GUIDE · ROUTE

02 JUL 2026

K2 Altitude Camps:
The Route to the Savage Mountain's Summit

From the glacier at 5,100 metres to the Bottleneck at 8,200 — a field guide to every camp on K2's Abruzzi Spur, the way nearly every climber goes up.

K2's most-climbed route, the Abruzzi Spur, is a long, steep rib on the mountain's southeast side. It is not a walk and it is not a technical rock climb — it is a sustained, serious mountaineering route that never lets you rest, from the glacier to the summit pyramid. Here is how the camps stack up.

Base Camp — 5,100m

Perched on the Godwin-Austen Glacier, K2 Base Camp is a small tented city at the foot of the mountain. Teams spend weeks here acclimatising, watching the sky, and waiting for a weather window that may never come. From here the Abruzzi Spur rises almost 3,500 metres in a single, unbroken line.

Camp 1 — 6,100m

Reached by climbing the jumbled ice and rock of the lower spur. Camp 1 is where the mountain begins to feel real: the glacier is behind you, the exposure is below you, and the work is only beginning.

Camp 2 — 6,600m

A narrow, exposed ledge on the spur, reached via steep rock chimneys and ice slopes. Conditions here are the first taste of the high mountain, and many climbers turn back at this point with the summit still two camps away.

Camp 3 — 7,400m

The last protected camp, tucked under the great rock buttress of the Shoulder. Above Camp 3 the mountain opens out into the deadly upper slopes — and into the zone where every decision matters.

Camp 4 — 7,800m

On the Shoulder, exposed to the wind and sky. From Camp 4 the summit push begins in the deep hours of night, climbing through the seracs and into the most feared corridor in mountaineering.

The Bottleneck — 8,200m

The crux of the entire climb: a narrow couloir overhung by a massive wall of ice seracs that could release at any moment. Climbers cross it quickly, quietly, and pray. Above it, a steep traverse leads to the summit ridge, and the final steps onto K2 itself — 8,611 metres, the second-highest point on Earth, earned the hard way.

“Every camp on K2 is a promise you make to yourself. Only the summit releases you.” — a guide who walked the spur