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A decade later, Sella reached new heights - both literally and artistically - on a 1909 expedition to K2 with the Duke of the Abruzzi.

Yet last Saturday, when 10 mountaineers left Camp 4 on the Abruzzi Ridge in minus-70 degree Fahrenheit weather and pushed toward K2’s summit, every one of them was Nepali.

It had been decided before their arrival that all the climbers at base camp would follow the standard Abruzzi route that winter.

To reach K2’s summit, the team endured temperatures in excess of -58 degrees Fahrenheit and gale-force winds while ascending the Abruzzi Spur on the mountain’s southern flank.

“There is a kind of uniform monotony in the fate of man,” Natalia Ginzburg observes in her essay “Winter in the Abruzzi.”