A grim warning underscored by a haunting image from the world’s second-tallest mountain left one viewer of adventurer Mike Horn’s slick Facebook videodumbstruck – and launched her recent quest for closure for herself and others whose loved ones died trying to scale the treacherous peak.
“If you are not 100 percent ready, the mountain is going to kill you,” Horn, an internationally known sportsman and motivational speaker, intoned as a stylized ax sliced dramatically through the northern Pakistan mountain and the camera lingered briefly on a partially preserved head lying on a glacier.
For Sequoia Di Angelo, 24, of Houston, the image on the video posted in July was almost too much to bear. Two years ago, her father and brother died on the mountain and their bodies were never recovered.
“I immediately thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s my brother’s head,’” Di Angelo toldFoxNews.com. “I’m sure every family who lost someone on that mountain thought the same thing and experienced the same sick feeling in seeing that.”
“I immediately thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s my brother’s head.’”- Sequoia Di Angelo
Di Angelo’s father, Marty Schmidt, 53, and her brother, Denali, both experienced climbers, died in an avalanche on July 26, 2013, while trying to become the first father-son team to successfully scale the 28,251-foot peak. K2, on the China border, may not be as tall as Mount Everest, but while 4,000 have conquered Everest, just 377 have seen the top of K2. The avalanche added the Schmidts to a roster of at least 82 who have died trying to reach the summit.
The trip by Horn, who has performed a string of “extreme adventure” feats, including a solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle and a journey to the North Pole with without the aid of dogs or machines, was sponsored by Mercedes-Benz. The fact that it was scuttled due to harsh weather is testament to K2’s dominance of man, but the image that shocked Di Angelo bothered others, as well.
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