Dani Arnold, Alexander Huber, and Simon Gietl have opened a difficult, 1,300m route on the east face of Jirishanca, in Peru's Huayhuash range, that may be one of the most significant climbs of 2025. The trio completed the 31-pitch climb in a single, alpine-style push between July 13-15.

Hummingbird's heartbeat

Gietl of Italy, Huber of Germany, and Arnold of Switzerland made two bivouacs on the wall and reached the east summit (6,028m, according to their GPS) at 9:15 am on July 15, the third day of the climb. They explained that climbers no longer attempt Jirishanca's main summit because of very poor snow conditions and high objective risk.

They named their route Kolibri, a translation of Jirishanca into German. Jirishanca means "hummingbird" in the Quechua language. According to author Jeremy Frimer, the name of the peak might refer to the spiky summit, likening it to the beak of a hummingbird. Climbers' heart rates might also mirror a hummingbird's when looking at the vertiginous southeast side of the mountain.

Great conditions

The Huayuash range is special. It is the only limestone range in the world with peaks surpassing 5,000m.

"The quality of the limestone is unique: solid, rough, and grippy," the team said. "We found a beautiful and logical line on the best rock. The conditions on the wall were ideal, and the teamwork was perfect."

Route report

We asked the climbers for details of a climb they described as "steep, technically demanding, and combining alpine seriousness with classic line selection."

Here is a complete report by Simon Gietl, and some notes added by Alex Huber.

The route begins on the lower part of the wall with slabby, sometimes overhanging passages that are often difficult to belay. This is dominated by technically demanding pitches with runouts in places that must be free-climbed up to grade 8 and occasional technical passages up to A2.

The middle section of the new route first follows the striking ice ramp of the Italian route, and then follows a direct line of cracks and intersections in the upper part of the wall, until it reaches the steep east ridge -- and the route of the first ascenders (Egger/Jungmair, 1957).

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Serious endeavor

The climbers have estimated the route's difficulty at 8 (UIAA grade), A2. They assess the climb as a serious endeavor that demands high technical standards and alpine experience.

"The route is characterized by clear, elegant lines, excellent rock, and a varied wall structure. There is highly demanding wall climbing in the lower part, followed by classic crack climbing on the upper part of the wall up to the east ridge on snow and ice. Wedges, Friends, and micro-cams are essential."

The team was delighted with the climb. "For us, this line is one of our greatest first ascents, a gift from Mother Nature," Gietl told ExplorersWeb.

Between historical routes

In 1957, Jirishanca was the last 6,000'er to be summited in the Huayhuash range. Since then, it has attracted some of the best climbers in the world.

"Kolibri runs between the French and Italian routes," the team noted. "In the central section, we decided to follow the Italian route for three pitches (the Italian Ramp) before returning to the direct pillar between the French and the Italian route."

After the second bivouac, on their way to the summit on July 15, Arnold, Gietl, and Huber followed Tony Egger and Siegfried Jungmair's route, which was used during the peak's first ascent.

The 1957 team deemed the southeast face impossible and instead followed the peak's east spur, in heavy expedition style. Their route is now called the Austrian route. Egger died 18 months after climbing Jirishanca, on Patagonia's Cerro Torre.

The French Route (actually called Tambo, Churros y Amigos) was the second line opened on Jirishanca from the east. Clouet and Jourdain climbed the peak in 2003 -- not in alpine style but without using bolts, which was quite a feat at the time on such a difficult face --  progressing up the main pillar on the southeast face.

Also in 2003, Italians Stefano DeLuca, Paolo Stoppini, and Alessandro Piccini climbed the Italian Route. They placed nearly 40 bolts on the wall and stopped where their route joined the Egger/Jungmair route, calling the incomplete route Suerte (luck). The complete route was finally free-climbed in 2022 by two Americans: Josh Wharton and Vince Anderson. They made the summit in three days without bolts. You can read their report here.

You can read Frimer's article in the American Alpine Journal about the climbing history of Jirishanca here.

Denis Urubko of Russia and Maria Cardell of Spain have finally shared details of their new route on Nanga Parbat.

The couple took it easy after climbing from the Diamir side; in a very Urubko-style move, they remained an extra week in Base Camp, enjoying the solitude of the mountain. It was only yesterday, as they returned to Skardu, that they checked their emails and shared details of their line.

Difficult, exposed, lonely

They opened their route between July 6 and July 10. It combined varied terrain, with ice, mixed rock, snow, and a crevassed glacier, Urubko told Mountain.ru. He explained that the route is technically difficult and exposed to avalanches and rockfall in some sections.

In addition, the climbers went up in far from ideal weather conditions, with storms every afternoon and winds as high as 90kmph.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

"We didn't use other people's ropes or tracks," Urubko told Mouintain.ru. "There were no breakdowns, injuries, or illnesses."

Indeed, they were the only people on that side of the mountain and, when the climb took place, they were the only people anywhere on the mountain. This season, summits on the normal route (the Kinshoffer) occurred on July 3 and July 4. David Goettler of Germany and French climbers Tiphaine Duperier and Boris Langenstein summited from the Rupal side on June 24.

You can read Urubko and Cardell's full report on Mountain.ru in Russian.

Crossing previous lines

Shortly after Urubko published a topo of the route, some members of the climbing community shared comments on social media pointing to the similarity of the line to previously opened routes. In particular, some pointed out that the route seems to coincide with a line opened in 2009 by Gerfried Goeschl of Austria and Louis Rousseau of Canada.

Urubko did note in his report that their route intersects the Austrian-Canadian route at around 6,600-6,800m. "But [our route] continues along the ridge, while the other team went along the glacier," he explained.

Asked by ExplorersWeb, Cardell confirmed the information from Pakistan: "Our route does not step on the Goeschl/Rousseau route at any section; both lines cross, but then the Austrian-Canadian route continues along the glacier and our line follows the ridge," Cardell said.

Cardell noted that she spoke to Rousseau before the expedition, and the Canadian climber shared information about his 2009 expedition alongside Goeschl (who later perished while attempting winter Gasherbrum I). Therefore, Urubko and Cardell were well aware of the location of the 2009 route.

"For a person not familiar with the terrain, it may look like it is the same line, but the distance between both routes is wide; everything else is speculation," Cardell said.

Many teams have climbed Nanga Parbat from its Diamir side. Crossing and/or following small sections with previous lines doesn't make Urubko and Cardell's feat any less impressive.

Female first

The achievement is especially significant for Maria "Pipi" Cardell. She is a ski patroller by profession and a member of Spain's elite female alpinism team. According to Urubko, Cardell is the first female climber to summit an 8,000'er via a new route opened in alpine style.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Urubko and Cardell took turns to lead during the climb, and in some sections they simul-climbed (progressed roped up at the same time, without belaying one another).

"It is an elegant and logical line, technical to a point that took me to my physical and mental limits," Cardell wrote. "I am not euphoric after the achievement. On the contrary, I feel calm...all the past efforts fit like pieces of a puzzle. Our dream is complete."

A solid pair

Cardell was enthusiastic in her praise for Urubko. "It is surreal to see how confidently he climbs in extremely complex terrain at high altitude," she said. "His intuition is based on wide experience, and his ability to obsessively focus becomes our guarantee of survival. [Added to his] supernatural strength at 8,000m, this makes him unique."

"Denis [Urubko] and I have been climbing together for ten years," Cardell wrote on Instagram. "We have been working and training all this time to get ready and, someday, achieve this dream."

Together, they have opened new routes, alpine style, on Chapayev (in the Tien Shan) and Ushba (in the Caucasus). They attempted a new route on Gasherbrum II in 2019, but Cardell had to drop out after injuring her back. Urubko soloed the route, naming it "Honeymoon" in tribute to Cardell. They also attempted a new route on Gasherbrum I, but eventually climbed via the normal route because of bad conditions.

Through the years, Urubko has been a methodical and very tough coach for iron-willed Cardell. "It has been training and more training...drytooling, climbing, running to exhaustion, learning new techniques and adopting new habits, don't drink, cry often, feeling utterly happy at every little step ahead, hesitating until finally managing to believe in myself and, never, never surrendering," Cardell said.

Forget-me-not

The pair has named the new route Незабудка (Nezabudka), meaning "the unforgettable girl." It is the Russian name of a flower known in English as the forget-me-not or scorpion grass. Under the Latin scientific name Myosotis and with some 60 variants, it is a small mountain plant that grows delicate flowers, generally blue, soon after the snow melts in alpine ecosystems. It is the official flower of Alaska. The relatively low altitude of Nanga Parbat's lower slopes allows grass and flowers to grow in Base Camp, especially during this relatively warm season.

Thomas Huber, Jon Griffin, and Tad McCrea are back in Pakistan for another summer climb in the impressive Latok massif. This time, they have set their sights on Latok III.

The team started the approach trek to the Choktoi Glacier yesterday, outfitter Shipton Treks & Tours said.

Favorite playground

For Thomas Huber of Germany, the Karakoram's Choktoi Glacier and the ragged spires surrounding it are special. Here, he has achieved some of his most spectacular ascents: Latok IV (6,459m) with his brother Alex in 1999, and Latok II (7,108m) in 1997 with Conrad Anker and Toni Gutsch. Huber also climbed the neighboring Ogre and Ogre III in 2001.

Choktoi is also home to a major unfinished project: linking the north face and north ridge to the summit of Latok I, a line that has never been completely climbed. Huber has attempted it several times, including last year with McCrea and Griffin.

This time, Huber is back with the same partners, but a different goal: the unsummitted southeast pillar of Latok III (6,949m).

The team was awarded a cutting-edge grant to attempt the climb.

German climber David Goettler had unfinished business with the Rupal side of Nanga Parbat: "I needed to prove I'm able to claim an 8,000’er in the style I like and off the normal route."

Back in Europe after climbing the Schell route and paragliding from the summit, Goettler is over the moon. He's not only ecstatic about the achievement, but also because he finally succeeded on a personal bet that has molded his high-altitude climbing career.

"After all these attempts and years I put into this project, it paid off and I am very happy," Goettler said. "I have fulfilled this dream, and flying down, it's kind of the cherry on the top, even if it was not right from the summit."

Prize for persistence

In some cases, when a climber achieves a project attempted and planned for years, they feel a kind of emptiness. Goettler, on the contrary, has found that it has motivated him for future climbs.

"The recent success has increased my motivation to chase similar projects because I have climbed Nanga Parbat in exactly the style I wanted. I have learned that it sometimes takes a lot of attempts, but in the end, with persistence and patience, it pays off."

This is an important issue for Goettler, who follows strict safety standards on his climbs. His goal is to complete a climb and descend safely, without "having to get epic," as he terms it.

"Through the years and the attempts, I turned around so many times because some small things didn't fit right or it was not perfect. Of course, I questioned myself. Perhaps I was not pushing hard enough? But in the end, I have proven that I can achieve my goals in what I consider the right way," Goettler explained.

Safe, not boring

Goettler concedes that his focus on safety "might look boring for audiences and the media, because I avoid drama. I am aware others push these limits far beyond [what I choose to do] and play with fire. But each climber has to decide this for themselves."

"Of course, bad luck is always possible, and you can always end up in a difficult situation without forcing it. However, if you push the limits again and again and again, you may need to start questioning your approach to mountaineering," Goettler told us.

On every attempt, Goetller studied his mistakes and tried to fix them for the next round. So, what changed on this attempt? What was the final finetuning that led to success instead of retreat? Was it just luck?

More than luck

"I believe it's not only luck, although we were indeed lucky with the weather window and with the conditions. The mountain was very dry this year, which made the going up to 6,000m quite complex, especially for Boris and Tiphaine [climbing partners Boris Langenstein and Tiphaine Duperier of France] who wanted to ski down from the top," Goettler said. "However, from 6,000m up, conditions were way better."

Goettler explained that, although the climbers had to break trail all the time, the snow was not as deep as in wetter years. As seen in videos from the mountain, the climbers wore small snowshoes, which made progress easier on the snowy patches.

The team enjoyed an extraordinary weather window. "For three days we had little wind and no precipitation," Goettler recalls. "However, from my experience climbing in Pakistan since 2004, I had learned that temperatures are rising in recent years, so we knew we would need to make the attempt early in the season. We still almost got there too late!"

Fine-tuned tactics

Reflecting on the increasing temperatures, Goettler believes expeditions in the Karakoram may consider an earlier start, even if that means overlapping with the Spring season in Nepal.

Goettler also made a key tactical adjustment for this final attempt.

"The summit day from the last bivy at 7,400m is extremely long, and the last time I underestimated it. On the maps, the terrain looks so vertical that you think it cannot be too long, but it is! It’s a long way to the top, especially because of the traverse of the Diamir side," Goettler said.

"Therefore, this time we took a tent, a stove, and a sleeping pad with us for the summit day. That way, we could always stop, pitch the tent, get shelter from the wind, and have a rest, no matter the altitude. Either on descent or during the ascent, if the weather turned for the worse, the safety items gave us confidence to tackle a longer summit day."

They reached the summit shortly after 3 pm local time, which is late on an 8,000'er. But they had perfect weather, so an evening descent was not concerning.

"However, it was just a little bit too much wind to feel comfortable taking off and paragliding directly from the summit," Goettler noted.

The descent

With too much wind to take off from the summit, Goettler started down with Langenstein and Duperier. The two French climbers put on their skis at the top and started down the summit ridge to the south summit of Nanga Parbat; Goettler followed on foot. The skiing was slow at that altitude, so he didn’t get left behind.

"At around 6:30 pm, we reached 7,700m. Here, the ridge opens up and the terrain falls away in a huge, steep snow field," Goettler said. "It was still a bit gusty, but I felt confident to take off."

The following 30 minutes will always remain in Goettler’s memory as one of the most amazing, surreal moments of his life.

"I took off, first flying toward the flank of the mountain, along the traverse of the Diamir side and right over the Mazeno Col back to the Rupal face, where I dropped down and landed right beside our Base Camp. It was one of my best and craziest moments in the mountains so far."

Thirty minutes vs. three days

Goettler's arrival shocked the Base Camp cook, who didn’t expect anyone for dinner so soon after hearing the summit news. He ran out of the tent when he heard Goettler calling.

Going down took much longer for Langenstein and Duperier. "The traverse is no more than 50 vertical meters, but it’s all ups and downs, which can take an extremely long time when you’re on skis," Goettler said. "They used the tent, improvising a bivy for the night. The following day, they continued to the place of our last proper camp, at 7,400m, right at the access point to the Rupal side, and they spent another night there."

The descent down the Rupal Face was so rough that the French climbers still needed another stop. They halted on the ridge at 6,000m because the lower part of the mountain was so prone to rockfall that it could only be downclimbed when frozen, between midnight and 6 am.

Their long descent provided Goetller with a new experience: waiting in base camp for partners on the mountain. "It was quite intense," he said. "We could only communicate over the radio when they were on the Rupal Face. While they were on the other side, only SMS over InReach worked, and there was so little we could say. It was unnerving not knowing where they were and how they felt."

The art of flying

Indeed, flying down proved an amazing way to descend from a high-altitude summit. It is safer, faster, and spectacular. Benjamin Vedrines and other French climbers experienced it on K2 last year, where it also worked wonderfully.

"I'm sure we will see it more and more, but it will not become the norm," Goettler said. “Most days, flying from a summit or a high point is not possible. Even with modern, more accurate forecasts, you need to be really lucky with conditions, and then high-altitude paragliding requires extra skills. Often, I carry my wing up and I can't fly."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Goettler recalls that he took his wing to Nanga Parbat last year when he attempted the climb with Vedrines, but he was unable to fly from any higher than 5,500m because of high winds. Equally, he brought the wing up Baruntse in spring, but he had to return on foot in foggy weather.

"Gliding makes life so easy when it works. You fly with zero worries about rockfall, avalanches, exhaustion, or anything. In 30 minutes, you're back down to safety."

Team workflow

Goettler has attempted Nanga Parbat on five occasions with different climbing partners. He has climbed with Herve Barmasse, Mike Arnold, and Benjamin Vedrines. Last year, he met Langenstein and Duperier on Nanga Parbat. They shared the same goal, so they quickly made plans to join forces in 2025.

"It was one of the best teams I have ever been on, even though our characters are rather different. I worked really well, it's so good to have a group where you spend no energy managing the team dynamics," Goettler said.

The climb

The climb was described by Goettler in a series of clips that he posted on social media. Here's a summary and the footage:

Day 1: Latabo Base Camp to Camp 1 (6,000m)

Goettler notes that the team had made a previous climb to this point to check conditions. They left a small gear deposit.

