K 2, seen from Base Camp

Another sad message from the Karakoram: The Canadian climber Serge Dessureault fell to his death at K2, the second highest mountain on earth, from an altitude of 6,700 metres. This was announced by the Alpine Club of Pakistan. The 53-year-old’s body was taken to the Advance Base Camp. Dessureault had led an expedition from Quebec. The four members wanted to be the first climbers from this Canadian province to reach the 8,611-metre-high summit of K2. They wanted to ascend via the so-called Abruzzi route (the Southeast ridge).

2007 on the Everest

R.I.P.

Dawa Sherpa from the Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks wrote on Facebook that Serge fell “from below a chimney while climbing at Camp 2”. Actually, this can only be House’s Chimney, a climbing passage through a crack in the rock, which had been first mastered by the American Bill House in 1938.

Dessureault had worked as a fireman in Montreal. In 2007 he had scaled Mount Everest from the Tibetan north side. – Last weekend, an Austrian climber had died in an avalanche on the 7,338-metre-high Ultar Sar in the Karakoram.