CONCORDIA

This is K2, the highest mountain in the world next to Everest, at 28,250 feet. It is so inaccessibly remote in the Karakorum mountains behind the Himalayas on the border between Pakistan and China, that very few human beings have ever seen it.
Last week I was privileged to take a small group of Americans to the base of K2 by helicopter. It was the first helicopter expedition ever to K2, which otherwise takes 10 days of very high-altitude trekking to reach.
An enormous glacier flows from the south face of K2 called the Godwen-Austen glacier, which meets another huge glacier flowing from a mountain called Baltoro Tengri. The confluence of these glaciers is known to mountaineers as "Concordia."
It is the consensus of the world's professional mountaineering community that at Concordia is the single spot of greatest scenery on planet earth.
But Concordia could stand for so much more.

