In 1953 my dad, Dee Molenaar, was a member of the climbing expedition to K2 that attempted to be the first team to summit the world’s second highest mountain. Being who he is, my dad brought his watercolor paints with him. As anyone who’s ever been on a high-altitude climb will know, water is a precious commodity up there. After my dad painted the art you see below, his teammates (understandably) made him drink the water he’d used for the paintings. Dad was always kind of proud of that.

Dad’s painting are the highest paintings ever painted. Here are a few photos of them (I cropped one of the paintings so you could see Dad’s writing on it):

Posted by Karen Molenaar Terrell.