8000+m deaths

I have been looking at stats on the 14 8000+m peaks, the death rates on some are pretty intense (info source is www.8000ers.com - it has very detailed stats on the 14 peaks as well as the 7 summits):

Peak Attempts Fatalities %
ANNAPURNA I 153 58 37,91
K2 284 66 23,24
NANGA PARBAT 287 64 22,30
KANGCHENJUNGA 209 40 19,14
MANASLU 297 53 17,85
DHAULAGIRI I 358 58 16,20
MAKALU 234 26 11,11
GASHERBRUM I 265 25 9,43
SHISHA PANGMA 274 23 8,39
EVEREST 3684 210 5,70
BROAD PEAK 359 19 5,29
LHOTSE 321 11 3,43
GASHERBRUM II 836 19 2,27
CHO OYU 2668 39 1,46

So clearly if you want to reach the top of only 1 of the 8000ers, Cho Oyu (8188m - the 6th highest peak on earth) is the "safest". I wonder if there are stats available on where and how people have died in the Berg in the past...

I think that is probably the number of summits rather than attempts.

Its not too low, I believe the number of women who have summitted K2 is still not even in double digits. The number may be the number who have summitted, but the number of attempts on K2 is definitely very low, and I believe most deaths are on the way down (I don't need to tell a group of hikers that climbing down is more dangerous and difficult than climbing up ).

Nanga Parbat remains the no 1 peak I want to see in reality in that area of the world, just because of that 4.5km high drop off on the one side, I find it crazy that the standard route up the peak is this route, but I guess it makes sense as you probably won't be in an avalanche on such a steep slope...

Ghaz - some detailed stats for you over here: www.adventurestats.com/statistics.shtml

Up to and including the 2008 season, there were 296 K2 summitteers, of which 12 were women. So your stats above are the death:summit rates which overstate the actual death rate quite a lot. Especially for mountains with very low success rates (like K2).

Just for interest - if we looking for the most dangerous peak, as far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong) K2 has never been attempted in Winter, so even though it's death rate is 2nd, in my books it remains top.

ghaznavid wrote: I wonder if there are stats available on where and how people have died in the Berg in the past...

Here you go... Search & Rescue stats for the Berg dating back to 1977: kzn.mcsa.org.za/search-rescue/stats-and-reports

@Stijn: thats a fair point (and I don't know how recent those stats are), but as most deaths are on the way down, it won't be that far off...

@Heath: I don't know if it has been summitted in winter, but I know a group had a failed attempt with a death in Feb this year, I think they got to about 7200m when the one member got frost bite and weather was turning bad, so they headed back to base camp, a rescue helicopter couldn't be used due to weather and the person died at base camp (there is a full account on either 8000ers.com or k2.com). According to www.adventurestats.com/tables/8000erwinter.shtml no hikers have summitted K2 in winter and only 27 summits on the 14's have ever been successful in winter.

Also note that Nanga Parbat used to be referred to as K1, I believe it was something to do with it initially having worse stats than K2, but its been a while since I last read up on the history of this peak. If I am correct, Nanga Parbat's easiest route "isn't that difficult", but things always seem to go wrong due to poor leadership or underestimating the mountain - I know that the one Messner brother who died after one of the first successful summittings was killed in an avalanche low down on the peak around the point where its not too dangerous. Although when a peak has a name that means the "Naked Mountain" due to the low volumes of snow and vegetation resulting from the steepness of its sides, avalanches should be fairly common...

Its crazy that the list of the top 100 peaks on earth includes 2 peaks that have still never been summitted, and some which are still in single digits for total successful climbs. The best has to be Gringe Fullen's account on his website of climbing the highest point in Uzbekistan (I read this account a while back, I may have the wrong county, but it was definitely in the Fan mountains), it had "definitely never been climbed before", so he climbs it (after a few failed attempts) and find a massive cairn built on top - most probably as part of a Soviet survey of the area...

ghaznavid wrote: Also note that Nanga Parbat used to be referred to as K1, I believe it was something to do with it initially having worse stats than K2, but its been a while since I last read up on the history of this peak.

IIRC, the first surveyors that mapped the Karakorum named the peaks they surveyed K1, K2, K3, etc all the way up to K15. Some of these have since been named. These names were assigned before any attempts had even been made on any of the peaks, so will purely be a geographical order or something like that.