ISLAMABAD: Nepali climbers who last week made history by scaling the world’s second highest peak — Pakistan’s K2 — in the winter season praised Pakistan’s military and civil authorities on Friday for facilitating their challenging expedition.

The leader of the 10-member Nepali team, Nirmal Purja, said he and his fellow mountaineers made “the impossible a possible.” He spoke in a video message after his meeting with Pakistan’s army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

“K2 is the only mountain in the world that had remained unclimbed in the winter," said Purja. “Me and my team together managed to make the impossible a possible."

The Nepali team scaled the K2 last Saturday. At 8,611 metres (28,251 feet), K2 is the most prominent peak on the Pakistani side of the Himalayan range, and the world’s second highest after Mount Everest.

Pakistani authorities provided security to the mountaineers when they arrived in the country weeks ago. A security team remained present at their base camp until the mountaineers returned after scaling K2.

Since the maiden attempt back in 1988, just a handful of winter expeditions have been attempted on the storied peak in the Karakoram range along the Chinese border that leads into the Himalayas.