More than two years of planning and training paid off for a Wyoming man with 30 minutes in rare air where few on the planet have ever been.
Those 30 magical minutes Darren Rogers had were at the summit of K2, the second tallest spot on Earth at 28,251 feet above sea level.
As he stood above the clouds and breathed in the thin air on the famous mountain in Pakistan, Rogers had become part of an exclusive club of mountaineers who have successfully made it to the top of K2, the highest spot in the Karakoram range.
Mount Everest on the China-Nepal border is the only peak that is higher than K2, which was so high that most locals were not even aware of K2 before mountaineers started climbing it. That high up, there’s always snow and only a short window of time that is safe for climbing.
Every year, people die trying to summit the peak, while many more are hurt or become ill and must turn back.
Reaching the summit wasn’t the end of Roger’s journey.
As he took in the view and inhaled his bottled oxygen, he said he knew he still had to descend and make it safely back to camp. Only then, after 44 hours of being awake and pushing himself to his limit, could Rogers fully celebrate the accomplishment.
It was a dangerous trip and an ascent that only about 8,000 have successfully made.
During his journey to ascend K2, Rogers said he ate broth with goat eyeballs and other strange delicacies of the region, battled stomach issues, had little sleep, watched climbing partners turn back and suffered through cold nights.
Rogers is often asked what drives a 54-year-old Sheridan chemical engineer to put himself through such physical torture to climb a mountain.
“I like to challenge to myself,” Rogers said. “It is to test yourself, both mentally and physically. It's not for the faint of heart. There is a very real and significant chance of death on these mountains.”
Rogers spent the past two and a half years training, which he said was more than just getting in shape. He also had to get his affairs in order in case the attempt ended in disaster.
“You have to prep yourself both physically and mentally before you even go,” Rogers said. “You have the physical side where you're training every day, but the mental side is also fascinating. It's about how long you can handle the misery management, as I call it. You also must be prepared that you may not come home.”
The Small Steps
Rogers wasn’t a high school athlete. He told Cowboy State Daily he partied too much, but he did spend his childhood outdoors and had an affinity for climbing trees and running up mountains.
This natural athleticism led him to finding harder mountains to conquer.
“I've climbed around the world, but I don't have an interest in the Seven Summits,” Rogers said about what’s considered the ultimate in mountaineering — summiting the tallest peaks on all seven continents.
It’s an achievement Casper mountaineer Dr. Joe McGinley is close to realizing. He has six of the seven, with only Everest left to summit. He’s tried it twice, and had to turn back both times.
Rogers said that’s not on his bucket list, but the drive for personal challenge thrives on.
But he's earned plenty of mountaineering cred. Along with K2, which is considered the pinnacle climbing achievement, he's done five of the seven. He's summited Vinson Massif on Antarctical, Mount Everest in Asia, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe and Aconcagua in South America. He's also topped Kilimanjaro.
“K2 is hard. It's remote and one of the pinnacles of the 14 mountains that are taller than 8,000 meters,” he said. “It’s vertical and challenging. You have to have all aspects of your body and mind in order to do it.”
Prior to even beginning the preparation for this difficult climb, Rogers shared his dream with his mom, who was very supportive. Then her health began to decline and this, compounded with a major work project, caused Rogers to put his plans on hold.
He had also injured his foot and was in recovery from the surgery, so the thought of conquering K2 became a distant dream.
The ensuing year was a tough one for Rogers. His mother unfortunately passed away and, as he dealt with that grief, he had to have a second surgery on his foot.
“So, I went through that,” Rogers said. “I got back into shape and then went to Nepal earlier this year for more training with my Sherpa friend, Phunjuru. We did a bunch of rock and ice climbing.
“I wanted to make sure that I had their skill set because western climbers climb different than Sherpas, which leads to a lot of these faster ascents. It's about working with the locals that they hire.”
Food was a hardship while ascending K2 and Darren Rogers was grateful for a feast of salmon shared by his fellow climbers. (Courtesy Darren Rogers) 
Death is a constant threat on K2 and this memorial shrine is dedicated to those that lost their lives. (Courtesy Darren Rogers) 
A village on the way to climb K2. That day’s meal would be walking around and it is here that Darren Rogers was offered goat head soup. He could only bring himself to drink the broth. (Courtesy Darren Rogers) 
The climb up K2 was dangerous and at the Bottleneck, it was a lot of waiting. (Courtesy Darren Rogers)
The Climb Begins
The journey to basecamp took Rogers seven days with two days of what he described as rugged riding in a jeep.
