K2

While most Marylanders kick back this summer and relax at the beach or the swimming pool, Chris Warner will be grappling with a mountain that chews up and spits out most adventurers. Twice, K2 has flicked away Warner's advances with a powerful display of biting cold, brutal winds and treacherous avalanches that earned the world's second-highest peak the nickname "The Savage Mountain." For a third time, the Maryland mountaineer is taking up temporary residence at its base, hoping to tag the top of Pakistan's 28,251-foot peak somewhere around July 4, using a route no one has conquered.

The Peace of Sunshine store off the main drag in Catonsville has lately been making more than half its weekly sales in K2, a "legal pot" known also as "spice. " But owner Lawrence J. Zwick says he has sold his last bag. As soon as he heard Monday morning that Baltimore County might make it a crime to sell the smokable leaf, he says, he packed up his inventory of two boxes and shipped it back to the distributor. "Oh, I'm going to miss it," said Zwick, a 44-year-old retired Coast Guard warrant officer who for four years has owned the the store specializing in T-shirts, jewelry, incense and hookahs.

Under a cobalt-blue sky that seemed just beyond reach, Chris Warner placed his boots yesterday on the snow-encrusted summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain, where few others have gone and that he had only pictured in his dreams. Just three days shy of his 43rd birthday, Warner, an Annapolis resident and owner of three Baltimore-area climbing gyms, became the first Marylander to stand atop both 28,253-foot K2 and Mount Everest, 782 feet higher. It took more than 15 hours for Warner and more than a dozen other climbers to cover the 1,850 vertical feet from Camp 4 to the summit, plowing through chest-deep snow, picking their way across ancient ice slabs and hauling themselves up slopes that reached an 80-degree pitch.

Well, our plans changed during the night. Last night the rain started at 6 p.m. and turned to snow a few hours later. At noon, it is still snowing. All of this precipitation was being pushed by tent-shaking winds. In the middle of the night, we rolled over in our sleeping bags, hiding from this harsh realtiy until the pull of strong coffee dragged us to the mess tent. I spent most of the morning checking in with other teams. Seems as if on K2, lots of hopes were dashed. Then a fresh weather report rolled in, hinting at more bad weather by week's end. For those of us on Broad Peak, the summit still seems possible mid-week.

LOS ANGELES - K2 Inc., a ski and snowboard maker, agreed yesterday to buy Rawlings Sporting Goods Co. Inc. for $114 million in stock and debt, topping an offer from the baseball-equipment supplier's biggest investor. K2 will pay $84 million in stock and assume $30 million in debt in a transaction valued at $9 to $10 a share, K2 said in a statement. Daniel Gilbert, Rawlings' largest investor, announced Sunday that he had raised his cash bid to about $69 million, or $8.50 a share, from $65 million, or $8. By acquiring Rawlings, K2 expands into the $1.3 billion U.S. team sporting-goods market.

The mountain is the third character in Patrick Meyers' two-man play, "K2" (as even the press information recognizes). But the mountain isn't just any other character. It's the main character. This is a tribute to the astounding 50-foot simulated ice wall designed by Ming Cho Lee for director Wendy C. Goldberg's production at Washington's Arena Stage. The set is basically a higher tech version of the one Lee created in 1982 for the play's premiere at Arena. The same set won him a well-deserved Tony Award a year later when "K2" was produced on Broadway with a new cast and director.

The Himalayas have given up another secret. Climbers attempting to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan have found the bones of Dudley Wolfe, a wealthy Boston socialite who 63 years ago became the first climber to die on the slopes of the world's second-highest mountain. Chubby, clumsy and out of his element, Wolfe nonetheless insisted on being a member of the American-German expedition trying to be the first to conquer the 28,250-foot behemoth nicknamed "The Savage Mountain." His motive was simple: He hoped to win back the affections of his ex-wife by impressing her with the headlines that would follow.

Before he could realize his dream and stand atop the world's second-highest mountain, Chris Warner watched a man fall to his death. In a voice thick with exhaustion and broken by spells of coughing, Warner said yesterday that the physical and mental pounding it took to climb Pakistan's K2 "were definitely worth it." But in the next breath, the Annapolis resident and Mount Everest veteran admitted it will take some time to process all that happened during the more than 15 hours it took to push the last 1,800 vertical feet to the top. Just three hours into the summit bid on Friday, Nima Nurbu, a Sherpa working for the Korean team, slipped and tumbled thousands of feet in the darkness down K2, nicknamed the "Savage Mountain."

The sun was just below the curvature of the earth, but the faded light was strong enough to show us the remaining few hundred feet of crumpled, tilted glacier leading to the col. We were at 24,500 feet on Broad Peak, having left the tents of Camp 2 just after 10 p.m. Below us everyone was asleep. They had no idea that the two Americans, who arrived at K2's base camp five days ago, would now be stretching the acclimatization game so dramatically. No one on either K2 or Broad Peak, even those teams that arrived in early June, had reached so high yet. We did give ourselves one full day at base camp before setting off on this little adventure.

Watch video reports of Chris Warner and the Shared Summits team at baltimoresun.com/k2