"For the ultra purists, our ascent wouldn't be 'alpine style,' but I’m still happy to call our climb alpine style because there wasn’t a single meter of fixed rope, no set camps, and no external help."

The team climbed with a 50m rope, some pitons and cams, one tent, and food and gas for five days.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Day 2: The ridge section and snow fields between 6,000m and 6,800m

"The route goes along a sharp ridge, then you have to cross big, wide open snowfields," Goettler described.

This is the section where the climbers enjoyed better conditions than the previous year, with not so much snow. Still, they used small snowshoes for some parts.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Day 3: To the third bivouac at 7,400m

For Goettler, this section is key to predicting whether the climb will be successful. Luckily, the forecasts were accurate, and the winds dropped.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Day 4, part 1: The traverse, 7,400m to 7,800m

Goettler turned around on this section on two previous occasions. They made much faster progress this time.

"The conditions on the summit ridge were exceptional, as was the weather, but the traverse itself has endless ups and downs, which makes for an exhausting return," he noted.  "We swapped leads whenever someone needed a break, and with this teamwork, we maintained a slow but consistent pace to the Merkel Notch, just below the final unknown section of the route."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Day 4, part 2: From 7,800m to the summit

Once in unknown terrain, after the Merkel notch (a small col), they climbed a technical rocky section and crossed a snow field that took them to the south summit and then the main summit of Nanga Parbat.

"[The rock section] wasn’t super hard, but difficult enough to get the 50m rope and camalots out, which, at close to 8,000m, is spicy enough," Goettler recalled. "When we finally stood on the summit of Nanga Parbat, 14 hours after leaving our last camp, each of us knew that without the others we wouldn’t have made it. A feeling and a moment so powerful I won’t ever forget."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Chris Wright, Michael Hutchins, and Stefano Ragazzo are leaving tomorrow for one of the most exciting expeditions of the year: an attempt on an unclimbed monster wall 3,000m high in an isolated region of the Karakoram. They will climb in alpine style and have very little information about what they will find.

Only last week, the team still thought they were going to India as planned.

"I was talking with Chris [Wright] yesterday and we realized that we will finally relax when we find ourselves flying to Pakistan," Stefano Ragazzo told ExplorersWeb from Chamonix, where he (and Wright) work as guides. "The hardest part of the expedition will be done, and everything else will be doing what we like."

Tomorrow, Wright (UK/U.S.) and Ragazzo (Italy) board a plane to Istanbul, where they will meet Michael Hutchins of the U.S. and fly together to Islamabad.

The three men received a $6,000 Cutting Edge Grant from the American Alpine Club for an expedition to the southwest face of Rimo III. They also received support from the Italian Alpine Club and the Mount Everest Foundation.

They applied for climbing permits in January, well ahead of time, but the border conflict between India and Pakistan sank their original plan.

"We had been waiting in vain for a green light from the Indian authorities for months," Ragazzo explained. "As the weeks went by, we started looking for a plan B, while keeping the original goal as our first option, until we simply couldn't wait anymore. We changed our goals and plane tickets on Monday."

The goal

They are now heading to the north face of Yukshin Gardan Sar (7,530m). This unclimbed face is twice as large as the one on Rimo III.

"The peak has three previous ascents, up the easiest ridge, but there are no attempts on any other side of the peak," explained Ragazzo. "Our plan is to climb a new line up the north face and the north ridge. We estimate we will need five or six days on the wall to reach the summit, and two more for the descent, climbing in alpine style."

He admitted that they have very little information about the face and the area, except for some pictures shot by a science expedition in 2015. Called the Karakoram Anomaly Project, it studied why glacial lakes sometimes burst catastrophically and how to prevent this.

The climbers also consulted mountain geography expert Rodolphe Popier. He replied with a picture and a note that read: "Monster NE Face, over 3,000 vertical meters!"

"We need to get there and start climbing to properly assess the conditions and ponder our options, because no one has been on the line we want to climb," said Ragazzo.

The team will acclimatize elsewhere on the peak, which may help them evaluate from a distance the conditions on the face.

Exploration mode

The entire expedition has a strong exploratory component. They will have to set base camp pretty low down, at around 3,600m on a moraine, and the proper climb starts at around 4,400m and eight kilometers away from base camp, said Ragazzo.

"It is a huge climb, so we need to study it well and acclimatize as close to it as possible," he said.

Ragazzo explained that the lower part of the face will probably not be so difficult, and the crux will be in the middle of the headwall, on mixed terrain.

"We might acclimatize on the lower part of the mountain and then leave the headwall for the definitive push," he added.

Asked why they aren't acclimatizing on a secondary peak nearby, to keep to the strictest conditions of alpine style, Ragazzo noted there were no interesting peaks between their base camp and the foot of Yukshin Gardan Sar. He also said they had no time to consider a lesser peak, given their already hectic last-minute change of plan.

First-time team

The three members of the expedition have not yet climbed together, but Chris Wright is the joint connecting the other two.

"Chris and I regularly climb together...[in] Chamonix," said Ragazzo, "and he knows Michael from an expedition to India they did last year." He is referring to an attempt on Chiling II in Zanskar.

Yet Ragazzo is confident they will make a good team because each has different skills and excels in something.

Stefano Ragazzo recently rope-soloed Eternal Flame on Nameless Tower in Pakistan and completed the Nose on El Capitan in the same style. Wright received the Piolet d’Or in 2020 for his team’s ascent of Link Sar, and Hutchins has climbed six of the seven major peaks in the Fitz Roy massif.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

"This kind of expedition involves a lot of mental strain, caused by the unknown terrain, the altitude, and the conditions," explained Ragazzo. "What I have experienced on previous expeditions will help for sure."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Ragazzo pointed out that the financial support through grants has really helped their preparation. "[It] allows us to devote more time to specific training and a bit less work as guides," he said. "Of course, guiding and specific training are complementary, but combining the two of them can be exhausting."

Climbing history of Yukshin Gardan Sar

Yukshin Gardar Sar lies in the Shimshal Valley of Pakistan's Karakoram. Its altitude varies with the source but ranges from 7,460m to 7,600m. Its most widely accepted altitude is 7,530m.

As Ragazzo pointed out, it has been climbed three times, all via the south ridge. An Austrian-Pakistani team led by Rudolf Wurzer made the first ascent on June 26, 1984. They approached from the Yazghil Glacier, camping on the west side, and climbed the south ridge in classic Himalayan style, setting camps along the route, according to their report in the American Alpine Journal (AAJ).

That first ascent was a race between them and a Japanese team from Tokyo University led by Kenshiro Otaki. The Japanese tried to find a line up the north face and failed.

"After a month’s effort, we gave up because of vertical and brittle rock," member Akira Suzuki reported in the AAJ.

In the end, they switched to the south ridge.  When they summited, they found the flags left by the previous team. However, the Japanese climbed the ridge in alpine style.

According to the British Alpine Club's Himalayan Index, Alejandro Arranz, Inaki Aldaya, Alfredo Zabalza, and Tomas Miguel of Spain made the third and latest ascent in 1986. Their descent was dramatic. They struggled down for two days in bad weather, and all suffered frostbite.

Earlier tensions between India and Pakistan continue to reverberate in parts of the Karakoram and have forced some climbers to change goals. While some teams dropped out at the last minute, others switched peaks when closed zones thwarted permit applications.

Piolet d'Or winner Elias Millerioux of France went to Pakistan three weeks ago, but when we asked him about his plans, he replied, "It's complicated."

It turns out that Millerioux's partners dropped out just days before leaving, leaving the French climber at loose ends. He wandered alone up the Momhil Glacier, scouting peaks for future endeavors. He also spent some days teaching climbing to locals in Karimabad. Finally, Medhi Vidault and another unidentified partner came from France to join him in climbing and skiing some Karakoram 6,000'ers.

"We have no clear expectations but are just letting things flow," he wrote on social media. "Some expeditions are all about the unexpected."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

On Monday, the team climbed 6,171m Ambareen Sar, which they dubbed "a little summit" compared to the 7,000m giants around it. Yet the peak has only been climbed twice before: by Austrians Robert Gruber, Kurt Lapuch, and Christine Schmid in 1987 and by Felix Berg and David Langanke of Germany in 2020.

India's permits restricted

In the Indian Himalaya, many mountain areas are closed, forcing teams to find alternative destinations. Last month, Vitaliy Musiyenko and Sean McLane of the U.S. were already in India when escalating tensions with Pakistan denied them a permit to climb Kishtwar Shivling. Instead, they picked an alternative on the go -- Chaukhamba I, which lay in an area they knew nothing about. Their expedition costs doubled, and the climbers found the mountains in this new area were in highly dangerous conditions.

"[There were] active seracs over avalanche-prone slopes, serious icefalls to cross, and wet slides that start soon after the sun's rays touched the slopes," Musiyenko reported.

They made two attempts on Chaukhamba. On the first try, high winds forced them to retreat. On the second, scorching heat made the route unclimbable.

"The ice we intended to climb was a mix of fractured ice, running waterfalls, and frequent rockfall/wet slides," Musiyenko noted. He also had a close call when he almost fell into a crevasse, which affected him.

"It was difficult to bail...because the story we wanted out of this trip was one of overcoming adversity," Musoyenko wrote back at home. "However, you can’t push it too far; life is more important."

No more Rimo III

Musiyenko and McLane are not the only recipients of an American Alpine Club Cutting Edge grant who were forced to change plans. Michael Hutchins, Stefano Ragazzo and Piolet d’Or winner Chris Wright tried in vain to obtain permits for the 1,600m southwest face of Rimo III. The peak lies in the easternmost part of the Karakoram, within India. Fortunately, the climbers found a new goal, which they will tell us about in an exclusive interview later this week.

Some stick to plans

Not all alpine-style teams had to change plans. Some have already succeeded on their original goals, like the teams on Ultar Sar and Spantik. Others are currently climbing, like Urubko and Goettler's teams on Nanga Parbat. Still others are on their way to their destinations, such as the separate French and Italian teams targeting Gasherbrum IV.

From June 2-7, Mueez Ud Din of Pakistan and Mathieu Maynadier of France opened a new route on the previously unclimbed east ridge of 7,029m Spantik in the Karakoram.

A massive wind slab obstructed the climbers during the final part of the ascent, and they did not quite reach Spantik's summit. Their GPS noted that they stopped at 6,999m.

The climbers named their new route Zindabad ("Long Live" in Urdu) and graded it 1,800m, M5, A1, 80°.

The expedition included Maynadier (leader), Ud Din, videographer Nathanael Sapey, documentary filmmaker Loury Lagardere, drone manager Ozair Khan, and two cooks. During the approach, 42 porters supported them.

The Spantik expedition almost didn't happen because of recent Pakistan-India tensions. Many other planned expeditions pulled out, so that by May 20, Maynadier's team may have been the only expedition in Skardu.

After a long drive, they reached Arandu, a small village in Baltistan's Shigar Valley, near the confluence of the Shigar and Basha Rivers. The village serves as a gateway to Spantik’s base camp.

Tense moments during the approach trek

After three intense days of trekking and 35km of crevassed glacier, the party arrived at base camp on May 26.

The approach journey included a few tense moments, including when a porter fell between two icy walls. He was not injured, but the fall "sparked a brief rebellion among the group," Maynadier wrote. "But after some negotiations, we were able to continue."

Their acclimatization took two days. Seizing the first break in the weather, they spent two nights at higher elevations –- 5,200m and 5,800m –- on Spantik’s normal southeast ridge route. They then returned to base camp for a night’s rest on June 9.

The favorable weather persisted, and though not fully acclimatized, Ud Din and Maynadier pushed for the summit via the east ridge.

The climb

"We spent 25 days on the mountain, 10 of them at base camp waiting for a window that barely opened," Ud Din wrote. "When it finally did, we went for it."

The pair left base camp, situated above a heavily crevassed glacier at 4,200m, and ascended 1,800m over four days.

They crossed the bergschrund at 5,200m and eventually reached their highest point at 6,999m, just shy of the summit. There, a massive wind slab and dangerous amounts of snow blocked the final ridge.

"We made the tough call to turn back, but honestly, the route was the true summit," Ud Din explained in a post.

The ascent required three bivouacs. Connecting their new line to Spantik’s normal route, they completed the descent with one bivouac at 5,800m. After a day and a half, the duo returned to base camp, five days after setting off.

Complex terrain and the crux

The long east ridge presented a complex tapestry of terrain, with snow sections and a mixed crux. As they gained altitude, the ridge sharpened into a knife-edge of snow and rock.

According to Maynadier, the crux arrived on the final day of the ascent: two mixed pitches rated M5, where ice-smeared granite demanded delicate footwork and precise axe placements. An A1 aid section required technical ingenuity to navigate overhanging rock.

"The higher you go, the steeper it gets," Maynadier recalled. The ridge’s exposure, coupled with its technical demands, made every move a calculated risk.

The first two days of the climb had clear skies, but conditions deteriorated on days three and four, as snow flurries dusted the ridge, obscuring holds and slowing progress.

The final bivouac at 6,700m was particularly tough, with 20cm of fresh snow blanketing their camp.

"It was a little stressful," Maynadier admitted, recalling the tension of the wind howling all night and waking to a snow-laden tent.

But their commitment paid off. "After weeks in the Karakoram, we returned with more than just frostbite and memories," Ud Din wrote on social media.

"We are happy. It’s a really cool line," Maynadier told us.

Spantik’s storied past

First ascended in 1955 by a German expedition led by Karl Kramer via the southeast ridge, Spantik has long captivated climbers.

The southeast ridge was first attempted in 1906 by American explorers Fanny and William Bullock Workman, who reached 6,700m, a remarkable feat for the era. Subsequent milestones include the south ridge, climbed by a Japanese team in 1978, and the striking northwest pillar, ascended by British climbers Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders in 1987.

However, the east ridge remained untouched, its steep, exposed line deterring attempts until Maynadier and Ud Din’s bold climb. The American Alpine Journal records no prior ascents of this route.

Unlike the guided, fixed-rope ascents common on Spantik’s more frequented routes, the duo’s approach aligns with the purist ethos of modern mountaineering. Their success not only adds a new chapter to Spantik’s legacy but highlights untapped potential.

Maynadier’s climbs

Maynadier, a 38-year-old French guide from Briançon, has a distinguished career of first ascents.

In 2010, Maynadier, Mathieu Detrie, Maxime Belleville, and Sebastien Ratel made the first ascent of 6,812m Lunag II in Nepal, via the southwest face. Their route, Close the Door (1,300m, ED), earned a 2011 Piolet d’Or nomination.

In 2012, Maynadier, Antoine Bletton, Pierre Labre, and Sebastien Ratel opened a new route on 7,108m Latok II in the Karakoram, reaching the southeast summit at 7,020m.

In 2013, Maynadier, Mathieu Detrie, Jerome Parra, and Pierre Labre carried out the first ascent of the south face of 7,134m Gaurishankar, by their new route Gare au Gauri (2,000m, ED+, M5/A1).

In the autumn of 2015, alongside Julian Dusserre, Maynadier opened the northeast face of 6,295m Dzasampatse in the Mahalangur Himal-Khumbu section of Nepal. Their 700m route was named A La Verticale de la Peine and graded TD+, WI5. They stopped 20m below the summit because of extremely unstable snow on the narrow ridge.

In 2017, Maynadier summited Gasherbrum II.

A close call in 2018

In the summer of 2018, Maynadier, Nicolas Favresse, Jean-Louis Wertz, and Carlitos Molina were probably the first foreign mountaineers to explore the Tagas Valley in Pakistan’s Karakoram. They focused their attention on the west side of a beautiful rock tower near the Second Tagas Glacier, according to Favresse’s report for the American Alpine Journal. The summit, approaching 6,000m, was named Pathan Peak. On August 4, all four climbers reached the summit.

During the climb, right after Maynadier and Favresse had just completed fixing a new anchor, the ledge above them, on which Molina was standing, collapsed. Maynadier was hit and suffered a concussion, a fractured right elbow, and two compressed vertebrae. He was incoherent, but the team lowered him to a portaledge and called for rescue.

However, the next morning, Maynadier was in better shape and descended to the base of the wall. From there, an army helicopter evacuated him to Skardu.

In 2021, Maynadier and Tom Livingstone attempted 6,850m Pumari Chhish East, retreating just 100m from the summit after heavy snowfall.

The next year, Maynadier made the first ski descent of 7,266m Diran in the Karakoram, after reaching the summit at 6 pm.

