This winter, an elite team of Polish climbers is attempting to solve this problem. After more than two years of preparation, the team began ascending K2 in early January. They’re led by Krzysztof Wielicki, one of the most famous climbers in Polish history, and include several other of the best living Polish climbers. Their journey seeks to extend a long national tradition: Until 2005, exclusively Polish teams had made every winter ascent of an “eight-thousander.” National Geographic nicknamed them “Ice Warriors.” Even the international team that broke this long run had a Pole in it.

Three previous attempts at K2 in winter by international teams, two of which included Wielicki, failed. Given what he learned from those attempts, this team’s combined experience, and an outpouring of support from fans on social media, there’s a good chance they’re going to make history. But the story of their climb is as much the story of K2 itself—and of everything mountains have meant for climbing. The first winter ascent will also be a “last,” completing a certain version of the story of human victory over mountains. And that introduces a whole new problem for climbers, as well as their fans, to contend with: What happens once the world’s most savage mountain has been domesticated?

The case of Everest might offer some insights. In contrast to K2, which only serious climbers attempt, Everest is the Himalayan peak crawling with amateur adventurers, whose bank accounts often exceed their mountaineering experience. The late Ueli Steck, considered by many to be the best high-altitude mountaineer in the history of the sport, argued that mountaineering is failing its most iconic mountain. More than 600 people summit per year, paying somewhere between $30,000 and $100,000 each. And more than 200 dead bodies, too costly to remove, remain in plain view, a particularly dramatic kind of human waste.

The commercialization of Everest came to public attention after Steck’s 2013 altercation with Sherpas, the native people of the region who work as porters for climbers, on the mountain’s notoriously difficult Lhotse Face. Accounts of the events vary, but they all agree that, at a certain point, Steck and the Italian mountaineer Simone Moro found themselves face-to-face with a mob of dozens of masked men wielding rocks and ice picks and yelling “no.”

Following the incident, Moro chalked up the Sherpas’ anger to jealousy of the pros’ climbing speed, and to professional competition: “Sometimes people like us, who are not clients, are considered not good for business.” But Steck had a more nuanced view of the tensions on Everest. “You have to look at how the whole system works,” he told Outside. More than simply matters of economic inequality or human psychology, the problems on the mountain reflect massive shifts, over time, in both climbing culture and the ways climbing reflects culture at large.