1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 turned to one of the team, Jack Durrance. When Durrance at last made his manuscript expedition diary available in 1989 it seemed instead that the primary failings had been with the deputy leader, Tony Cromwell, as well as with Wiessner himself. In 1961 Fosco Maraini described it as "one of the worst tragedies in the climbing history of the Himalaya". K2 is on the border between what in 1939 was the British Raj of India (now Pakistan) and the Republic of China. At it is the highest point of the Karakoram range and the second highest mountain in the world.
K2 unable to keep pace. The mountain was first surveyed by a European survey team in 1856. Team member Thomas Montgomerie designated the mountain "K2" for being the second peak of the Karakoram range. The other peaks were originally named K1, K3, K4, and K5, but were eventually renamed Masherbrum, Gasherbrum IV, Gasherbrum II, and Gasherbrum I, respectively. In 1892, Martin Conway led a British expedition that reached "Concordia" on the Baltoro Glacier. The first serious attempt to climb K2 was undertaken in 1902 by Oscar Eckenstein, Aleister Crowley, Jules Jacot-Guillarmod, Heinrich Pfannl, Victor Wessely, and Guy Knowles via the Northeast