In 2023, Maynadier, Simon Gietl, and Roger Schaeli opened Goldfish (800m, M6+, A1) on 6,570m Meru South’s southeast face in India.

Ud Din, an emerging talent

Muizz Ud Din, an emerging talent from Pakistan, represents a new generation of local mountaineers. Ud Din’s local knowledge and determination were critical to the expedition’s success.

His partnership with Maynadier is a bridge between global and local climbing communities, and their climb might be the first major new route opened in Pakistan by a local climber.

"It’s a huge step, I hope, for the Pakistan climbing community," Maynadier said.

For Ud Din, Zindabad is more than a route. It’s a beacon for aspiring Pakistani climbers, proving that technical, high-altitude ascents are within their reach.

On June 18, Radoslav Groh and Zdenek Hak climbed the 3,000m Southwest Face of 6,270m Hunza Peak in Pakistan's Karakoram.

The Czech pair made the ascent in a 20-hour, alpine-style push, according to Aktivtono and an Instagram post from their sponsor, Hudysport. They trekked two or three days via the Batura Glacier to the base of the wall.

Hunza Peak lies in the Batura Muztagh above the Hunza Valley and near the Ultar Sar massif. Its southwest face, a steep wall of rock and ice, had been unclimbed until now.

Hunza Peak's climbing history

In the summer of 1991, a British team, including Crag Jones and Mick Fowler, made the first ascent of Hunza Peak, via the southwest ridge, after an earlier unsuccessful attempt on Ultar Sar. That season, a Swedish team also ascended Hunza by an unspecified route. Both climbs were in alpine style.

Jones and Fowler proceeded from the Hasanabad Glacier to the col between Hunza Peak and Bublimoting, then mounted the southwest ridge from there over three days.

An Austrian party that included Harry Grun, Klaus Bonazza, and Jakob Karner attempted a 1,200m section of the southwest face in 2008, but failed due to bad weather.

Groh and Hak's first ascent of Mucchu Chhish last year was ExplorersWeb's top expedition of 2024. They named their new route on Hunza Peak Eid al-Adha ("Feast of Sacrifice").

Sebastian Pelletti, Ethan Berman, and Maarten van Haeren have returned to civilization after their landmark ascent of the Southeast Pillar of 7,388m Ultar Sar in the Karakoram.

Still in Pakistan, Pelletti described their new Shooting the Moon route to ExplorersWeb, which they graded M5 WI4 3,100m. The climb took place from June 6 to 13 — six days up and two days down, including one weatherbound day.

The 3,100m route featured steep snow and ice with a rock pillar between 6,700m to 7,200m. For the first three days, they tried to cover as much elevation as possible between safe bivouacs.

Based on what they learned from their 2024 attempt, they spent a lot of time climbing at night and during the early morning hours to optimize temperatures and conditions. Later in the day, high winds and cloud systems typically rolled through, eliminating visibility and forcing them to stop early.

Spartan bivouacs

Excavating bivouacs on this pillar proved challenging, but they eventually carved out platforms big enough for the three of them to sleep together in a hammock.

On the third day, they climbed from 5,800m to 6,650m on mostly 70-degree ice. No bivouacs were possible until the base of the rock pillar, which they reached after a long day.

The rock pillar proved much higher than they had anticipated, and they had also expected the route to have some easier snow slopes. However, apart from the lower entrance fan and the final 200m to the summit, the entire route was steep ice and rock, keeping them on their tools and front points the entire time.

On day 4, they confronted the crux of the climb -- the upper part of the rock pillar. There, mixed climbing up to M5 continued from 6,800m to 7,200m before they gained the final snow slopes.

70+ rappels

After summiting, Pelletti, Berman, and van Haeren went down their ascent line. That afternoon, a storm pinned them down at their 6,650m bivouac. They endured 24 hours of blowing snow before a brief opening in the clouds allowed them to continue down.

By the time they reached 6,000m, the weather had significantly improved. They covered the descent in three stages: the first from the summit to 6,650m, the second (after the weather delay) from 6,650m to 4,300m, and finally, all the way down to base camp in a 31-hour push. They lost count after 70 rappels.

Their timing was exquisite: Back in base camp, a major storm swept through the range for several days.

"This feels like the biggest climb any of us has individually done, and we are still processing the experience," Pelletti told ExplorersWeb. "We’ve all completed multi-day alpine climbs, but this was our first time applying this experience to an objective above 7,000m...We are just super-satisfied in the way we worked together on an objective that seemed too big to contemplate as a whole."

The climbers received financial support from the John Lauchlan Award, a Cutting Edge Grant, and the Mazamas Bob Wilson Grant, and logistical support from Pakistan Higher Ground Expeditions.

There was a time when climbers revealed their plans publicly months in advance, to raise interest for fundraising or solicit beta from climbers who'd been to the area. We now live in more secretive times, where everyone worries that letting a good idea out of the bag prematurely may tempt other climbers to snatch it. So when Lucien Boucansaud of France recently detailed plans for a solo first ascent of Nepal's Khangri Shar this fall, we wondered...why.

"For me, announcing my plans and admitting how little I know about this mountain is like an open call to everyone in the climbing community to look for adventure, to try climbs we don't even know if they are possible," he told ExplorersWeb.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The soloist

We discovered Lucien Boucansaud when he soloed Pumori in the fall of 2023. Days earlier, Boucansaud had done an alpine-style ascent of the west face of Cho Polu with David Goettler and Guillaume Pierrel. He then used some free time in Nepal to hike up the Khumbu Valley and try Pumori. The aesthetic yet difficult peak rises immediately opposite Everest.

Boucansaud had no idea how far up he would get. But despite difficulties and exposed sections, he summited alone on Oct. 28.

While climbing Pumori, Boucansaud looked westward and noticed a peak nestled between Nepal and Tibet. It usually went unnoticed because Pumori cast a long shadow over it.

"At the end of that expedition, I met a team that had attempted the summit and told me about it," he said. "That peak remained in my mind since then, and now the moment has come. I'll try to solo in the same style and with the same attitude I had on Pumori."

Several attempts

According to The Himalayan Database, the peak has had several attempts, including some by commercial teams. A Japanese team made the first attempt in 2003. In 2004, an Adventure Peaks group from the UK, led by Tim Blakemore, also tried. The year 2018 featured two attempts, one by the late Noel Hanna of Northern Ireland and another by Luke Smithwick of the U.S. and Frederik Strang of Sweden. Adventure 14 organized a team for Delphine Reymond of Switzerland.

Last year, a South Korean team led by An Chi-Young attempted Khangri Shar. All attempts came from the Nepal side, all were unsuccessful, and all attributed their failure to bad conditions and objective hazards.

According to Nepal Himal Peak Profile, Khangri Shar is 6,811m, but The Himalayan Database identifies it as 6,792m. It also lists a 6,658m Khangri Shar West.

This fall, Boucansaud will make the first solo attempt, in pure alpine style. "To reach an untouched summit is an alpinist's dream," he said.

Asked whether he is concerned about other climbers stealing his idea, Boucansaud seemed surprised.

"I hope not," he said. "But, well, I guess that should be okay. Everyone has the right to climb the peak."

French climbers Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer are teaming up again to attempt one of the most epic peaks in the Karakoram: Gasherbrum IV.

"Our primary objective is the southwest ridge, starting by climbing the Shining Wall [the West Face] and then continuing along the ridge to the summit," Dubouloz told ExplorersWeb. He noted that this is the route twice attempted by Piolet d'Or winner Jordi Corominas in 2006.

The West Face of Gasherbrum IV is called the Shining Wall because the setting sun lights it up spectacularly. It offers a formidable sight to climbers and trekkers as they reach the glacier crossroads known as Concordia, on their way to K2 Base Camp. The 2,500m-high face is one of the most aesthetic and difficult in the world. It was the scene of some epic chapters in the history of mountaineering.

Given the changeable conditions in the Karakoram and the magnitude of the challenge, Dubouloz, 36, and Welfringer, 31, are hedging their bets. Once at the foot of the wall, they may consider other routes or, if it proves impossible, opt for an alternative goal.

"Other possibilities would be climbing Gasherbrum V [G5] or attempting a G5/G6 traverse," Dubouloz said. "Additionally, if the weather turns bad, we’re open to exploring the lesser-known 6,000m peaks around base camp."

These peaks could also serve as preparatory climbs.

Staying flexible

Adapting to conditions is one of the pair's assets. The last time they climbed together in the Himalaya was in the spring of 2024. On that occasion, they went to Nepal with 7,952m Gyachung Kang in mind. Then Welfringer got sick, and as they were running out of time, they ended up opening an excellent new alpine-style route up the vertiginous west face of neighboring 7,029m Hungchi.

“When you go on an expedition to the end of the world, things rarely happen as expected,” Dubouloz explained at the time.

The climbers plan to keep the same flexibility this year.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

A change of venue

The Gasherbrum massif will be a significant change for Welfringer after last summer, when he teamed up with Matteo Della Bordella, Silvan Schupbach, and Alex Gammeter on remote big walls in Eastern Greenland. The team achieved the first ascent of a 1,980m face.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Dubouloz is also restless after a busy winter climbing, skiing, and flying at home in the Chamonix area and across Europe and northern Africa. Year after year, his name appears linked to some of the best expeditions in the Himalaya and the Karakoram. He is a regular partner of fellow hard-core visionaries Benjamin Vedrines and Tom Livingstone -- and, of course, Symon Welfringer.

A small number of alpine-style teams in Pakistan are currently acclimatizing. The Spantik team has already moved above Base Camp, while Denis Urubko and Maria Cardell are doing their rounds in the lesser ranges near Skardu before attempting a new route on 8,126m Nanga Parbat.

As a pure alpine-style ascent, it makes sense that they acclimatize on different peaks rather than on their targeted route. Urubko also believes that rotations at high altitude cause a climber to lose fitness.

"The climber gains altitude step by step but becomes weaker," he said in an interview with Mountain.ru. "On the contrary, intense hikes or ascents with a large altitude gain [in lesser ranges] allow you to keep your muscles in good shape."

Mid-altitude hikes and climbs

Skardu's new international airport is the gateway for all expeditions to the Karakoram and the Nanga Parbat region. The town lies at 2,228m and features plenty of straightforward peaks of 4,000m to 5,000m nearby. Some are close enough to summit on day trips.

After arriving last weekend, Urubko and Cardell hiked to 3,101m. The following day, they climbed a 4,560m peak.

Urubko's personal project

In a previous email shared by Mountain.ru, Urubko noted the acclimatization phase would take them a couple of weeks. Then they'll move to the northern, Diamir side of Nanga Parbat to attempt a new route the ace Russian climber has been planning for a while.

This is the first time Urubko has returned to the higher mountains after he suffered frostbite after falling in a crevasse on a winter attempt to Gasherbrum I two years ago. Urubko has made it clear that while his wife will start with him, he is also ready to climb it on his own.

"If Masha [Maria Cardell] can’t keep up, I’ll try it solo," Urubko wrote in his email.

Family issues prevented Cardell from joining until last week, but she is at least partly acclimatized, as she worked all winter as a ski patroller at a resort located between 2,200m and 3,300m in Spain's lofty Sierra Nevada. But a new line on Nanga Parbat is a major endeavor, and the Diamir face is huge, from 4,900m of the base of the wall to the summit at 8,126m. In some sections, the avalanche risk is considerable.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Spantik

Further north, in the Shigar area, a French-Pakistani team led by Mathieu Maynadier is ready to start climbing 7,027m Spantik.

They set off from base camp at 4,200m last weekend, after a rather rough approach trek over a glacier, which included some difficult passages among crevasses. It was hard to find a safe passage for the entire convoy, which included the climbers, two cooks, 42 porters, 8 chickens, 1 goat, 17kg of rice, and all the camping and climbing equipment.

Maynadier is teaming up with local climber Muizz Ud Din, as well as fellow Frenchman Loury Lag, and videographer Nathanael Sapey-Triomphe. Drone operator Ozair Khan will film the climbers from base camp.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Hellias Millerioux of France has also posted some photos from his below-the-radar expedition. He is currently on an approach trek but has not shared details about the peak.

Denis Urubko of Russia has confirmed he and his wife Maria Cardell will attempt Nanga Parbat (8,126m) via a new route in the next few weeks.

Yesterday, we wrote about how the improving situation in Pakistan could prompt climbers to visit this season, especially smaller, alpine-style teams.

Urubko has not yet revealed details about the route, but he made his priorities clear when he spoke about his plans during a lecture in Italy in March: “No route has ever been opened without oxygen and in authentic alpine style." At that moment, he said his goal was to open a new route on the mountain's Diamir Face.

Two years badly frostbiting his fingers while trying to open a new route on winter Gasherbrum, Urubko is back to high-altitude mountaineering. He is also the first climber attempting a new route on an 8,000m peak this year.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Urubko announced the expedition on his 52nd birthday.

Mountain master

Denis Urubko has summited all the 8,000m peaks without supplementary oxygen or Sherpa support. He also has two first winter ascents, on Makalu (with Simone Moro) and Gasherbrum II (with Moro and Cory Richards).

Urubko has opened new routes on the highly difficult south side of Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum II (solo). He has also made a name for himself — and friends around the world — for the many rescues he has performed in the Himalaya.

One of them made him an international hero and earned him France’s Legion of Honor. In 2018, he and Adam Bielecki of Poland abandoned their own attempt on winter K2 and hurried to Nanga Parbat to launch the nearly impossible rescue of Tomasz Mackiewicz and Elisabeth Revol. They couldn’t reach Mackiewicz but saved Revol’s life.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have abated after the flare-up in early May, and some alpine-style teams are already tackling difficult routes in Pakistan. At the same time, outfitters have confirmed their commercial expeditions to K2 and Broad Peak and reached a compromise with local authorities on the new price of climbing permits.

At least three teams are currently working on alpine-style routes on 6,000m and 7,000m peaks in the Karakoram.

The first team to reach Pakistan was the American expedition to 7,388m Ultar Shar in the Batura Muztagh range. Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren, and Sebastian Pelletti had their original flight cancelled during the political turmoil but boarded the first available plane once the situation calmed down. The team has been in Pakistan for the last two weeks.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

French alpinists

Piolet d'Or winner Elias Millerioux has not revealed his goal or his team, but he is currently setting up Base Camp on the Momhil Glacier in Shimshal. This is where the late Kazuya Hiraide and Kenjo Nakajima achieved two of their most applauded first ascents, on Karun Koh and Shispare. Last year, Millerioux and fellow Chamonix guide Yannick Graziani attempted a new route up the southeast ridge of Trivor Peak in the nearby Batura range.

French guide Mathieu Maynadier is attempting a new route on Spantik via the Chogho Lungma Glacier. He has again teamed up with local climber Mueez Ud Din.

"At one point, the expedition was on the verge of cancellation due to recent Pakistan-India tensions, which led to many teams pulling out, but against the odds, we’re here," Ud Din wrote on social media.

Ud Din recognizes that this kind of alpine-style expedition is "the beginning of something bigger for Pakistan’s mountaineering community."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They started the 35km approach trek three days ago from the village of Arandu and set up their Base Camp yesterday at the foot of Spantik.

"We’re the first team to break trail this season," Maynadier wrote. "The route wasn’t always easy, with many crevasses to navigate, but the whole team and the porters arrived safely."

Climbing fees confirmed

Several local outfitters have told us about the compromise reached over climbing permit fees. An official announcement that tripled the cost of 2025 fees discouraged many climbers and concerned local outfitters.

Outfitters and the authorities have now agreed to split the difference, so the final figure falls midway between the authorities' original proposal and the current low rate. As we announced earlier, the permit fee for K2 is $3,500 per climber, and the rest of the country's 8,000'ers cost $2,500 each.

Below, an updated list of prices for climbers and trekkers, with the fee initially proposed by the authorities and, on the right, the agreed-upon final price for this season:

While several outfitters in Pakistan confirm that they are running climbs to K2 and Broad Peak, there is no news yet about any Gasherbrum climbs. As for Nanga Parbat, where the season starts in June, the situation is uncertain. Several teams canceled their trips when the political conflict escalated in early May. The mountain will likely be pretty lonely, but a few teams may still apply for permits at the last minute and enjoy the peak without the usual crowds.

One potential entrant is Denis Urubko. He has not yet confirmed this, but he recently said that he intends to open a new route on the peak's Diamir Face, probably with his wife Maria Jose Cardell. For the time being, Urubko is training hard to get as fit as possible, "just in case."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The fact that the only team with serious plans for Nanga Parbat is a pair of alpinists could signal a limited return of old-fashioned expedition climbing on at least one 8,000m peak.

