I've bagged K2!!!

Well, this was a goal I didn't think I'd accomplish this year. At least not before year-end. But, as luck would have it, circumstances allowed the most perfect window of opportunity. It took some huevos, though, and without my friend Jim to climb lead, I wouldn't have been able to reach a previously unattainable goal.......summiting K2. Especially not on a spontaneous decision made just Christmas morning of this year (aka, yesterday). My minutes of training were about to pay off!

The landscape is so sweeping, I couldn't fit the entire summit scope into one photo and had to do a bit of a collage mash-up:


It was a pretty cold day for climbing.....but I managed to get this shot snapped before the gales blew my tripod over. Jim's summit pose:
While I struggled to shoot photos with some event integrity, Jim opted - during his turn behind the camera, and my turn to summit - to document my clumsy ascent:

oops, never mind the ladder.....or the cornfields, or the barn either, for that matter....
...and a Rocky Balboa-style fist-pump....

Finally, the last summit shot!


Finally, got THAT off my life list, and a couple of years early, to boot. Bring it on, ought-8!!