Long distance walking in Pakistan

What is it like trekking to K2?

How do you get to see K2 in real life? A hike to base camp is a remote expedition involving 12-14 days of trekking along the world’s fifth largest glacier, in temperatures that range from 40 degrees centigrade to minus figures.

Whilst it isn’t a technical trek, you’ll need sunglasses to protect your eyes from the glare of the reflecting sun on the ice, and a change of shoes to cross rushing meltwater streams. This shouldn’t be your first long distance, high-altitude trek.

Unlike a trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, there are no villages along the route you’ll take to K2, so no stopping to get more provisions. There’s a camp where the porters will bake huge amounts of bread ready to use for the rest of the trip. There are no trees after day six. When you first see K2, perhaps if the visibility is good on your flight from Islamabad to Skardu, you’ll think it’s really close. It’s only after many more days of hiking that you realise it wasn’t close at all, just really, really big.

For most of the route, you are walking on a glacier. The Baltoro glacier is so big that it can be seen from space. There’s no trail, as such – this is living, shifting ice. It’s epic to experience, “Everyone who goes there feels like they are on Mars,” says Umer, describing the strange, treeless landscape. It’s a terrain that’s the firmest of firm going, and very hard on your feet.

The trek is so isolated and difficult that satellite phones must be carried, and you need six porters for every trekker.

Six? Surely not. “People expect one or two,” says Umer. “When you do long distance walking on a glacier, they are often surprised… We don’t have tea houses or hotels where you can stop – you have a lot of equipment – they have to carry your load, their own equipment, plus sleeping tents and the mess tent.”

No one comes to K2 alone. In the face of its deadly majesty, you need a team. Whilst you might struggle for words to convey the size, scale and beauty of what you’ve seen to people back home, you’ve got your trekking party with you, to share the experience.

Every trek has its own story

When you go on a long distance trek like this, you are becoming a character in your own epic narrative. After all, you are walking in the footsteps of historic expeditions, through a land formerly only crossed by the odd ibex hunter. Your trek lives on long after it’s over, in the tales you’ll tell people back home.

“Every trek has its own story,” Umer says. For Muneer, one of his best involves an American group in Concordia. “One sat and just started crying,” he says. “When I asked him why, he told me – “I couldn’t imagine that I could come here and see all this mountain beauty.””

Omer’s best story involves bumping into the Canadian High Commissioner on a trail, “That was a very memorable moment – and we were both very sunburnt!”

What do I need to prepare?

This is a walking vacation, so no specialist kit is required, but there are some essential everyday items that you’ll want. Clothing layers are essential to deal with the temperature fluctuation; it can be 30 degrees, easily, in the first few days of the walk, before the temperature starts to plummet with the rising altitude.

As you get higher, sun protection is key. There are no trees and no shade, and the glacier’s reflective power is beaming sun into your face from below. Hats, suncream, glacier goggles or sunglasses, and lip balm all help protect you.

Walking poles are optional but very useful. You’ll also need a pair of old trainers to put on for river crossings. The most important item on your kit list is for your feet: you’ll want shoes or boots that you know won’t let you down after multiple days’ walking on very hard ice.

This shouldn’t be your first walking vacation, and not your first long distance trek. You need to be fit, and also used to walking on uneven, rocky, hard surfaces, for up to seven hours a day.

Best time to go

Trips into the mountains run in summer, when the routes are fully opened up and snow-free. It means you’ll go from 30-degree heat in the Skradu Valley, to single figures over the course of a trek, so prepare accordingly. You don’t want to meet those big faces with a sunburnt face, after all.