Yuri Koshelenko and Aleksey Lonchinski have just returned from a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt on one of the great unclimbed walls of the Himalaya: the East Face of Jannu East.

The Stoic's advice

Before the expedition, Koshelenko had simply said that he and Lonchinski were heading to the Kangchenjunga region but preferred to keep their goal quiet until their return.

"[Marcus Aurelius] and other Stoic philosophers don't recommend [speaking about future goals]...it can break the motivation," the Russian Piolet d'Or winner said.

After acclimatizing on Langtang's Langshisa Ri, they obtained a three-person permit for Jannu, Koshelenko told ExplorersWeb today. They jumped on a helicopter, piloted by Simone Moro, on May 8. Alexandr Semenov was the third man on the team.

The expedition would not have flown under the radar so easily if they had revealed their plans. The unclimbed East Face of 7,468m Jannu East is one of the most coveted and difficult goals in Nepal's Himalaya.

The helicopter deposited the climbers right on the glacier, about one hour from the start of their route.

Impossible conditions

A dozen attempts

Peter Hamor of Slovakia and Nives Meroi and Romano Benet of Italy have made the first ascent of the west face of 7,412m Kabru I. They waited to announce their success until after they returned home.

The style, the goal, the line, even the name they picked for the new route -- graded D for moderately difficult -- describes their whole approach to mountaineering. They do Himalayan trad climbing, as opposed to speed climbing or other fashionable variants of high-altitude mountaineering.

Unstable weather

 

"The weather was really unstable," she added. "Days and days of snow, and the rest were very windy."

Second try

They began their second attempt on May 2.

"We managed to meander through an unpleasant section full of hidden cracks and dangerous seracs to about 6,300m, where we found a relatively safe place for our bivy tent," Hamor reported on his website.

The team progressed for one more day. Then, after a short rest in a second bivouac, they left for the summit at 1:30 am on May 4 in stable but very cold weather.

"Sunrise caught us just below the ridge connecting Talung Peak (7,349m) and Kabru," Hamor wrote. "At that point, the terrain was a little easier but still very dangerous due to avalanche-prone snow and huge cornices."

Luckily, the three climbers climbed along the ridge without incident and finally reached the summit area, a short, steep section of rock and ice. They stood on top at 5:00 pm.

A cold descent

The climbers stayed just long enough for some quick photos and immediately started down, following their footprints in the snow even after nightfall.

"The problem was that, as we arrived at the place where we had previously bivouacked at 6,300m, we couldn't find our tent," said Hamor. "A night in the open in such cold conditions would certainly not be without consequences."

It was 11 pm before they finally found their tent. They went inside, melted snow to rehydrate, and got some rest after the 22-hour day. The following morning, they continued down to base camp.

Trad style

"Our first ascent of the west face of Kabru was done in an easy, fair style, on our own, without the use of fixed ropes, bottled oxygen, high camps, or a helicopter, and we left nothing on the wall except a few bamboo poles," Peter Hamor noted. They called the route simply Himalayan Trad.

Instead of seeking maximum difficulties, they followed the most logical line to the summit. Hamor said it's only doable in the right conditions, since the avalanche risk can be very high.

"It was a pleasure to complete this beautiful, logical, long...and exhausting route," Nives Meroi told ExplorersWeb.

She recalled, in particular, the solitude they enjoyed. It was just the three of them, climbing in real trad style.

A good area for new routes

Hamor, Meroi, and Benet were on their third visit in three years to the subsidiary peaks of the Kangchenjunga area. Their main goal was 7,590m Yalung Peak, and they had eyed Kabru I as a preparatory ascent. Two years ago, the climbers opened a new route on the nearby Kabru IV, which earned Nives Meroi a Piolet d'Or.

The European trio was one of the few teams targeting new routes in Nepal's peaks this spring. Earlier today, we heard from Piolet d'Or winners Yuri Koshelenko and Alexey Lonchinsky of Russia, who were also climbing near Kangchenjunga. More on their expedition in an upcoming story.

Escalating hostilities between India and Pakistan have thrown spring climbing expeditions into disarray, and even the June-July Karakoram season is uncertain. Sean McLane and Vitaliy Musiyenko of the U.S. flew to India last week to attempt 5,935m Kishtwar Shivling, but the conflict in Kashmir has forced them to adapt on the fly and move to Garhwal instead.

At least, they made it to the mountains. But today, as flights to Pakistan are canceled and India restricts or halts operations at several airports, the pair wonders whether their expedition will continue. And what of the many climbers and trekkers who've not yet packed their bags?

Flying into uncertainty

Musiyenko and McLane obtained a Cutting Edge Grant from the American Alpine Club to attempt a new route on Kishtwar Shivling in India's Kashmir. They were preparing to leave when a terrorist attack left 27 people dead not far from where they planned to start. The attack, claimed by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, re-ignited the conflict between the two countries over long-disputed Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack, which Islamabad denied, according to CNN.

"I was monitoring the situation from home after the terrorist attack and saw articles on April 27-28 about Jammu and Kashmir being closed to trekkers,"  Vitaliy Musiyenko told ExplorersWeb. "My flight to India was on the 29th. I started researching potential Plan Bs a day before departure. Our logistics company said it was all ok with going to J&K, but when we landed, one of the people who works for the company and lives in the area met with local officials. They confirmed that it’s not allowed to climb there."

Adaptation required

Muyisenko considered some options, like approaching Kishwar from the northeast, via Zanskar, which is still technically open to climbing. However, the uncertainty about how the situation might evolve made them reconsider.

Musiyenko notes he is a climber and an ER nurse, and acted as such: "I am open to rolling with the punches and adapting to big changes," he said.

Within 24 hours, they had made a decision: They would climb in India but in a different area.

"We ended up applying for Chaukhamba 3," Musiyenko told ExplorersWeb. "It looks like a very challenging peak, supposedly still unclimbed and a totally new area to my partner and me, so we are at least as excited about it as we were about Kishtwar."

Chaukhamba III

McLane and Musiyenko left for Rishikesh, the start of the trek, last weekend. They will be off-grid while they climb 6,974m Chaukhamba III, located in the Gangotri group of India’s western Garhwal Himalaya.

Chaukhamba III is rarely visited but had some unexpected drama last September, when Fay Manners of the UK and Michelle Dvorak of the U.S. had a close call while attempting its east buttress and had to be rescued.

A different line

They have not mentioned if they have a particular route in mind, except that it will not be the same one that Manners and Dvorak took. The two women have just received a Grit&Rock award to return to Chaukhamba III to finish their route. But if Musiyenko and McLane succeed, they will lose the first ascent.

"Hopefully, they can return and finish their business," Musiyenko said. "If we had more time to look, I’d prefer not to attempt peaks that others are trying, but there are just not many of that size and difficulty, potentially unclimbed, which are inspiring and easy to get a permit for."

Situation uncertain

Jammu and Kashmir is currently closed to foreigners and will likely remain so for the rest of the season. Other mountain areas remain open, but the situation is fluid.

Today, before dawn, India retaliated for the April 22 terrorist attack by bombing objectives reportedly linked to the terrorist group in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has promised to respond to today's strike.

Even if some mountain areas are unaffected by the hostilities, getting there may become a problem.

As we wrote in a story earlier today, most commercial airlines have avoided flying into Pakistan since the attack. India had already closed its airspace to flights from Pakistan, but today, after its missile strike, it further restricted it. Indian authorities have canceled over 200 domestic and international flights and closed 18 airports, including Srinagar, Leh, Amritsar, and Chandigarh, India Today reports.

Far enough from trouble?

Communication in backcountry India is complex even in peacetime, since the country bans satellite phones and InReach devices. Musiyenko and McLane are now out of touch and probably on their way to base camp. We won't hear from them until they return. However, they and their liaison officer will surely have contact with the local outfitter. So far, the skirmish has not affected the Garhwal Himalaya, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. But this could change.

Before leaving for the mountains last Friday, Musiyenko shared how lucky he and his partner were not to have traveled to India before April 22. If they had been in Kashmir when the attack took place, "I could see having to leave the area in the middle of our trip," Musiyenko reflected.

With the worsening situation, it is unclear whether Garhwal will be far enough away from trouble. The uncertainty also affects those preparing to travel in the next months. Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren, and Sebastian Pelletti were heading for Ultar Shar today but didn't get any further than the airport lobby in Calgary. Their flight to Pakistan was canceled before they even boarded the plane. The entire summer Karakoram season is in jeopardy.

For now, we can only hope the situation improves before Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak return to Chaukhamba III in the fall. At least the women have plenty of time to devise a Plan B.

Peter Hamor of Slovakia and Italians Nives Meroi and Romano Benet are safely down from the summit of 7,412m Kabru I after making the first ascent of the west face.

Kabru I's west face lies on the Nepali side of the peak. According to Peter Hamor's home team, the three climbers did an alpine-style ascent.

Details remain scarce, as the team is only able to contact their relatives via short InReach texts. A previous report noted that the team had retreated from 6,000m on one of the two peaks they planned to climb this spring -- Kabru I and Yalung Peak --  but it was not confirmed which. The climbers had permits for Kabru I and Kangbachen. Yalung Peak is considered a secondary point of Kangbachen.

On Friday, the team said they were off on a summit push.

it is also uncertain if, after their success on Kabru I, the trio will now go for Yalung Peak.

This week's bad weather has thwarted all climbing teams in Nepal, including the alpine-style climbers attempting new routes.

High winds forced Peter Hamor of Slovakia, and Nives Meroi and Romano Benet of Italy, to abort their first push on a new route on 7,590m Yalung Peak in the Kangchenjunga region. They had to retreat from 6,000m and returned to Base Camp to wait for better conditions. The three climbers have been grounded for 10 days, but now an optimistic forecast has prompted them back to action.

Scant details

The team planned to wait one or two days for the weather to improve and for the mountain to sluff off its excess fresh snow. If all went well, they are likely climbing now.

Unfortunately, Hamor's team only issued a brief update, so we aren't sure if earlier, they climbed Kabru I as planned before moving onto Yalung Peak. But they are on Yalung now.

The team has no wifi connection, and Hamor just texts his wife briefly on his InReach. A full report will have to wait.

Last week, an unidentified pair of climbers secured a permit to climb Ghenye Liru, a 6,571m peak in Nepal’s Langtang region with only one recorded ascent.

This year, it has been harder than ever to get information on climbs in the Himalaya. Among other legwork, we carefully check permit lists shared by Nepal's Department of Tourism -- always at least a week old -- for peaks over 6,000m. In the most recent list, there is an entry for a two-man team that paid $800 to climb Ghenye Liru, an aesthetic peak also known as Langtang II.

Ghenye Liru has been climbed only once, by Peter Taylor (born in the UK and resident in Australia) and Nepalese climbers Pasang Phutar and Pasang Sherpa, according to The Himalayan Database. Digging around, we discovered a remarkable story of adventure.

A Himalayan newbie

Peter Taylor wanted to climb a peak over 22,000ft (6,700m) in the Himalaya but had no idea which one or where, as he had never been to Nepal. He would have six weeks off between jobs while he moved from Brazil to the Australian Outback.

Taylor went to New Zealand for some last-minute winter training. There, a guide recommended Bill Tilman's book about Langtang, the closest range to Kathmandu. As a result, Taylor exchanged letters with officials in Nepal, and they finally permitted him to climb a 6,571m peak. Later, he discovered this was Langtang II/Ghenye Liru.

"A couple of Sherpas would come with me, since I had no climbing companions," Taylor wrote for The Himalayan Club. "I had tried to enlist climbers from New Zealand and Canada, but without luck. It seemed that for the 1963 season, just about everybody I knew had a plan of his own."

Taylor arrived in Kathmandu, only to learn that customs back in Calcutta had impounded most of his equipment. Taylor had to travel back to the Indian city to solve the issue. By the time he returned, it was already May 18, and the monsoon was around the corner. Around this time, he learned that Ghenye Liru had never been climbed, and no one knew anything definite about an approach route from the west.

He managed to gather a local team of porters and base camp crew, and employed Pasang Phutar and Paang Sherpa as high-altitude porters. Graham Homan, a 27-year-old former Royal Air Force officer whom Taylor had met by chance in Kathmandu, joined him as base camp manager.

"Attempt at summit in the first week of June or not at all," Taylor wrote before leaving Kathmandu.

Taylor also told his team that it would be a Nepalese expedition and only carry Nepal's flag to put on top of the peak, should they succeed.

Race against the monsoon

The team reached base camp on May 23. Taylor wrote:

I now had a decision to make: whether to spend time in recce [reconnaissance] and acclimatization and hope for a late monsoon climb or go ahead in an all-out attempt for the top as soon as possible. I decided to go as high as possible right away and take a chance on the effects of altitude.

To complicate matters, the terrain on the west face proved too rough to climb. Taylor used the next day to walk around the peak and check the opposite face. He saw a network of couloirs and steep ridges that disappeared in low clouds. Without knowing the terrain above, he took a chance and departed with the Sherpas on May 25.

They were mid-way up a couloir when a snowstorm broke, forcing the three men to improvise a bivouac at 5,640m. Fortunately, the next morning was clear, and Taylor kicked steps into the firm snow to the top of the couloir. Beyond, there was a plateau with two frozen ponds where the team set up their second bivy, at the foot of the east face.

The following day, the climbers progressed in fog. Eventually, they called it a day, unaware they were at 6,400m.

"Had I known that we were so near the top, I would have dumped everything and gone on. It was only 11:45 am, but I had no idea where we were. I had caught a glimpse of a rather exposed-looking snow ridge higher up. I didn't feel up to tackling it," Taylor wrote.

Taylor settled in for the night, but couldn't shake his altitude-related cough. He took some penicillin tablets, only to learn he was allergic when his face swelled. Still, he set off toward the summit the following day, feeling better once he was up and moving.

The team reached the top in foggy weather, took some photos, and returned, first to Camp 2 and then to base camp.

Back in camp, the team's mail-runner brought news from Kathmandu: an American expedition had succeeded on Everest. Outside the tent, rain poured; the monsoon had arrived.

Meeting the Everest Americans

Taylor dispatched the mail runner with a letter to an American journalist based in Kathmandu, who Reuters had assigned to cover the Everest expedition. The journalist's name was Elizabeth Hawley.

Hawley kept Taylor's letter as part of her massive archive of mountaineering expeditions that would eventually give shape to The Himalayan Database.

The Americans on Everest were the members of Norman Dyhrenfurth's expedition. On May 1, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest, assisted by Sherpa Nawang Gombu. Then, on May 22, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld established a new route on Everest via the West Ridge. After bivouacking at 8,500m, they came down the South Side, thus completing the first traverse of Everest.

The final paragraph in Taylor's diary reads as follows:

We arrived back in Kathmandu on June 6, three days before the Americans got back from Everest. A chance meeting with Colonel Wylie in the Hotel Royal led to an invitation to lunch at his house near the British Embassy. Over a Scotch and soda, I recounted a few of my experiences in the Langtang and elsewhere. ‘How long were you away on your climb ?' 'Nineteen days.' 'I say, that was a quick one!' And conversation drifted to other climbs, other places, other men.

Current team unknown

We don't know who is following in Taylor's footprints, nor do we know whether they intend to repeat his route or open a new one. Hopefully, we will know more when the team returns.

Ghenye Liru is located in the Langtang Himal, west-southwest of the best-known peak of the range, the difficult Langtang Lirung. The Himalayan Database only registers Taylor's climb in 1963, but it is unclear if anyone has climbed it unofficially. After the first ascent, the peak was closed to foreigners and only reopened in 2002.

Luca Schiera, Luca Moroni, and Giacomo Mauri of Italy are on their way to repeat the famed Boardman-Tasker route on the West Wall of Changabang.  Why is this repeat of a route on a 6,864m peak in India's Garwhal Himalaya so significant? Because it would be the first alpine-style climb of a line so difficult that its first ascent made mountaineering history. The line has been repeated only once, after 46 years and over 20 attempts.

The West Wall of Changabang, aesthetic, remote, and vertical, has a near-mythical reputation among alpinists. In 1974, this 1,600m Himalayan cliff defeated an all-star team led by Chris Bonington. Two years later, in 1976, Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker finally climbed it after a 25-day epic.

"The route traced by the two English champions marked a turning point in how Himalayan expeditions were conceived," the Italians said before boarding a plane for India today. "It was a masterpiece of new, technical, and lightweight mountaineering, aimed at an objective of extreme technical difficulty at high altitude."

