You don't need to climb Savage Mountain/one of the world's most dangerous mountains to conquer it — just look at these paintings instead

‘Nothing can prepare you for the size of the Karakoram mountains and their glaciers,’ says art dealer and mountaineer William Mitchell. ‘From Concordia, K2 looks like it is just beyond the moraine in front of the camp — when in fact it takes eight hours to walk to its base. Everything is on a gigantic scale.’

In July 2025, he and artist James Hart Dyke, a veteran of painting Mont Blanc, Mount Everest and Patagonia, had set out to journey from Askole, in Pakistan’s Braldu Valley, to K2, the world’s second highest mountain, and back. The result of their extraordinary endeavour is an exhibition of Hart Dyke’s paintings, presented by Mitchell at Marquis House, London.

1. Artist and art dealer followed in the footsteps of Italian photographer Vittorio Sella, who had travelled to K2 in 1909 and taken large-format photographs that have since inspired generations of mountaineers. So rugged and difficult is the terrain that Hart Dyke had to prepare for more than a year for his expedition. Once there, he sketched almost every day of the three-week, 124-mile trek, creating an extraordinary visual record of one of the world’s most inaccessible mountains.
2. The two took on the 40-mile-long Baltoro Glacier. ‘They were long days and, in altitude terms, we were already much higher than the top of most ski resorts in Europe,’ says Mitchell. ‘The midday sun seared straight down on us. As a result, we covered much of the distance from well before dawn, using headtorches over our woollen hats, and then stopping in the early to mid afternoon’.
3. The weather was decidedly not their friend. ‘On our way to Concordia, we passed through a few miles of very steep gullies running between the glacier and the southern flanks of the peaks. Our lead guide, Gul, said we should be very thankful that it wasn’t raining, as this was the most treacherous part of the voyage, because of rockfall,’ recalls Mitchell. The group cheered at the news that they would return a different way, via the Hushe Valley — only for that pass to be snow-bound. ‘We had to come back through these gullies — and it was raining. For two very fraught hours, we had to run in single file through a “bowling alley” of small rocks and even boulders tumbling from both sides. It was extremely unpleasant.’
4. The Balti porters who accompanied Mitchell and Hart Dyke loved cricket. ‘On the way down from K2, we passed through a military checkpoint by a bridge and Ali, the cook, managed to fashion a cricket bat from a piece of abandoned decking. At our last camp before the end of the trek, using a hard, blue physiotherapy ball, we staged a “Pakistan versus the Rest of the World” match. The tourists lost, but it was played at 3,250 metres [10,663ft]’.
5. Hart Dyke’s paintings will be on show until November 22, after which they will travel to Italy, where they will be displayed at Forte di Bard, a fortress at the mouth of the Aosta valley that also hosts the Museum of the Alps, next to 20 photographs by Sella.

‘K2 Artistic Expeditions: James Hart Dyke’ is at Marquis House, London, from November 16–22.

This article first appeared in the October 28, 2026 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.