As he waited for a break in the weather to begin the climb, Rogers got little sleep and battled stomach issues and the cold.
“At basecamp I went to the medical tent and received meds,” he said. “I worked to regain strength for the next 12 days for a summit weather window. We left basecamp early July 24, making to Camp 1 in six hours.”
“It’s always the small things that lead to bigger issues,” Rogers said, describing his climb to Camp 2. “It was a cold morning, and I’d dropped a hand warmer out of a glove. This set up a chain of events affecting the whole day.
“My extra warmers were with Ngima (his Sherpa), so he dug in his bag and gave me new ones and in the process gave me other things to carry making my bag much heavier and not well packed. In short, I was sucking wind working to get to Camp 2.”
At Lower Camp 2, Ngmia put Rogers on bottled oxygen, which Rogers said helped as he took in his surroundings.
They still had a vertical rock alley ahead of them before they stopped for the night and even on oxygen, he said he struggled to make it up the vertical climb which was a little hand ladder over ice and snow.
“I had to stop and take 20-30 breaths to catch my breath,” he said. “A very intense mixed climbing section.”
The next morning, Rogers thought the hike to Camp 3 would be “easy” and that they would make it to Camp 3.5.
“I was completely wrong,” he admitted. “The Black Pyramid was impressive, difficult and challenging, a vertical rock face of ice, snow and rock. There was a ladder that was misleading, stepping on it with crampons flipped you around. With the small sugar breakfast, no lunch and seven hours, I was beat.”
The Summit
They spent the next day resting at Camp 3, preparing for the final climb to the summit.
“We left for the summit at 8:30 p.m. We climbed steadily, reaching the infamous Bottleneck about 2 a.m.,” Rogers said. “The Bottleneck is a narrow catwalk with a 300-foot overhanging serac that periodically calves, sweeping anything and everything away.
“The fixing team was working in the high avalanche section of the area. More people showed up, we waited for approximately two hours. Fortunately, it was only minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit, not cold by big mountain standards. We entered the Bottleneck then stopped part way, having to wait for the fixing team.
“This was nerve-racking! Standing on a narrow snow ledge with a huge drop below, waiting while the wind picked up showering us with spindrift.”
As Rogers tensely waited, dawn crested over the horizon and lit up the snow, ice and rock around them. He held onto the rope, taking pictures and waiting for another hour before they could start up the Bottleneck.
“We started moving heading up a steep incline with waist deep snow to gentler incline of sheer ice to a saddle then up two more deep snow slopes to the summit arriving just before 10 am.”
This section of the climb had taken 13 and a half hours. Rogers was above the clouds, the world stretching out below him. As he took photos and studied the terrain, he knew that he still had a long road ahead of him.
“When you get to the summit, you're only halfway there and the majority of accidents happen on the way down,” Rogers explained. “You get up there and you look around and it's like, OK, I've made it, but you haven't.
“You take it in and then I was ready to go down after a few photos. I hung around for about 30 minutes and finally I told my Sherpa, we need to go. I don't want to get caught in the traffic jam going down. So, we were the first to start going down.”
Going Down
The trip down, Rogers said, is more challenging and when the most accidents happen.
At one point, he lost his footing. He was trying to get beneath a large block of ice when it hit his pack and knocked him off the path.
“It was pretty intense. It's the most dangerous spot there. And then, you know, you're on that mountain,” Rogers said. “The differential from the summit of K2 to base camp is about 12,000 (feet) vertical. I rappelled the vast majority of it.”
After his “forever rappel” of nearly 15 hours to get back to camp, Rogers was grateful to have made it.
“It's euphoric once you get down to base camp and you're safe,” he said. “You no longer have to worry about the rockfall or the blocks of ice. There were a couple times where we had to hide behind rocks as other rock was going over us. I had a small rock bounce off my helmet. I had a piece of snow or ice just glance off the side of my face below the Bottleneck coming down. But I didn't receive a scratch.
“When I got down to base camp, I literally hung my head and cried. When you think about it, you go up to one of the most deadly peaks and you get to the summit and back to base camp without a scratch. I mean, it's a pretty big deal.”
Rogers paused for a moment, remembering the intensity of the moment and all the work it took to reach his goal of reaching the peak of K2.
“One of my favorite memes is of Sylvester Stallone asking Chuck Norris, ‘How many push-ups can you do?’ Norris says, ‘All of them,’” he said. “And that's what it is. You have to do all of them, every day.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