Schiera, Moroni, and Mauri belong to the prestigious Le Ragni di Lecco mountain club. The Lecco Spiders, as they're known, have been around for over 70 years. Even today, they feature prestigious members such as Matteo Della Bordella.

Unrepeated for 26 years

In the 48 years since Boardman and Tasker's feat, some 20 teams attempted the route and failed until 2022. That year, Matthew Scholes and Kim Ladiges of Australia and Daniel Joll of New Zealand repeated the route in a nine-day push. All three belonged to the New Zealand Alpine Team. ExplorersWeb considered their expedition one of the best of the year.

At the time, they presented the climb as alpine style (and so we inaccurately reported it). In fact, they did their single, bottom-to-top push in a light and elegant way, but also acclimatized directly on the route. They climbed some sections using big-wall techniques, such as shuttling gear up and down and retreating at night to their portaledges lower down.

This year, the three Italians want to apply strict alpine-style criteria, neither retreating nor repeating a single pitch. By these standards, they must climb on-sight from bottom to top in one attempt.

Ultimate test

"Even if it is a repetition of a route already opened by others, the unknown and the challenge are the same," Schiera explained on the Ragni di Lecco's website. "We ask ourselves if it is possible, but above all, if we are capable of climbing Changabang with the same approach that we use on the walls of the Alps or Patagonia, where the lower altitudes can allow you to move with a very light approach."

Schiera is fascinated by the evolution of mountaineering and points out how Bonington's 1974 expedition considered the West Ridge of Changabang "impossible."

"Then Boardman and Tasker proved the opposite, climbing what was at the time the most difficult and innovative route in the Himalaya," the Italian added.

Luca Moroni explained they contacted the New Zealand team for beta, which they kindly provided: "Daniel Joll compared the technical difficulty to that of the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, but with 2,500m more altitude, which will significantly increase the effort," Moroni said. "After talking to him, we still thought it was possible to attempt an alpine-style climb."

The new team trained hard and has already fully acclimatized.

"We will need to have the conditions on the wall and the weather on our side," said Moroni. "Unfortunately, that area is always unstable, allowing very short windows of good weather…All the more reason to climb fast and light."

Giacomo Mauri, the youngest member in the team, recalls the photo (lead image) of Dougal Haston sipping whiskey with the wall in the background. Mauri signed on the moment he was invited, unwilling to pass up such an iconic adventure.

Hamor, Benet, and Meroi won't be alone in the Kangchenjunga region, attempting a new route this spring. Piolet d'Or winner Yuri Koshelenko is also heading there with regular partner Alexey Lonchinsky. The Russian pair likewise plans to open a new route.

The two teams have a lot in common: where they look for virgin faces, the pure alpine style, and the values that have shaped their mountaineering careers. Both began with big expeditions on 8,000m peaks in the late 20th century and evolved to focus on technical, exploratory routes on lesser mountains.

Now 62, Yuri Koshelenko climbed with some of the last Soviet teams of the 1990s, winning several awards. He came to specialize in new routes on difficult faces and has also been a mentor to younger generations of Russian climbers. Koshelenko won his Piolet d'Or in 2003 for an impressive 2,500m line on the south face of Nuptse with Valeri Babanov. Babanov, incidentally, is also in Nepal to attempt Everest without supplementary oxygen.

Koshelenko and Lonchinsky, 43, last climbed together in Nepal in 2023, when they made the first ascent of 6,645m Rolwaling Kang Shar. In 2024, Koshelenko bagged another first ascent, this time on an unnamed 6,000m peak in Ladakh in the Indian Himalaya with Bayarsaikhan Luvsand and Mikhail Pups.

The Russians have confirmed their plans to RussianClimb but have not revealed exactly which peak they will attempt. The Department of Tourism of Nepal has not updated its list of permits since April 9. We may have to wait until the climbers return to know more about this expedition.

Benjamin Vedrines has wrapped up another non-stop alpine endeavor. Vedrines climbed the legendary North Faces of the Grandes Jorasses-Matterhorn-Eiger trilogy in a week, without motorized travel between the peaks.

Vedrines partnered with long-time friend Leo Billon for each climb but traveled from peak to peak on his own, mostly by bicycle. Billon decided to drive between peaks because he is currently focused on a strength-based training program for climbing, and a long-distance endurance effort did not fit his plans.

Last-minute plan

Vedrines had considered the project for some time, but the decision to go was made in a day.

Between April 6 and April 11, Vedrines skied, paraglided, ran, and cycled between the Bernese Oberland and Zermatt regions of Switzerland and the Chamonix Valley in France.

On the peaks, they climbed three iconic routes: The Heckmair on Eiger, the Schmid on Matterhorn, and the Colton-McIntyre on the Grandes Jorasses. Vedrines says they climbed at a "relaxed pace, without pressure."

Their "relaxed" pace was rapid. It took 4 hours and 10 minutes for the pair to complete the Heckmair route (which took Anderl Heckmair and his team three days to open in 1938). The Matterhorn took 5 hours and 40 minutes, and the Grandes Jorasses 4 hours and 20 minutes.

"The bonds of the rope team are powerful, and this project proved that once again," Vedrines said.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

A dizzying schedule

They started on April 6 from Grindelwald town. The following day, Vedrines skied up the Eigergletscher to the North Face of the Eiger, climbed the face with Billon, and then paraglided from the summit with his skis on. He landed on the Aletsch Glacier.

On April 8, he combined trekking and cycling from Fiesch to Zermatt, eventually arriving at the classic starting point for Matterhorn climbs, the Hörnli Hut. With Billon, he climbed the peak on April 9.

From the Matterhorn, Verdrines skied down to town and cycled to Visp. The same day he cycled into France's Chamonix Valley. The following day, he climbed the Grandes Jorasses and paraglided back to Chamonix.

Ethical expeditions

Vedrines' trip featured strict criteria for self-sufficiency, environmental awareness, and multi-disciplinary skill, in the vein of Kilian Jornet's complete traverse of the Alps' 4,000'ers or similar activities by Vedrines himself, either alone or with Billon.

Last year, Vedrines climbed K2 in 11 hours, without supplementary oxygen or support. He paraglided from the summit and then walked back to Camp 2 to retrieve his tent. Last autumn, he attempted the north face of Jannu East.

One of the most interesting expeditions of the season left Kathmandu today toward two isolated peaks in the Kangchenjunga region of eastern Nepal.

Peter Hamor of Slovakia, plus Nives Meroi and Romano Benet of Italy, will attempt a new route on 7,590m Yalung Peak, one of the subsidiary points of the Kangchenjunga massif. The team intends to focus on their exploratory climb and leave their social media posts for their return, so we likely won't hear anything further until they finish.

Veterans Meroi, 63, Benet, 62, and Hamor, 60, attempted Yalung Peak last year, but bad weather prevented them from even starting. They have not yet set foot on the southeast spur, so they still have a chance to climb that new route in pure alpine style. The peak for which they obtained a second permit, 7,412m Kabru I, is just an acclimatization ascent.

The team is otherwise familiar with the area, which is one of Hamor's favorites, thanks to its beautiful peaks and lack of infrastructure. In 2023, the trio did the first ascent of nearby Kabru South (7,318m). Meroi won a Piolet d’Or in the female category for that climb.

Permits and trekking

The Italian couple Benet and Meroi reached Nepal last weekend, but Hamor has been in the country for some weeks, trekking with his wife.

The team received their permits for Kabru I and Kangbachen from the Department of Tourism on Monday. Although their goal is Yalung Peak, their permit had to be issued for the neighboring -- and higher -- Kangbachen (7,902m).

Last year, the trio had considered traversing from the summit of Yalung Peak to Kangbachen along the summit ridge. Conditions at the time will determine whether they may attempt the same this year.

Instead of taking a helicopter to Base Camp, they are doing their approach the old-fashioned way -- driving to Phidim village today and then taking a second vehicle for another eight hours to the start of their trek. They will need over a week to reach Base Camp.

One of the most important figures in the history of the 8,000m peaks is returning to the Greater Ranges in grand style. Denis Urubko will climb a new route on Nanga Parbat in June, then attempt what he calls "real winter firsts" on Broad Peak and Gasherbrum I the following winter.

Finally recovered from the frostbite he suffered during a winter attempt on Gasherbrum I in January 2024, the 51-year-old Russian will travel in May to Nanga Parbat in Pakistan's Himalaya for a new route on the Diamir side of the mountain, Montagna.TV reported.

“It will be an authentic new route, not a variant presented as an independent route,” he said during a lecture in Terni, Italy.

Real winter

As for his cold-season plans on Broad Peak and Gasherbrum I, the ever-strict Urubko defines winter as meteorological winter (December 1 to March 1) where climbing is concerned. As it happens, the first winter ascents of Broad Peak and GI took place on March 5 and March 9. By Urubko's criteria, that's early spring.

When he was asked at the lecture if new routes remain on the 8,000'ers, Urubko replied that there are many, even on Everest. "No route has ever been opened without oxygen and in authentic alpine style," he insisted.

Urubko admitted he would love to achieve such a feat.

A living legend

Denis Urubko has summited all the 8,000m peaks without supplementary oxygen or Sherpa support. He also has two winter first ascents, on Makalu (with Simone Moro) and Gasherbrum II (with Moro and Cory Richards).

Urubko has opened new routes on the highly difficult south side of Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum II (solo). He has also made a name for himself -- and many friends around the world -- for the many rescues he has performed in the Himalaya.

One of them made him an international hero and earned him France's Legion of Honor. In 2018, he and Adam Bielecki of Poland abandoned their own attempt on winter K2 and hurried to Nanga Parbat to launch the nearly impossible rescue of Tomasz Mackiewicz and Elisabeth Revol. They couldn't reach Mackiewicz but saved Revol's life.

Every year, the Cutting Edge Grants awarded by the American Alpine Club and Black Diamond encourage the best alpine-style expeditions attempted by U.S. climbers. In 2025, the five successful applicants will head for Kishtwar Shivling and Latok III in India; Ultar Sar and Rimo lll in the Karakoram, and Dorje Lhakpa in Nepal.

The 120-year-old American Alpine Club uses a total of $25,000 to support exploratory alpinism "to remote areas featuring unexplored mountain ranges, unclimbed peaks, difficult new routes, first free ascents, or similar world-class pursuits."

The jury especially favors low-impact, leave-no-trace expeditions. The 2025 grantees are:

Kishtwar Shivling

Latok III

 

Ultar Sar

"The route is a striking 3,000m line, with the lower half of the route consisting of 1,500m of steep snow and ice climbing with a couple of mixed steps, and the upper half consisting of a 1,500m stunning rock pillar that cuts a line through the sky all the way to the summit," the AAJ reported.

Dorje Lhakpa

Finally, Alaska resident and regular climbing and skiing partners Zach Lovell, Joseph Hobby, and Nepal-born Japhy Dhungana have a $4,000 grant to attempt a new route on 6,966m Dorje Lhakpa in the Jugal Himal. The peak is in the Langtang region on the border with Tibet but just 55km northeast of Kathmandu. On clear days, it is visible from the Nepalese capital. A Japanese team first summited the peak in 1981.

To receive a Cutting Edge grant, you must be a U.S. citizen and a member of the American Alpine Club. The application period goes from October 1 through the end of the year. Read more here.

For the second year in a row, three Nepalese guides are using their off time to target an unclimbed peak in their home country.

Prakash Gurung, Yukta Gurung, and Sandesh Sherpa are on their way to Khayang Peak (6,186m) in the Manaslu region, aiming for a first ascent.

"This peak has not been summited by anyone before, at least officially," Prakash Gurung told ExplorersWeb. "A Japanese team attempted it in October 2023 but didn’t make it to the top."

Local power

Prakash Gurung and Yukta Gurung met while guiding commercial expeditions. Together, they started Project Together to promote a different kind of climbing in Nepal: small, off-the-beaten-track expeditions with a leave-no-trace ethic.

The pair launched their first one in December 2023, during a low-work time of year, and made the first ascent of Khumjungar (6,759m) in the upper Mustang.

"We wanted to go alpine style, in the hope of reducing waste materials left on the mountain," Prakash told ExplorersWeb at the time.

Alpine-style

Their current climb follows the same approach. The team plans a single, alpine-style push, although they admit that weather and conditions will have the last word.

"We had planned to launch the summit attack from base camp on March 16, but weather forecasts show heavy snowfall, so we are checking conditions every day," Prakash said.

The amount of snow on the route may force the team to adapt their strategy.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The project reminds us how quickly Nepalese climbers have upped their professional game. Prakash is an accredited IFMGA guide and both his partners are aspiring guides who hope to obtain their accreditation by 2026.

On the way

Part of their approach is to hike rather than helicopter to their base camp. The expedition drove to Tatopani, in the lower Manaslu region, last Sunday, then began their approach trek the following day, with an eight-hour hike to Deng village. Spring has not yet arrived, and they are dealing with some rough weather and terrain damaged by recent rock slides.

For this climb, Project Together found some sponsors, including the Mount Everest Foundation, an organization that promotes local climbing in Nepal.

The first alpine-style expedition of the season leaves for Nepal shortly. Nives Meroi, 63, Romano Benet, 62, both of Italy, and Peter Hamor, 60, of Slovakia, will return to finish the job they started last year on 7,590m Yalung Peak. Yalung is a subsidiary peak, the lowest of the four main ones along the Kangchenjunga massif. The veteran trio plans to open a new route, alpine-style.

Hamor flies to Nepal tomorrow to trek with his wife before the expedition. Benet and Meroi leave on April 2. Aiming to keep their style pure, the team will not acclimatize on their planned route but on nearby Kabru (7,412m), Romano Benet confirmed today.

The three climbers know this area well and have good memories of 2023 when they did the first ascent of nearby Kabru South (7,318m). Meroi won a Piolet d'Or in the female category for that climb.

Hoping for better weather

This will be their second attempt on Yalung Peak. Last spring, a long spell of bad weather hit eastern Nepal, thwarting most attempted climbs in that region. Even the commercial teams on Kangchenjunga had to abort their expeditions. Only a few independent climbers who launched a last-minute push reached the summit.

Hamor, Meroi, and Benet had planned a single push to the summit but couldn't even try it. So their climb this spring will still be on new terrain and so within the strict rules of alpine style.

"Let's hope it goes better this time," Benet wrote today.

The team will climb Yalung Peak via the southeast spur, the same planned route as last year, Meroi confirmed to us today. Last year, the trio also hoped to traverse from Yalung Peak to higher Kangbachen (7,902m) along the summit ridge. Benet and Meroi attempted Kangbachen in 2019, but access to the face was too crevassed. The approach from Yalung Peak would be a safer option. Meroi told ExplorersWeb that they will decide, based on conditions at the time, whether to attempt this serious traverse this year.

In the 1980s, exploratory alpinists Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders stunned the climbing community when they first climbed the Golden Pillar of Spantik. Fowler described their difficult line as the Walker Spur of the Himalaya. Last fall, their excellence showed again at ages 68 and 75 when they executed a flawless first ascent in pure alpine style of 6,258m Yawash Sar in the Karakoram.

The two veterans plan to introduce themselves as the "Pioneering Pensioners" at a lecture hosted by the Mount Everest Foundation at London's Royal Geographical Society on March 27. Recently, they spoke with ExplorersWeb from Chamonix and Derbyshire. Fowler and Saunders have endless stories about their climbs, including important life lessons about adventure and friendship.

Period of separation

Mick Fowler, 68, is a retired tax inspector and a cancer survivor. Yet he has never stopped climbing. Saunders, who left his architect's career at 45 to become a professional mountain guide in Chamonix, is still leading ski tours at 75.

"The clients probably freak out when they find out they have such an old guide," Fowler chuckles.

Saunders offers a different version: "I am trying to retire, but my lovely clients won't let me," he says.

In the last five years, the duo commonly known as Vic and Mick have been on yearly expeditions together. Friends since their youth, they were nevertheless separated for decades.

"We often climbed together between the 1970s and the 1990s, but then Victor moved out to Chamonix, and I stayed in London, so we lost touch for nearly 30 years," Fowler said.

They met again during the research for a book by Eric Vola about their pioneering Himalayan climbs.

"We got together and thought, oh, we really ought to do some climbing together again," Saunders said. "So in 2016, we did the first ascent of the north buttress of Sersank (6,100m) in the Indian Himalaya."

It was their first expedition together since 1987, but it felt like time had not passed them by.

"It was such a fantastic trip [that] we decided we should really carry on...as we seemed to be really enjoying ourselves," Fowler noted.

