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From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds.

Today, we wrap up our series, K2, The Savage Mountain, about the summer of 2008, when some of the world's best climbers converged on one of the most dangerous mountains on Earth.

K2, all of them intent on making a bid for the summit. What followed was one of the worst climbing disasters in modern times.

Over the course of two days, the mountain claims 11 lives.

But the deadly turn of events on K2 also led to extraordinary acts of bravery and an incredible demonstration of the ability of human beings to dig deep and find the strength to stay alive.

And today, we are talking to someone who was there in the summer of 2008, Frederick Strang. Frederick reached camp 4 just below the death zone before deciding not to try for the peak because of all the climbers backed up on the rope line.

A decision that wasn't easy.

But K2 wasn't Frederick's first experience on the challenging mountain, and it wasn't the last. He has climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents.

This will be a two-part interview you don't want to miss. In part one, I'm talking to Frederick about the challenges of climbing and what it's like to train for these feats.

In part two, we'll talk about what happened on that tragic day on K2 when disaster struck in the death zone.

Frederick Strang, welcome to Against the odds.

Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure.

First of all, I have to say you and I are probably going to get along really well because we're both doing the thing that we were most scared to do with kids.

For me, it was public speaking and for you, it was heights, right?

To shit.

So as a kid who was scared of heights, how did you first get interested in climbing?

When I started out in school as a map freak, I've always been addicted to maps and I was running or competing or intering. I indulged in the atlas and I was turning page after page and at that stage, seven years old, I wasn't aware of the highest peaks around the world.

So I was following the contours and I was trying to find out which the highest mountain in the world was. So I was getting to Pamirs in Kyrgyzstan and I was going into Tibet and it was getting higher and higher.

I was in Pakistan and something said 8, 6, 11. That's not the highest. That's the second highest.

And then I eventually ended up at 8, 848 meters and it said Mount Everest and the school teacher comes along and I point at 848 and we have a saying in the province that I used to live.

It goes like it's never too late to give up and she was looking at me and I was pointing it with anticipation and join my in my eyes and she was just looking at me. It was this terrible look of, you know, it never works. She said.

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