As Indian and Pakistani negotiators are yet to work out an agreement for demilitarising the Siachin glacier, a proposal is being mooted to organise a joint Indo-Pak expedition to the world's second highest peak, Mount K2, situated just across the Actual Ground Position Line, north of the glacier.
The proposal to send a joint team to ascend the peak, towering over Baltoro glacier at 8,611 metres, the second longest in the Karakorams after Siachen, has been submitted to the Indian Mountaineering Foundation and to the Defence Ministry.
The proposal, which envisages six to eight of the toughest and most skilled climbers from the two countries making an attempt on the peak next summer or autumn, will now be forwarded to the Pakistan government, according to highly placed officials.
With the high peaks in the Himalayas losing much of their allure and challenge due to repeated ascents over the years, Indian mountaineers have been eying the formidable challenge posed by the steep granite slopes of K2 for long.
There have been earlier proposals to organise joint expeditions to other peaks in the Karakorams on either side of the AGPL, but given the hard positions displayed by both Islamabad and New Delhi on the contentious glacier issue, such attempts have never come to fruit.
The proposal for a joint expedition to K2 has also been explored through the Indo-Pak back channels and has been reportedly received favourably and reciprocated by the Pakistan Mountaineering Association.
IMF sources said that the proposal, on which major groundwork had been done, was currently awaiting the nod from the Ministry of External Affairs. The interesting feature of such an expedition would be that the bulk of the climbers would be drawn from both the armies.
Supporting the proposal, legendary mountaineer Colonel Narinder Kumar, who led the successful Indian army expedition to scale the 8,527-metres-high Mount Kanchenjunga in 1977, said ascending K2 has been the dream of many Indian mountaineers.
Though Indian troops hold vantage postions on the Saltoro ridge straddling the middle Siachen glacier, K2 cannot be glimpsed from these. The only view of the formadible mountain is from the Indira Col, the northern-most Indian position in the Siachen galcier, which also affords an access to the Baltoro galcier.
The view of the Peak from the Siachen glacier is bolted by the massif of Mashebrum and hidden peaks, which rise to a towering 7,500 metres from the Baltoro glacier.
Though Indian and Chinese troops recently broke ice by organising a joint expedition to a 7,000-metre-high peak on Indo-Tibet border in central Himalayas, official attempts at bringing Indian and Pakistani climbers have been very few.
And while Indian climbers aspire to be on the tough slopes of K2, the Pakistani army climbers made their first ascent of the peak in July 1977. Under the proposal mooted, once the joint team has been selected, it would trained jointly in the Darjeeling-based Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, before making a bid for the tough peak.
The peak is considered to pose immense technical challenges and while Mount Everest (the world's tallest mountain at 8,848 metres) has been climbed almost 2,000 times till now, there have been hardly more than 120 successful bids on K2.