"The really interesting thing is that at the end of our working careers, we rediscovered that we still could climb together very well," Fowler added. "On Sersank, we were probably slower than on our first expeditions, as we were in our 60s by then, but it felt like we were back in our 30s. It was a fantastic discovery."

One proper fight

After all this time apart, it is significant that they still got along so well. Some climbing partnerships end in bitter disputes, but that is obviously not the case here.

"We did have a proper fight once, and I don't know who won, but the people looking on said it was me," Fowler recalls.

"Excuse me, what did you say?" asked Saunders. "I should explain: There was this pub in London in a very seedy area, which had a boxing ring. Every Sunday, they encouraged customers to go into the ring and punch each other. One day, Victor and I did! Which, of course, provided great amusement for our friends."

The two stopped climbing together when Saunders moved to France after climbing together for most of the '70s, '80s, and early '90s. During that time, they set new standards of difficulty at home, especially in Scottish climbing, as well as abroad.

"We continued being friends but otherwise moved on with our individual lives and climbing careers."

During this hiatus, Fowler often went on expeditions with fellow Brit Paul Ramsden. Together, they won three Piolets d'Or in 2003, 2013, and 2016.

One year after Sersank, Fowler was diagnosed with cancer, which required him to use a colostomy bag. But even that didn't stop him from climbing. He was back to the Himalaya in 2019. During the COVID lockdown, he studied a photo of a striking pyramidal peak called Yawash Sar in the American Alpine Journal and made plans.

Back to the Karakoram

"It was incredible that the peak was still untouched," Fowler said. "I did a bit of research years ago, but back then, it was not safe to travel to that part of the world. Then, I saw a chance last year. I revisited my notes, asked around, and found out the peak was quite accessible and safe. It was a good time to go."

"When you get through the administrative process, permissions,  fundraising...and then you cross the bergschund and start climbing, you get a very special feeling," Fowler said.

Saunders added: "We had to deal with pretty deep snow until after the bergschrund. But the face was so steep that...all the new snow had slipped off, and the climbing conditions were really good."

The worst night ever

The climb was reasonable in difficulty, but the bivy spots were something else. There were no flat spots on the whole route and hardly anywhere to cut a ledge on which to put a tent.

On the first night, they could only pitch half a tent, and they spent the night dangling their legs in the void. The second night, there was nothing at all.

"All we could chop was the size of a chair, and it was sloping," Saunders said. " It was a miserable night, one of the hardest I've spent on a mountain, windy and cold. We put the tent fabric on our heads, but without the poles, it didn't really protect us from the wind. It was one of those nights when you are really glad to see the dawn."

"We were sliding down all night," Fowler said. "It was especially hard for me since the treatment for cancer involved removing most of the fat in my buttocks. That means I have no padding at all when I sit down."

Fowler is sure that was his worst night in the mountains ever. But Saunders interrupted him to disagree: "Nah, I can think of worse nights, like that hanging bivouac on Spantik in 1997."

"Oh, that was a good one too!" Fowler conceded. Here's a pic:

Terrible weather

After the terrible night sitting up, it was summit day.

"Unfortunately, it was not a very good weather," Saunders recalls. "It was windy, cold, and misty. We couldn't see very much. so the summit views were not as we would have liked. In fact, our summit photos could have been taken anywhere."

No wonder they barely stayed on top for five minutes before rappelling down the ascent route. At first, they thought they'd have to do another bivy. In fact, they intended to stop at their first bivy point but missed it in the dark. The weather was so bad that they continued rappelling throughout the night, 10 or 12 hours in all, and made it all the way down.

Clear priorities

Asked about whether they have considered indulging themselves in more comfortable climbing at this stage -- say, going to Manaslu instead and sipping champagne in Base Camp. No interest in that, as Saunders explained:

The kind of climbing we did on Yawash Sar means it's just me and Mick, the cook and kitchen boy in Base Camp, and no one else. We have the whole area, the whole valley, entirely to ourselves. There is a very special place in heaven for that kind of experience. No one had ever been to that side of the mountain or that end of the valley before.

And the uncertainty is part of the adventure for us. It is exactly what we enjoy. On Manaslu, it would be exactly the opposite: hundreds of climbers, all going clipped to the same rope on a path made for them. It's just awful -- at least for me!

Next goal

They intend to keep climbing in the same style.

"However, as we grow older, we have to pick objectives that are just right for us," Fowler explained. "These are different from what we would have done in our 30s. It has to be attainable but still steep enough to be exciting."

The goal is to find climbs that include exploration.

"It has to be spectacular, not climbed, doable from the most obvious line, and if possible, on a mountain that is unclimbed or at least little visited," said Fowler. "A route which also offers some aesthetic pleasure, and located in a culturally interesting area, and just the right amount of difficulty. We need to think: 'We hope we can do it but we have no certainty that we can do it.' "

As usual, they keep quiet about future plans.

"Some people are too lazy to do their own research and copy from others' plans, which is sad, as it does not show a lot of respect for others who have put a lot of effort planning an expedition," said Saunders.

Saunders and Fowler's idea, which they may scout this year, will come to fruition in 2026.

"I have to admit that it is getting more and more difficult to find objectives that are just right for us, inspiring mountains like Yawash," Fowler said.

Changes in climbing

In nearly 50 years of Himalayan climbing, Fowler and Saunders have seen many changes in how expeditions are done.  When they started, there were no agents or outfitters.

"You'd go there, find and hire a cook and porters yourself, arrange food, and so on," said Saunders. "Now logistics are much easier since a company takes care of it for you."

He adds: "Roads have also been pushed further and further into the mountains, sparing climbers the long walks in and allowing much shorter expeditions."

Finally, the equipment has improved greatly. "Three times as efficient," says Saunders, "three times lighter, three times better and safer."

For Fowler, the game-changing advance was communications.

"[It went] from having to find a mailman to carry letters to a town with a post office to the satellite devices that allow communications with your family, but most of all, to call for a rescue immediately from the mountain," he said.

Saunders argues that communications have compromised that feeling of remoteness.

"Now, for better or worse, we have forecasts, but we also may end up discussing domestic problems with the family while in the middle of the climb," he says.

Clear priorities

Through the years, career, marriage, health, and illness, Mick Fowler's climbs have been a continuous line adding structure to his life. Yet he wants to make his priorities clear.

Climbing is my hobby; the most important thing in my life is my family. And climbing has sometimes involved a big juggling act between family, work, and limited holiday time...Before I got married and had children, we would go climbing every weekend, and all our holidays were climbing holidays. But when I had a family, I couldn't sensibly go climbing every weekend, and I decided to devote time to family.

Of course, climbing was also important to me, so I tried to merge climbing into my family life, and had family climbing weekends too. Then I retired, and then I got cancer. And doctors fixed me but left me with some inconveniences. But all that has not dimmed my desire to keep climbing with Victor.

Advantages of a late start

Saunders has climbed for fun and for work. In his opinion, a late start is not a bad thing.

"I worked as an architect until age 45, then trained as a guide and qualified at 46. I only did my first Himalayan expedition when I was 30 years old, so I guess I was slightly late. That has been good for my knees, which are not that worn out. I was lucky to have had an office job before I moved to Chamonix, so I avoided injuries or excessive strain in my youth."

None of the two veteran climbers follow a specific training or nutrition plan. But they basically keep moving.

"I don't have a training program, but some years ago, I took up trail running," said Fowler. "I've always been noticeably slow in the mountains, and friends kept asking me if I was okay. So now I have managed to speed up a bit. I do a race every other week, usually in the hills of the UK."

Saunders, meanwhile, likes  cross-training -- a bit of skiing, a bit of hiking, a bit of climbing.

"I think that prevents injuries as the movements are different," he said. "As you grow older, injuries can really stop you. They hurt more and last longer. One way to avoid it is by not focusing on a single activity."

"We must assume the day will come when injury or age will force us off the higher peaks," says Fowler. "Even then, I hope we can keep doing things, spending time and enjoying ourselves in the mountains."

Michal Czech, Maciej Kimel, and Tomek Klimczak have done one of the hardest faces in the High Tatras, in the hardest style, and in the hardest season. Between February 8 and 10, they made the first free climb and also the first winter free ascent of the Direttissima route on the east face of Rysy Peak (2,501m).

The route was first climbed in 1975 using aid on some sections. It was then not repeated for nearly 40 years. The recent free-climbers had to deal with a pitch previously graded as A3 -- fairly difficult aid climbing. Most of the time, they wore crampons! It took them three days to complete the 450m line, which they graded as VII, M8+.

A remote face

"The east face of Rysy Peak is not a popular place in the Tatras," Kimel told ExplorersWeb.

He explained that the long ski in (4.5 hours) and uncertainty about the conditions on the avalanche-prone face resulted in a very low number of attempts.

"I don't think anyone has repeated this route for years," said Kimel. "Maybe in the 1980s, when these walls were more popular because Poland was a Communist country and traveling abroad was hardly an option. But even in summer, nobody climbed this route in a classic style. It was still rated A3."

According to the Polish Climbing Association, the face is "the quintessence of Tatras adventure: remote, difficult and long."

The lower part of the face mainly features smooth slabs, usually covered in snow during winter, while the upper part is a chaos of blocks.

Change of plan

At first, regular partners Michal Czech and Maciej Kimel were just planning a climbing weekend in the Tatras. Forecasts announced a short period of good weather, and they set their sights on the Rysy massif. Originally, they planned to try the Biały Rys route, which a Czech team had recently free-climbed.

"However, when Tomek Klimczak joined our team, it became clear that we would go for the Direttissima," Kimal said.

Klimczak attempted to free-climb the route back in 2014. Despite bad conditions, he managed all but one pitch. At one point, they had to use hooks to aid progress. Since then, he has tried to return several times, but bad conditions on the face always ruined his attempts.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

"On the first day, we climbed three easy pitches and settled at our first bivouac around 5 pm," the team reported. "The night was beautiful but frosty, and it passed without any major problems. The only downside was that we underestimated the amount of fuel we needed for cooking, so we had to ration food and water from that first day."

Three days on the wall

On the second day, Klimczak led the first pitches, mainly on fragile rock which he tackled by dry-tooling. At midday, with Michal Czech in the lead, they free-climbed the section previously graded as A3: a smooth slab. The team managed to put six pitches behind them before they stopped for a second night.

"The limited amount of fuel and damp sleeping bags made this bivouac less comfortable than the previous one," the climbers recalled.

Luckily, the third day was clear and sunny, and they climbed the remaining pitches to the summit.

On that last day, Kimel led one of the most difficult pitches using what he later called his secret weapon: a pair of soft climbing shoes in his backpack that he momentarily exchanged for the hard mountaineering boots with crampons. Then Czech led the final pitches to the summit.

The winter Tatras school of suffering

The Polish climbers who pioneered the first winter ascents in the Himalaya were said to be hardened in the "art of suffering" (as Kurtyka called it) by their training in the High Tatras mountains back home. This ragged massif on the border between Poland and Slovakia has brutal winter conditions.

Rysy Peak features three summit points: the highest is the 2,501m Central point in Slovak territory; the Northwest point at 2,499m is the highest spot in Poland. The southeastern point is 2,473m. While the peak can be easily hiked up from Slovakia in the south, the east face is a 450m vertical wall.

Kimel opened a new route alpine style on Nepal's Kiajo Ri last fall with Michal Krol and Mariusz Madej. In previous winters, Kimel and Krol had attempted a winter climb of Pakistan's Trango Tower, but their latest attempt featured bad weather and poor experiences with local staff. Soon, Kimel will climb in Kyrgyzstan but he prefers not to share more details "until the climb is done."

Yudai Suzuki belongs to that new generation of Japanese climbers who are pursuing excellence in exploratory alpinism by keeping an old-fashioned sense of adventure and purity.

In the last two years, Suzuki and a small team of friends have achieved two impressive first ascents in the isolated Hindu Raj -- Ghamubar Zom 5 and Thui 2. ExplorersWeb ranked both among the best expeditions of 2024. Suzuki has also done highly difficult new routes on Ausangate and Quitaraju in the Andes. He is 30 years old.

We spoke with Suzuki about his intense climbing career, his mountaineering values, and the small but outstanding alpine community in Japan to which he belongs.

From college to the Himalaya

Like most Japanese alpinists, Suzuki started with a university mountain club (Waseda University, in his case). After a quick introduction to the Japanese Alps at the age of 18, he joined a team on Nepal's Island Peak in 2015.

"Island Peak made me realize I could climb normal routes everywhere in the world," he said, "so I decided I wanted to attempt peaks that had never been climbed before."

He was in a hurry to experience the unknown.

"Alpinism has to offer results before turning 30," he recently told the Shugakuso blog. "I wanted to do some powerful climbs in my 20s."

Suzuki quickly showed another characteristic of modern Japanese alpinism: ingenuity in finding new goals. In 2017, he climbed Nepal's very remote Lajo Dada.

"That experience taught me that adventurous climbing is so much more fun and exciting than walking up normal routes," he said.

Next on his agenda of progression:

"I wanted to try more vertical and technical climbing on unclimbed faces or steep mountains."

When not on expeditions, he trains hard on rock, both sport and trad.

"These skills are necessary for modern alpine climbing, even on 6,000m peaks," he says. "I usually climb a lot from mid-October to December after my expeditions. Then, I shift to winter climbing and ski mountaineering. Ski mountaineering and freeriding train strength, endurance, and cardio for alpine climbs on 6,000m and 7,000m peaks."

Rising star

Suzuki also spent a year climbing around the U.S., Canada, the European Alps, and Patagonia. On a follow-up trip to the U.S., he climbed El Capitan's Freerider and the impressive Moonflower Buttress on Mt. Hunter (see photo below).

In 2022, he attempted the first ascent of Gasherbrum 6, reaching 6,000m. Yet his career took off in 2023 with the first ascent of the north face of Ausangate (6,381m) in Peru. Called the Japones Direct, the 1,100m route featured difficulties up to 5.10a, WI6 Ⅵ.

He followed this up last year with the first ascent of Ghamubar Zom 5 by its northwest ridge -- a  dizzying 2,000m M5, 5.9, 70° Ⅵ route.

In 2024, in addition to Thui 2, Suzuki made the first ascent of the south face/south spur of Quitaraju in Peru. Here, Suzuki faced highly exposed sections and survived a 15m fall.

“I may never be able to complete such a difficult and dangerous climb again in my life,” he wrote after returning home.

Suzuki has also done several new routes and many outstanding free-ride lines in the Japanese Alps.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Van life

Like many Japanese climbers, Suzuki used to have a day job (with an internet company) and climb during his holidays, but the COVID pandemic prompted him to quit his job and spend more time on expeditions. Of course, it came with a toll.

"I would say I am a semi-fulltime climber because sometimes I have photographic assignments and write articles or guide backcountry ski trips," he said. "I also coach at the University’s mountaineering club," he said.

He admits that he lives "very frugally."

"Most of the time, I live in my van near the mountains, driving where conditions are good each season."

Some weeks ago, Suzuki had a setback when another vehicle crashed into his van on an icy road.

The less known, the better

In all his goals, Suzuki stays coherent with the principles of exploratory alpinism.

"I go on expeditions to feel a sense of adventure and to experience the maximum level of self-sufficiency," he explained. "Summiting is important, but style is essential. I personally feel that a 30%  chance to reach the summit is an ideal expedition percentage."

He recognizes that sometimes summit attempts are not even possible. That, too, is part of alpine expeditions, especially in the Himalaya or rarely visited ranges.

That is why he doesn't like to fix ropes on a route. Even fixing a few pitches at the bottom of a big face reduces the level of uncertainty, commitment, and adventure.

"All on-sight from the very bottom to the summit is the ideal style for me," he says.

Suzuki agrees with multi-Piolet d'Or winner Paul Ramsden that traversing the mountain instead of rappeling down the ascent route is more adventurous on the descent. Sometimes, however, that is not possible.

"On Thui 2, we rappelled mostly the same route as the climb up because we were very tired and the wind was so strong," he said. "The mountain was also loaded with fresh snow, and we were concerned about the avalanche risk on the other side."

He also noted that the descent on Thui 2 was far from easy, anyway.

"We had [to lay] solid anchors every 60m, saving gear because we still had many pitches to rappel. We also downclimbed some sections."

"In 2023 on Ausangate and in 2024 on Quitaraju, we traversed to another face for the descent," Suzuki said. "On both expeditions, we had earlier used the descent route for acclimatization. And yet it still felt satisfying to make a giant loop around these big mountains."

The technical and the aesthetic

The technical and aesthetic features of his chosen mountains particularly compel Suzuki.

