SKARDU/ISLAMABAD, Aug 7: Two Dutch climbers who survived the recent tragedy near K-2 peak, which claimed the lives of 11 other climbers, on Thursday described their harrowing experience as "passion backed by luck".

Wilco van Rooijen and Cas van de Gevel had a miraculous escape when an ice fall, avalanche and exposure hit several teams of climbers while descending from the 8,611-metre high summit to Camp-IV at 7,700 metres on Aug 1 evening.

They were trapped at a bottleneck, also called `death zone’ and in the growing darkness the ice fall scattered the climbers and snapped their fixed ropes. One member of the Dutch team and 10 of the other teams -- three South Koreans, two Nepalese, two young high altitude porters from Shimshal in the upper Hunza and one climber each from France, Serbia, Norway and Ireland perished groping their way.

A Pakistan Army helicopter rescued the two surviving Dutch in a daring mission two days later when the weather improved.

"Weather was fine in the morning but around 7 in the evening it turned dark and there was no moonlight. Most of the climbers did not make to Camp-IV and perished as they strayed," Wilco, 40, who was leading the Dutch Norit expedition, told Dawn on reaching Islamabad.

"They followed the wrong way in the darkness and this tragic incident happened," he added.

"It all happened at the bottleneck, the last major obstacle, when the falling ice severed fixed ropes used for descending the near-vertical portions of slopes," he said.

"It was dark and I was descending with a short rope left dangling and finished soon. Finally, I reached Camp IV at about 2 o'clock in the dead of night. All the climbers were trying to get to camp 4 on their own. I did not know where the other climbers are. The problem with the climbers was that there was no rope to go down with and most were stuck above camp 4. Next morning I went to look for other climbers. I saw Marco, an Italian, who is now at the base camp with frostbitten fingers,” Cas said.

Wilco was proud he had scaled the summit successfully. "You got this opportunity rarely in your life. I'll not return however. Loosing a friend is sad.

"It's passion for the beauty of nature of mountains which leads you to a successful summit. Though our friend died, he lived his dream and that's the most wonderful thought you can have," Wilco said.

"It was a struggle for life injected with passion as I slept over the peak for two nights without food and water. There was no burner and I got frostbitten from eating ice," he added.

The Dutch team started climbing K2 on May 16 from Pakistan side at the "June and July are the months in which most of the expeditions start trying to climb the 8,611-meter high mountain, the second highest after Mount Everest," he said. "We were forced to start our assault on the peak in August which is the closing season," Wilco said.

Wilco, said they were the first among others who arrived at K2 base camp and planned to finish the climb in July.

"We chose the Abruzzi route instead of the Cezen route which I had used twice before though not without accidents but both times I had reached the summit. This is my third success. But, this time we chose the Abruzzi route instead.

Explaining the ice-fall Wilco said "ice falls if small are not big accidents. But sometimes big pieces fall down as in this case which swept away the fixed ropes and caused the death of other eight members most of whom died in their hurry to get down as soon as possible making their own way. Some of them slipped and fell and some died of cold as rescue could not reach in time.

However, three people died in the beginning, first the Serbian who fell down, second the Norwegian Rolf Bay and third a French climber who fell to his death. The others lost their lives because of fear, darkness and losing their senses.

Describing the difference between a serac and avalanche, Wilco said, serac is an unpredictable thing. On all K2 routes the danger is always there. But on Abruzzi chances of an avalanche are more. On the upper part of K2, seracs are dangerous. You don’t know when a small or big rock is going to fall. There is continuous movement which can break a piece off in an hour or may take 20 hours or two years. If the serac is massive you can still move out of its way if you are fast enough but at 8,000 meters nobody can be fast, have control and balance and sense. But avalanches depend on snow condition. If it is too wet it comes down as an avalanche. In response to a question Wilco said, "I would continue climbing and wish to conquer all the 14 eight thousand meter high peaks of the world. This incident was not new for me as 30 years ago, I had an accident between camp 1 and camp 2 on the Abruzzi route.

K2 is called the mountaineers’ mountain. The mountaineers believe that climbing K2 is more dangerous and more technical than Mount Everest. This was the 24th accident on K2 heights claiming the lives of 262 mountaineers thus far.