St. Paul climber Mike Farris called from Base Camp on K2 in Pakistan last night to say he had waited long enough, and he’s going to walk away from the mountain. “It’s time to come home,” he said.

Farris, an associate professor of biology at Hamline University, spent the last 10 days waiting for a weather window to open so he could make a second summit attempt, but high winds are forecast for the higher altitudes, and Farris said he was starting to worry about his physical condition.

“The winds won’t be low enough for an attempt for at least 10 days,” he said via satellite phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around the last 10 or 11 days, and my fitness isn’t coming back to what I need to summit.” Farris had a bout of food poisoning on Monday, and he’s been living at 17,000 feet and above for nearly two months.

Farris was part of an expedition group of seven men attempting to summit K2. He had started a summit attempt but was waiting for an inner ear condition to clear at Camp II when the events of Aug. 2-3 unfolded. A large group of climbers had reached the summit and upper slopes of K2, the world’s second highest mountain, but an avalanche struck a set of fixed ropes as they were descending. Eleven climbers died, and the course of events still isn’t clear, Farris said.

“I and the other climbers here have spent a lot of time trying to piece together what happened,” he said. “It’s very complicated — more complex than what happened on Everest in ‘96. There it was pretty clear, a storm hit. Here there appear to be multiple causes, and it’s going to be some time before we know.”

Farris stayed at Camp II and assisted surviving climbers in their descents. He decided to stay on at K2, hoping for a second chance to summit. He said he’s disappointed, but that he was prepared for this eventuality.

” On K2, the weather rules the kingdom,” he said. “You have to take what you’re given. So far this season there have been two days where it was possible to attempt to summit. The chances are small to make it even when the conditions are good.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under adventure, climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.