"I like cool-looking mountains," he says, adding that he also seeks out difficult lines.

"Modern climbing skills and new equipment make it easier to move in straightforward terrain than it used to be," he says. "So I always want to try faces where I am sure to find tough routes that involve many types of climbing  -- ice, mixed, rock, snow, dry tooling, and free climbing."

He is also attracted to long routes. "There are many one- to six-pitch routes in Japan, so when I go abroad, I look for faces that are at least 1,000m long," he notes.

Last but not least, location matters: "Remote areas are always more fun than well-known places," he explains. "For instance, many mountains in Nepal require a four- to five-day trek. But [while] there are no roads, you can order pasta and curry, have WiFi, and take a shower at a nearby village. There is also a lot of info about the area."

Pakistan, on the other hand, and especially the Hindu Raj, is more mysterious.

"You don’t know what lies ahead until you actually get there, even if your targeted peak is only one day away from a trail," he says.

Such off-the-beaten-track places are also less expensive than popular mountain hubs -- something that Suzuki, who is usually on a tight budget, considers.

Suzuki's expeditions in the Hindu Raj didn't even have a cook at Base Camp. That reduced the overall cost but also gave the team a sense of independence.

"We ate exactly the quantity and type of food that we wanted to eat," he said.

In Pakistan

While he climbs with different partners, Suzuki has found regular teammates in Kei Narita and Juu Nishida.

"Kei Narita and I have been climbing together since 2020," Suzuki says. "We met in Hokkaido when he was still a college student, and he had many days off. That was great with me since I had to work most weekends, and I needed a partner on weekdays.

"But most importantly, we had the same motivation and similar criteria for our favorite climbs. We climbed lots of ice and difficult mixed climbs in Hokkaido and then climbed Ausangate and Ghamubar Zom 5 in 2023 and Thui 2 in 2024."

Suzuki started climbing with Juu Nishida, who belonged to another university mountain club, in 2022 when they paired up on Alaska's Mount Hunter.

Risk in the 21st century

We asked Suzuki about the tragic accident that took the lives of Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima on the West Face of K2.

"I think Hiraide and Nakajima’s line was relatively risky but also beautiful," Suzuki said. "They were very confident about climbing fast at high altitudes. I am not super-strong at altitude, so I choose lines that may be steeper but safer. Thui 2 was a good example: That face was very steep, long, and technical, but it was kind of safe from serac fall and other hazards. In general, I always try to reduce the uncontrollable risks, such as seracs and loose rocks."

He admits there are not that many alpine climbers in the Himalaya. "It requires high skills and experience, both mentally and physically," plus a lot of preparation.

"Yet I hope wider audiences may come to understand the beauty of alpine climbing," Suzuki said. "In Japan, many people still believe that climbing Everest by the normal route is the most difficult and notable climb in the world. That shouldn't be the right direction to look for inspiration."

A tight community

Asked about other Japanese teams currently doing interesting things, Suzuki immediately mentioned the Giri Giri boys.

"They are big in the small Japanese alpine climbing community, for sure. Almost all young and motivated Japanese alpine climbers have read their many articles about their first ascents and new routes in Alaska, Pakistan, Nepal, India, and Patagonia."

"Yet the Japanese alpine climbing community is so small that if you climb for 10 years, you can actually make friends with them. They are really strong and so good at climbing, but they are also just 'normal people' -- unlike a billionaire baseball player."

Jeff and Priti Wright's climbing resumé ranges from K6 Central in the Karakoram to a traverse of Torre Egger in Patagonia. Yet they both work full-time as engineers. How do they manage it?

They have a system worked out. Every four years, they take a sabbatical to focus on mountaineering. Here's how they managed to live a life of adventure while making a living.

The call of climbing

Jeff and Priti met at college in Florida. They didn't really start climbing until they moved to  Seattle in 2012 and took mountaineering classes together. But both always had a love for adventure.

"When I was a teenager, my parents took me to India several times as practicing Hare Krishnas," Priti recalls. "On one trip to Mayapur, we visited a Jagannath temple, which is famous for being especially merciful in granting wishes of devotees. In this small, open-air place of worship, I lit some incense and offered flowers in the sweltering, subcontinental heat before these wood-carved, painted deities and prayed for an adventurous life. Sometimes, God grants you more than you could have ever imagined!"

Pacific NW background

During their early climbing years, the couple learned about alpine climbing on weekends in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Jeff worked for Boeing and Priti for Amazon. The climbing options were endless; Mt. Rainier was just 100km away. But the Wrights' main memory of that time is how the local climbing community shared their knowledge and skills with them.

"Alpine climbing is such a multi-faceted sport, requiring a large array of skills and training, that it can be difficult or dangerous to get into it on your own," Jeff explained.

Their mentors included Colin Haley, Wayne Wallace, and many others from the Pacific Northwest. Soon, the Wrights went from pupils to teachers and began to look for higher, more ambitious, and distant climbing goals. An accident also prompted them to reconsider their priorities.

"In 2017, Priti had a full ACL tear while skiing in Jackson Hole," Jeff said. "[It] gave us some much-needed downtime to think about long-term goals, make a budget, and live more frugally.

The couple turned out to be great at planning. After five months of ACL rehab, they used their brief 10-day vacation time to go to Alaska and storm up Denali’s Cassin Ridge.

It wasn't enough. The idea of a sabbatical year started taking shape in their minds. In 2020, they took their first.

How to do it

"Jeff and I had always daydreamed about taking an extended break to travel the world, but we hadn’t made an actual plan or saved up anything to make it a reality," Priti said. "Leaving jobs for an extended period can be scary. But we're both engineers [software and aerospace], so we were confident that we could get jobs again at the end of the sabbatical.

Jeff even arranged a formal sabbatical through his boss so he could return to the same job. "It’s worth bringing this up with your employer before you just quit!" says Priti.

"We had been on a hamster wheel of weekend warrior adventures and career pursuits," Jeff explained. "A Ted Talk from Stefan Sagmeister gave us the first inspiration for periodical leaves of absence. We love our jobs and are not really inspired to retire early. The idea is simple: Live below your means for several years, save, then travel cheaply during a gap year."

"You don’t have to be tech workers like us to make this happen," Jeff added. "On our travels around the world, we've met people from all walks of life, making their climbing/backpacking dreams come true. They stay in climber hostels in low-cost parts of the world like Southeast Asia."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

COVID experiences

In 2020, they took their first sabbatical.

"We already had experience climbing in Patagonia, and we climbed the Innominata Ridge on Mont Blanc, so on this trip, we aimed our sights higher," Priti explained. "We started in Patagonia for two months, where we succeeded in our dream of climbing the Ragni route on Cerro Torre, which we had previously attempted on a short trip in 2016. The next six months we spent in the Alps, mainly around Chamonix."

Inspired by the books of Gaston Rebuffat and Tom Ballard's winter solo climbs, they set out to climb the six great North Faces of the Alps. They didn't expect the COVID pandemic, but the virus didn't stop them. Priti describes the experience:

We flew to Europe, and since the weather and conditions were good, we headed straight for the Eiger North Face. As we arrived, rumblings of COVID began, but the trains, lifts, and ski resorts claimed that they would stay open. But the night before our climb, they officially announced a closure of the Jungfraujoch that would take us to the base of the climb.

We had to ski up to the base with our packs to start the climb. After a couple days, we successfully summited our first North Face, still technically in winter, via the 1938 Heckmair Route, which was in perfect condition.

The day we came down, France’s President Macron ordered confinement to begin, so we returned to our flat in Chamonix and spent eight weeks in strict lockdown. Eight weeks of beautiful weather passed by, as Mont Blanc taunted us from our bedroom window.

From the Alps to the Karakoram

"When confinement ended, the mountain trains had still not restarted, but we raced up the Petit-Leininger route on the Petit Dru," Priti recalled. "The rest of the six North Faces went down easily. We were super lucky to catch each one in perfect condition. Since we were on sabbatical, we had the flexibility to wait for routes to be just right."

The pair climbed the Matterhorn's Schmid Route, the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, the Comici-Dimai Route on Tre Cima Grande di Lavaredo, and the Cassin route on Piz Badile.

The scarcity of travelers also made it easier to get their visas and permits for Pakistan at the end of summer. In October 2020, they made the first ascent of K6 Central (7,155m).

The couple also kept detailed reports of their ascents on their Alpine Vagabonds blog, a format they still prefer compared to social media.

"It is much more searchable and persistent than social media sites like Facebook and Instagram," Priti explained. "It lends itself to how-to’s and trip reports very well."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

K7 Central and Cerro Torre

Finally, the Wrights returned to work, but by then, the travel bug had bitten them hard.

"We spoke with our managers and arranged to take some unpaid leave for an. expedition in 2022 to attempt another central peak in the Karakoram, K7 Central," Priti recalls. "We also used our three-week vacations for a smash-and-grab trip to Patagonia in 2023, where we made a partial traverse of the Torre Range from Cerro Standhardt to Torre Egger. Jeff helped me become the first female to summit all four Torre peaks."

That year, Priti Wright climbed Alaska's Mt. Huntington with Anna Pfaff, but the climb had a dramatic turn: Pfaff frostbit six toes and needed several of them amputated.

"This experience has made me think a lot about the other costs of alpine expeditions and risk-taking in the mountains," Priti admitted.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

2024 devoted to sport climbing

In 2024, their next sabbatical rolled around. This time, the goal was to sport climb in Europe and Southeast Asia. Their social media posts made many in the worldwide climbing community green with envy.

"Historically, we have focused on alpine and trad climbing so much that our pure sport rock climbing skills have not kept up," they explained. "The goal was set at 5.13a (7c+). Before this trip, we had both climbed a handful of 5.12a (7a+) routes."

They hired a dedicated climbing coach, Ian Cooper, and climbed every day.

Jeff sent his first 5.13a in Siurana last month, and Priti sent a 5.12d. At the time of this interview, she was still working toward that 5.13a. The couple moved comfortably in the 7th European grade, and they had a great time everywhere they went. They also reflected on how different sport climbing is from alpinism.

Success in sport climbing feels more ethereal than alpine climbing, which has distinct achievements and (for us) a more prolonged satisfaction. Both still require a lot of dedication and planning. We have focused on specific rock techniques, learned to incorporate hangboard/edge/Tindeq training, and projecting tactics.

We’ve learned how to climb on a variety of rock types (limestone, granite, sandstone, tufas, vertical crimps, overhanging jugs, pockets, etc) and introduced finger care tools and kneepads.

We also read the mental and physical training books from Dave McCleod, Don McGrath, Arno Ilgner, Eric Horst, Steve Bechtel and others, while also joining an online course through Altitude.

In the end, the biggest lesson we’ve learned is to think of climbing progression less as specific goals and milestones than as a continuous, non-linear journey of playful exploration.

A world of rock

One of the biggest questions during their 2024 sabbatical was how to design an itinerary and pick one particular crag over another.

"We wanted to minimize travel and hit some of the most iconic crags, narrowing it down to just places in Europe and Southeast Asia (Kalymnos, Leonidio, Finale Ligure, Céüse, Frankenjura, Arco, Sicily, Sardinia, Siurana, El Chorro, Chulilla, Tonsai, and Thakek)," they said.

"In Europe, we mainly traveled by car and aimed to stay in each crag at least three weeks at a time, using our one-year European tourist Visa."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

So, what's next?

The climbers are now enjoying their last days of fun in Thailand but will be back home in the U.S. in March.

"We feel ready and re-energized to get back in the workforce this spring, with the goal of trying out the digital nomad lifestyle," says Priti.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They are also planning new alpine expeditions for 2026. "The objective was always to take our new rock climbing skills and apply them to the mountains," they said.

And they are thinking about their next sabbatical.

"Future sabbaticals might focus on other climbing skills such as hard technical ice, crack climbing, or even bouldering. That's our biggest weakness."

The lure of the "highest" is the essence of high-altitude mountaineering. Despite nearly annual attempts, Muchu Chhish stood for years as the world's highest virgin peak open to climbers.

Luckily, it remained out of the plans of heavier expeditions willing to use money and manpower to siege the peak into submission. The first ascent has finally been done in great style by a trio of regulars from our Top 10 list over the last few years.

Here is how Zdenek Hak, Radoslav Groh, and Jaroslav Bansky solved one of the great remaining problems in the Karakoram after a six-day push.

Not a mountain?

Strictly speaking, Muchu Chhish (7,453m) is not a peak but a point on a massif, and not even the highest point. We're referring to the impressive 40 to 50km-long Batura range in the Karakoram, and specifically, to the so-called Batura Wall. All points on this 14km ridge are above 7,000m. However, Muchu Chhish is the only one that had not been reached, mainly because of its isolated location on the ridge.

Moreover, the legend of its difficulty and danger grew with each failure, tantalizing young climbing teams and even some eccentric solo adventurers.

Among those trying, the most stubborn were high-level climbers from the Czech Republic, led by Pavel Korinek in 2020, 2021, and 2023. In 2023, they climbed to the edge of their physical endurance and still failed to reach the summit. They had to retreat just 250 meters from the top.

One of the members on that attempt was Piolet d'Or winner Radoslav Groh. This was his first attempt at the Batura Wall, but he decided it wouldn't be the last. Later that year, Groh joined fellow Czech Zdenek Hak on an impressive new route on Cholatse. During that expedition, they no doubt discussed Muchu Chhish.

B-plan

At first, Hak had something else in mind: an expedition to Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush. But entering the Taliban-ruled country proved impossible. At that point, Groh pressed his case for Muchu Chhish.

First, the two climbers called Pavel Korinek and politely asked for his permission to give "his" peak a try. Once granted, Hak and Groh traveled to Pakistan on June 6, accompanied by Jaroslav Bansky.

At first, nothing went right. They originally planned to acclimatize on a nearby 6,000’er, but Hak got sick.

“After a short break, we moved over the Muchuchar Glacier to base camp under Muchu Chhish itself,” Hak wrote. “We had no choice but to acclimatize right there.”

Their acclimatization consisted of a four-day climb from June 25-28.

“We slept at 4,600m, 5,400m, and 6,100m,” Hak wrote. “Except for the last camp, we follow the route of [our] planned ascent, which led along the south ridge up to 7,300m on the main ridge.”

That invalidates the alpine-style tag of their climb, but they simply had no time to acclimatize anywhere else. Forecasts called for a whole week of good weather, and they couldn’t afford to miss that chance. It was long enough for both a short acclimatization and the final push.

Then, on the first day of July, the climbers set off up the south ridge of the peak, aiming to reach the summit ridge and continue toward the summit.

The route first goes up a non-technical rocky couloir and leads to the glacier at 4,800m. The team gained 500 vertical meters on the glacier until they stopped and pitched their first bivouac. It was not yet noon, but the temperature was already so hot that the climbers decided to stop and wait for safer conditions.

A long way up

The proper climb started early the following morning.

"The first pitches were on mixed and rocky terrain, with difficulties up to M4," Hak recalls. "Then we continued on endless icy terrain, climbing diagonally up to 6,300m below a dominant serac, where we pitched our second bivouac."

The third day of the climb was probably the most physically demanding: endless progress on moderately steep snowy ramps.

"The snow was so deep in some places that we had to use special snowshoes that can be inserted between the boot and the crampons," Hak admitted. "[They were] an invaluable aid. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to move any further."

They gained 500 vertical meters after a long day and set their third bivy at 6,750m.

The progress was similar on the following day. As the terrain became less vertical, their advance through soft snow got slower and mentally exhausting. In addition, the climbers had to watch carefully for hidden crevasses, aware that the snow bridges would be weak.

Hak praised the endurance of Bansky, who broke trail most of that day and led the team to 7,250m, just below the summit ridge. That evening, it started to snow, but the skies cleared just in time for the final ascent to the summit.

Final pitches

"On the morning of July 5, we set off as lightly as possible, leaving our tent and bivouac gear at the fourth bivouac site," Hak wrote. He described the final pitches as follows:

The summit was about 1,500m west of us. We progressed about 150m, then the terrain started to get steeper.  After some pitches, we reached a large rock tower below the headwall. We were about 150 vertical meters below the the top. Bansky led again, breaking trail, and we reached the summit at 10:20 am local time. There was no highest point around. We left a snow anchor there with our signatures and the inscription 'Muchu Chhish- Krkonose Expedition.'

It was the end of the ascent and the end of the good weather. The descent was complex due to poor visibility, and the wind had erased their upward trail in the snow.

"Often we had to go uphill again, which took the rest of our strength," Hak wrote.

