K 12. The Kyoto University Karakoram Expedition to K 12 was composed of Seiichi Kanayama, Shinichi Takagi, Tsutomu Ito, Satoshi Oku, Pakistani Second Lieutenant Zaffar Iqbal as liaison officer and me as leader. On July 25 we set up Base Camp at 15,425 feet on the moraine on the right bank of the Grachmolumba Glacier. Camp I was at 17,000 feet and Camp II at 18,700 feet. After crossing a great crevasse using a rope ladder, we reached a col northwest of K 12. Camp III was at 20,350 feet and Camp IV at 23,000 feet on the ridge. On August 30 Takagi and Ito started from Camp IV and reached the summit of K 12 (24,503 feet) at 5:40 P.M. They descended to 23,000 feet that night for a bivouac, where they were trapped by bad weather the next day. They transmitted this information to me at Camp II by walkie- talkie. On September 1 they began the descent. They told me by radio that one of them had lost his crampon along with his boot and at 6:30, while traversing an ice slope, they had slipped and were now hanging on the rope from an ice piton. This was the last contact with them. On the 3rd the rescue party reached Camp IV and found no one. We decided they must have slipped down the ice slope to the Siachen Glacier and we had lost them.

Goro Iwatsubo, Kyoto University Alpine Club