mountain.
Q 05Before 2021, K2 had claimed roughly one life for every how many climbers who reached its summit?
4
4: about one climber had died for every four who summited before 2021, a far higher proportion than on Everest, because K2 is steeper, lies further north and is prone to storms that last for days.
Q 06Balti speakers near K2 now call the mountain Ketu, a name borrowed from which language?
English
English: Ketu, or Kechu, is simply the surveyor's label 'K two' as local Balti speakers say it, and the word has even begun to be used for any high mountain.
Q 07Why did K2 keep its survey label as a permanent name?
The mountain appeared to have no local name
The mountain appeared to have no local name: it is barely visible from any inhabited place, so the survey label was kept, whereas K1 took the name locals already used.
Q 08What alternative name for K2, honouring an early explorer, did the Royal Geographical Society reject though some maps use it?
Mount Godwin-Austen
Mount Godwin-Austen honours Henry Godwin-Austen, who surveyed the glaciers below K2 in 1861 and first fixed its position; the society turned the name down, but one of those glaciers still carries it.
Q 09K2's suggested local name, Chogori, derives from Balti words meaning what?
Big peak
Big peak: Chogori joins the Balti words chhogo, big, and ri, mountain, but there is scant evidence that locals ever used it, and it may have been coined by Western explorers.
Q 10The K3 surface, named partly after 'the beautiful mountain K2', is an object in which field?
Mathematics
Mathematics: André Weil coined the name in 1958, saying it honoured the geometers Kummer, Kähler and Kodaira as well as the beautiful mountain K2 in Kashmir.
Q 11What mistaken claim about K2 followed George Wallerstein's 1986 satellite measurement?
That it was taller than Everest
That it was taller than Everest: Wallerstein's preliminary reading suggested K2 might stand above 8,850 m, but an Italian survey under Ardito Desio re-measured both peaks in 1987 and Everest kept its crown.
Q 12K2's Pakistani side lies in which territory, known until 2009 as the Northern Areas?
Gilgit-Baltistan
Gilgit-Baltistan is administered by Pakistan as part of the wider Kashmir region, which India also claims, so K2 sits on some of the most disputed ground on any map.
Q 13As of 2025, which side of K2 has never been climbed, largely because of unstable ice and snow?
Q 21Which pair bivouacked in the open above 8,000 m after carrying oxygen for K2's first ascent?
Walter Bonatti and Amir Mehdi
Walter Bonatti and Amir Mehdi hauled the oxygen sets to about 8,100 m, found no tent waiting and survived a night in the open; Mehdi spent months in hospital and lost his toes to frostbite.
Q 22What finally became of the long-disputed dissenting account of K2's 1954 summit day?
The Italian Alpine Club accepted it
The Italian Alpine Club accepted it: a 2004 inquiry by three experts backed the oxygen carriers' story that the top camp had been moved out of their reach, and the club published the corrected history in 2007.
Q 23Climbers from which country led the second ascent of K2 in 1977, 23 years after the first?
The east
The east side of K2 has never been climbed: its snow and ice formations are judged too unstable, whereas the equally feared West Face finally fell to a Russian team in 2007.
Q 14Which occultist joined the first serious attempt to climb K2, in 1902?
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley, a skilled climber still weak from malaria, joined Oscar Eckenstein's 1902 expedition, which spent 68 days on K2 and had only eight of clear weather.
Q 15The standard route up K2 is named after which nobleman who first attempted it in 1909?
The Duke of the Abruzzi
The Duke of the Abruzzi, Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, gave up on the spur that now bears his name in 1909 and turned to nearby Chogolisa, where his party set a world altitude record of about 7,500 m.
Q 16K2 is Pakistan's highest peak; which mountain, nicknamed the Killer Mountain, is its second-highest?
Nanga Parbat
Nanga Parbat, at 8,126 m, had already claimed 31 lives when Hermann Buhl made its first ascent in 1953, pushing on alone to the summit after his companions turned back.
Q 17Which feature just below K2's summit forces climbers to pass beneath a wall of overhanging seracs?
The Bottleneck
The Bottleneck is the last big obstacle on the standard route: climbers hurry up the gully and across a traverse right under an ice cliff, trying to spend as little time there as they can.
Q 18Which American led the 1938 reconnaissance and the 1953 expedition on which Art Gilkey died?
Charles Houston
Charles Houston, a physician, led both American attempts; after the 1953 retreat he never took part in a serious climb again and turned to research on altitude sickness.
Q 19Who saved almost the entire 1953 American team during a mass fall, an act known simply as The Belay?
Pete Schoening
Pete Schoening jammed his ice axe behind a boulder and held five falling teammates as well as the stricken Art Gilkey on one rope; the axe is now on show in a Colorado mountaineering museum.
Q 20Which two Italians made the first ascent of K2 on 31 July 1954?
Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni
Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni reached the top at about 6 pm on 31 July 1954, so late that they had to climb down in the dark, and both came home with frostbitten hands.
Japan
Japan's 1977 team, led by Ichiro Yoshizawa, repeated the first-ascent route with the help of more than 1,500 porters, and took Ashraf Aman to the top as the first Pakistani summiter.
Q 24Who was the first woman to summit K2, on 23 June 1986?
Wanda Rutkiewicz
Wanda Rutkiewicz reached the top on 23 June 1986 without bottled oxygen; Liliane Barrard, who followed her up half an hour later, died with her husband on the way down.
Q 25Which pope was elected on the day the first woman up K2 summited Everest, in 1978?
John Paul II
John Paul II was elected on 16 October 1978, the day she stood on Everest; when they met the following year he reportedly said the good Lord had wanted them both to rise so high on the same day.
Q 26Which British climber summited Everest without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support in May 1995, then died descending K2 that August?
Alison Hargreaves
Alison Hargreaves reached K2's summit on 13 August 1995 and was blown off the mountain by a violent storm on the way down; she had set out to climb the world's three highest peaks unaided in a single year.
Q 27What triggered the 2008 K2 disaster, which killed 11?
Falling ice
Falling ice: a serac broke off above the summit gully after dark on 1 August and swept away the fixed ropes, stranding climbers who had topped out late; most of the deaths came on the descent that followed.
Q 28Ger McDonnell, who died in the 2008 disaster hours after summiting, was the first climber from which country atop K2?
Ireland
Ireland: the Limerick-born engineer summited on 1 August 2008; survivors said he then stayed high on the mountain trying to free injured climbers, and he was killed during the descent.
Q 29Which 2000 survival thriller directed by Martin Campbell is set on K2?
Vertical Limit
Vertical Limit, released in December 2000, stars Chris O'Donnell as a climber racing to rescue his sister from a crevasse high on K2.
Q 30The 1978 American ascent, the third of K2, opened which new route?
The Northeast Ridge
The Northeast Ridge was the line of Jim Whittaker's 1978 expedition; Jim Wickwire and Louis Reichardt reached the summit on 6 September, and Wickwire survived a bivouac about 150 m below the top.