1986 K2 disaster

Like many others that summer, the team hoped to be the first to summit via the technically demanding and as-yet-unclimbed Southwest Pillar, also known as the "Magic Line".

[3] As darkness fell, all three, along with team member Michel Parmentier and two Basque[4] climbers, Mari Abrego[5] and Josema Casimiro, had to make an emergency bivouac shelter not far from the summit itself.

[3] Polish climber Tadeusz Piotrowski fell to his death after a successful summit of the central rib of the south face on 10 July.

Six days later, Italian soloist Renato Casarotto fell into a crevasse, after an unsuccessful attempt at climbing the Southwest Pillar.

[1] On 3 August, Wojciech Wróż, part of a combined Slovak-Polish team that successfully summitted the Southwest Pillar without using bottled oxygen, slipped off the end of a fixed rope and fell to his death.

[1] On 4 August, Muhammad Ali, Sardar for a South Korean expedition, was killed by falling rocks on the Abruzzi Spur.

After several unsuccessful attempts to establish camps on their chosen route, the group disbanded, leaving only Rouse and cameraman Jim Curran on the mountain.

After his fellow team members left the mountain, Rouse joined forces with six climbers—Austrians Alfred Imitzer, Hannes Wieser, Willi Bauer, and Kurt Diemberger; a Polish climber, Dobrosława Miodowicz-Wolf; and another British climber, Julie Tullis—in an attempt to summit via the conventional route, without a permit.

Tullis died during the night of 6–7 August, presumably of HAPE (high-altitude pulmonary edema), a common consequence of lack of oxygen during physical exertion.

A year later, members of a Japanese expedition found her attached to the fixed ropes, still standing upright and leaning against the wall.

Bauer made it to Base Camp under his own power, but Diemberger had to be brought down by Jim Curran and a pair of Polish climbers.