It was pure luck that they found a familiar rock, which they used as a reference to find the way back to their latest bivy. Here, they rested briefly, retrieved their gear, and proceeded further down. They had no time to waste, as the weather was seriously worsening.

Whiteout

"We couldn't see where we were stepping, and so we descended the glacier in autopilot-mode," Hak recalled. "I had to take off my goggles to try and find a safe passage among the crevasses. Luckily, I often look behind me when I climb and try to remember the terrain below me. This helps me a lot when descending in such situations."

The visibility improved a little below 7,000m, and they reached their bivy spot at 6,750m.

"The next day, we descended 1,500 vertical meters to the glacier," said Hak. "Except for 100 meters of rappelling, we downclimbed the rest in scorching heat."

The high temperatures triggered several avalanches and made the glacier unstable, slowing them further. They arrived at Base Camp later than expected, in the late afternoon. But they had done it.

A game of patience

In the end, the climb to Muchu Chhish was not as technically difficult as some other excellent climbs this year in Nepal, Pakistan, and the Indian Himalaya. It was rather a game of patience, stamina, and mental strength. The long climb on exhausting terrain was made worse by the excessively high temperatures, which have become a feature of the Pakistani summer of late. The heat is not only uncomfortable but makes conditions harder and more dangerous.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

One of the Himalaya's few remaining "unsolved climbing problems" was ticked off this season, but at a high cost. Marek Holecek and Ondrej Huserka climbed the East Face of Langtang Lirung. The climb took the duo longer than expected, and they advanced beyond the point of exhaustion. The young Huserka never made it back alive.

This climb could have been the top expedition of the year, if not for two terrible questions. Can you consider a climb successful if one of the members loses his life? What level of risk separates the epic from the reckless, and who decides where the line is set?

The aftermath of the climb overshadowed the achievement. On social media, Huserka's family requested a rescue, while Holecek confirmed the death of his partner. The situation created confusion and unease.

It was only a few days ago that we received a full report and photos from Holecek. helping us to comprehend the magnitude of the climb.

A dream of many years

Last September, Holecek told ExplorersWeb he was returning to Nepal to climb "an intact wall of a beautiful mountain."

"I saw her for the first time in 2004, and since then, she has returned to me in my dreams. So this fall, I’m ending my courtship and going for it," Holecek said.

As he trekked in the Langtang region, he didn't explicitly share his plans. However, daily pictures of Langtang Lirung (7,234m), an impressive peak near the Tibetan border, left little room for doubt.

Eventually, Holecek announced the route. It would be the East Face, a 2,500m obstacle that had been attempted several times but never completed. The latest to try their luck were Topo Mena, Roberto Morales, and Joshua Jarrin in 2023. That group aborted their summit push because of dangerous rockfall.

Holecek teamed up with two young climbers: Ondrej Huserka and Ondra Mrklovsky. Meanwhile, a friend, Pavel Hodek, planned to wait for them in Base Camp. The team had climbed together before, but it was their first expedition to a big Himalayan face.

During the first two weeks, the trio climbed nearby Naya Kanga for acclimatization and then moved to Base Camp at 4,500m.

First attempt

On October 9, the climbers launched a first attempt that ended quickly in relentless rain that triggered avalanches and rocks plummeting down the face. After a scary night in a tent at the base of the face, the climbers retreated. Ondra Mrklovsky decided there and then that his expedition was over.

Holecek and Huserka tried again on October 25. They planned for a four-day ascent and two more for the descent. Four days later, they were still far from the summit and struggling.

"Either we reach the summit ridge, which would be nice, or we have one more overnight stay somewhere on a 70° ice slope," Holecek reported over satellite phone from the wall. Unsurprisingly, they had to endure the second option.

"Tomorrow, we will run to the top and start descending," Holecek reported. "We are exhausted and still have a long way down ahead of us."

In fact, it took one more day of hell to reach the top as they struggled to advance in deep snow.

At the time, no details were available except for some short SMS messages sent by the Czech climber via satellite phone. It is only thanks to the recent trip report that we have a full picture of the climb's difficulty and the huge level of risk.

The climb, day by day

The complete report, in Holecek's unique style, can be read here. But here are some highlights.

On the first day, October 25, the pair had to overcome the dangerous sections where avalanches and rockfall had pushed them back previously. They climbed over two vertical walls where the ice was packed in a narrow couloir.

"This entire section was like a dangerous funnel which accumulated material from the vast space above our heads," said Holecek. "We had to quickly traverse this place to get onto a mixed rock edge, where we hoped to find a place for our first good bivouac."

The climb was mostly on fragile, foam-like ice where belaying was more "emotional support" than real safety. They also clung to their ice axes as two avalanches swept over them. Finally, they set up their first, very precarious bivouac at 5,500m.

Progress in the next two days was very slow. The route combined smooth rock and complex mixed sections on unknown terrain. This included a monster traverse to what they called the "heavenly bridges." These were a difficult section of mixed terrain that forced another bivouac. Their hope that this would lead to an easier snow couloir and then to the summit ridge disappeared soon after. They faced another rock section, the hardest yet.

"[On the fourth day,] the difficulties seemed to have no end, and the fatigue began to take its toll," Holecek wrote.

They spent that day on vertical ice, with increasing wind and no place to bivouac as darkness approached. Thankfully, at the last minute, the climbers found a tiny cave in a vertical ice formation.

On the fifth day, the summit looked closer, but progress was still slow. They were utterly exhausted.

"I switched off my brain and only mechanically counted the steps, always a series of six," Holecek recalled.

The climbers progressed up a seemingly endless ramp of steep, loose snow. At least they managed their first flat bivouac in five days, at 7,100m just below the final summit ridge.

On October 30, Holecek and Huserka reported that they finally reached the summit at 11 am local time. They took some pictures and started down. And then, silence.

Now we know that the climbers needed two more bivouacs, at 6,300m and 5,500m. On the day after the summit, they had a tense moment while descending among seracs on unstable terrain. It was only when they finally reached the plateau below that they took a breath.

They believed they were past the most dangerous sections. Right after, disaster struck.

SOS

For two days, we waited for news about their descent and arrival in Base Camp. Then, a strange call for help came on November 2.

Ewa Milovska from Huserka's home team posted an SOS on social media. She reported that Huserka had fallen into a crevasse during the descent. She was asking for help.

The home team hoped Huserka might be alive and, remembering the miraculous rescue of Indian Anurag Maloo from Annapurna one year before, they forwarded the message to Maloo's rescuer, Adam Bielecki. But Bielecki was not in Nepal.

Bielecki's home team asked if ExplorersWeb knew anyone who could reach Langtang Lirung's East Face to try and rescue Huserka.

We contacted an elite Ukrainian team on Ama Dablam. They were willing to help but needed to be airlifted from the Khumbu to Langtang.

A rescue attempt?

Two other teams were much closer to the accident. One was an Italian team led by Francois Cazzanelli, a mountain rescuer himself. The other featured David Goettler of Germany and Nicolas Hojac of Switzerland, who were in Langtang. All volunteered to help.

The Italian team received the SOS call on the morning of November 1 through the radio in a lodge at Kyangin Gompa village. They were about to leave for their second attempt to nearby Kimshung. Part of their team went to the Czech Base Camp while the expedition photographer scouted the mountain with a drone. They saw a helicopter approaching the glacier, but cloudy weather forced it back.

On the evening of November 1, Marek Holecek arrived at Base Camp and confirmed that Huserka had not made it.

Holecek had followed Huserka into a crevasse, and the younger climber, severely injured, had died in his arms hours later. The Czech team (Holecek, Mrklovsky, and Hodek) was airlifted to Kathmandu on November 2, while Huserka's team launched the SOS on social media.

That night, Holecek responded with a long text posted on Facebook detailing Huserka's fall into the crevasse because of a broken Abalakov (a type of belay in ice). He detailed Huserka's final hours, stating that he died of internal injuries and a broken spine.

"No rescue operation can revive what no longer breathes; disinformation like 'Let’s save Ondra' is nonsense," he bluntly wrote.

In the recent report, Holecek shares more details about the terrible accident, his descent into the crevasse, Huserka's final hours, and Holecek's solitary descent.

Painful confusion

It is still unclear why, if Huserka died on October 31, his family still hoped to find him alive on November 2. When accidents happen, informing the climber's family is an absolute priority. We have no reason to doubt that Holecek reported the passing of his climbing partner the moment he reached Base Camp on November 1 or even before, by satphone.

Huserka was a highly-regarded Slovakian climber. The news of his death caused shock, and the strange way the news was reported only increased the pain.

On November 3, the family focused on retrieving the body via a long-line operation. After one failed attempt because of bad weather, four sherpa rescuers and a helicopter pilot retrieved the body from the crevasse on November 7.

A couple of days before, Holecek's Instagram was full of cheerful pictures celebrating his 50th birthday in a Kathmandu bar.

Reactions from Huserka's friends and family were anything but cheerful. Wadim Jablonski of Poland, who had helped coordinate the rescue efforts, posted the following IG story that day:

Bitter aftermath

The Slovak Climbing Association (SHS JAMES) was even harsher. In a public statement, it wrote:

When someone dies, we do not celebrate in our culture. We grieve. That is why we were all so deeply affected by the insensitive photos from the celebrations so soon after the incident. We were affected by the disrespect that was presented as respect. We are hurt by the continued lack of humility, compassion, and sensitivity toward the relatives and the victim. This is truly inappropriate. It doesn't give anyone the much-needed personal peace and quiet to cope with this loss. And yet so little was enough. Ondrej [Huserka] would have really deserved it.

They also raised questions about Huserka's accident.

"Couldn't Ondrej [Huserka] have been saved somehow? Had all options been exhausted?" SHS JAMES wrote.

According to Pluska.sk, Holecek said that friends in Nepal threw him a farewell party before leaving on November 4 to cheer him up.

"At that moment, I couldn’t say to them, ‘You know what? Leave me alone!’ I have that sadness inside me, but that’s my personal issue," Holecek explained.

In another interview on the Blesk podcast, Holecek revealed that Huserka's family had banned him from attending the funeral.

Holecek's take

"I will limit myself to saying: it is a shame to waste words," Holecek finally stated about the media coverage. "The only thing that really saddened me were the expressions of hostility from those people from whom I would have expected more understanding and support, including the opportunity to mutually share the pain over the loss. I believe that time will calm this storm, and the sun will shine again above our heads. Just to repeat some facts: I am the only witness to the events of that unfortunate day. Therefore, the statements can only come from my mouth and written reports."

Holecek also mentioned the rescue operation to retrieve the body.

"From the very beginning, I did not recommend raising Ondra’s body because of the threat to other lives, and I still insist on this."

Overshadowed achievement

Each person deals with loss differently. Every life lost on a mountain is a tragedy, and the history of an ascent is invariably affected when someone does not return.

The climbers tackled a face many would not even consider because of its technical difficulty and the objective danger of rockfall and avalanches. Yet the route they opened is incredibly impressive.

Huserka's accident is not related to the line of the ascent; it happened on the descent, and the climbers were using a different route: "Down a steep ridge and a few passages through seracs," as Holecek described it.

Holecek summarized the climb as follows:

Ondra [Huserka] and I managed to climb up over two kilometers of a difficult mountain face with a combination of various complicated sections. We succeeded in climbing up and through places untouched by human steps before. We had to endure five rough bivouacs to reach the top of an exceptional mountain on the sixth day of our ascent.

We faced avalanches, falling rock and ice, and other risks. Despite adversity, the journey is accomplished. Ondra and I realized our shared vision, we put all our heart and skills into that ascent. This friendship is bound by the rope and I will always keep the memories of supporting each other on the journey. Only one small move on the descent did not work out for one of us.

Ondra was a perfect fellow, he was an optimistic, smart, and brave guy, a skilled climber with lots of strength and energy. He had the potential to be the leader of a generation of climbers. Heaven decided otherwise. There's no point in asking why, as there is no answer.

Holecek named the new route Ondrova Hvezda ("Ondra's Star"). The East Face of Langtang Lirung has finally been climbed. The problem is solved, but the toll is painfully high.

Whether it was worth it or not is impossible to answer.

On September 23, in Pakistan’s Hindu Raj, three Japanese climbers completed one of the most remarkable climbs of the year.

Yudai Suzuki, Yuu Nishida, and Kei Narita made the first ascent of the west face of 6,523m Thui II in pure alpine style. It was only the second ascent of the peak.

First ascended in 1978

Until 1978, Thui II was the highest unclimbed peak in the Hindu Raj, a mountain range between the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram in northern Pakistan. Before the first ascent, there were three unsuccessful attempts, all by British teams.

In the summer of 1978, British climbers Nick Tritton (leader), Chris Griffiths, and Chris Lloyd ascended the rocky, icy southeast ridge. After six days, they topped out on August 4.

After summiting, the three climbers bivouacked an hour below the summit without sleeping gear in deteriorating weather. The climbers recalled that the main problem was the remoteness of Thui II from base camp.

The Japanese target Thui II

Suzuki, Nishida, and Narita started exploring this wild and isolated place in 2023 when they made the first ascent of Ghamubar Zom V. During that expedition, they saw Thui II, the steepest and most seductive peak in the area. They agreed that they would return to climb it.

They returned home and started researching the peak, trying to determine a feasible approach.

"From my research on Google Earth, [I determined that] the west wall of Thui II had ice and rock formations suitable for mixed climbing all the way to the summit," Suzuki told ExplorersWeb.

The start of the climb

They established a base camp at 4,300m on a grassy plain. The first few days were slow as they waited for it to stop raining. Then they acclimatized on nearby Rishit Peak.

It took them five days to reach 6,000m, and they spent two nights on a col at 5,740m, just north of Rishit Peak. While acclimatizing, they studied the west wall of Thui II.

Soon after, more bad weather arrived, and they had to wait at base camp for 12 long days. Before starting their ascent, the climbers couldn’t see the condition of the snowfields from base camp, and they worried about avalanches.

On September 21, they set out with food for four to five days.

Overcoming difficulties

From the base of the west wall, they simul-climbed two long pitches until the steep climbing began. From the very start, there was treacherous melting ice on the route.

At 5,600m, dry tooling and jamming, they climbed a crack next to the ice. It was an M7 pitch with snow and ice stuck in the crack, according to Suzuki.

On the second day, they first ran up a snow band with about three pitches of simul-climbing. They then entered a steep mixed couloir, progressing fast on hard ice in the early hours of the morning.

After seven 60m pitches, they climbed another steep couloir, this time with hanging belays. Next, they scrambled up a narrow, vertical chimney section using their bare hands.

They arrived at a small, ridge-like slanted area, where they made a bivy at 6,250m. They had already climbed about 25 pitches on the wall.

The final section was quite difficult. At 6,300m, every vertical movement left Suzuki out of breath and his head hurt. Exhausted and battling high winds, the three climbers finally reached the top on September 23.

After a hard bivy on the summit, they started their descent on the fourth day.

A long descent

In strong wind and cold, it took them a whole day to descend. However, Suzuki explained that the strong wind helped in one way: It blew the heavy snow off the mountain.

The three climbers rappelled down the route and reached the base on September 24.

In total, they made three camps: Camp 1 at 5,810m, Camp 2 at 6,250m, and Camp 3 at 6,523m.

Suzuki, Nishida, and Narita named their 1,450m route on this strikingly isolated granite peak Spider’s Thread (ED+, M7, A2). The name references the ice formations that spread like a spider’s thread on the huge rock wall and the many giant spiders they found at base camp.

Back home, Suzuki told ExplorersWeb that the climb was a combination of high altitude, high difficulty, and high-quality mixed climbing.

"This climb made me realize once again how free and wonderful alpine climbing is. Above all, I am happy that I was able to climb this beautiful and wild unclimbed wall on the remote border of Pakistan, directly to the summit in a simple, beautiful, and satisfying style," Suzuki said.

You can find a detailed report of their ascent here.

We had never heard of Yashkuk Sar, a 6,668m peak in Pakistan's Hunza region until Dane Steadman of the U.S. applied for a Cutting Edge Grant for an expedition there. And it was only after we saw some images and the route map that he, Cody Winckler, and August Franzen had climbed that we realized the scope of their achievement.

Dangerous and difficult

The first exceptional aspect of the climb lay in choosing a little-known peak in the remote Charpusan Valley, which had been closed to foreigners for the last 15 years.

“The locals said that a couple of teams went with the intention of climbing Yashkuk when it was open to expeditions decades ago, but ended up trying/climbing easier peaks," Steadman told ExplorersWeb at the time. "My guess is that’s because from the north side, Yashkuk is either dangerous (seracs crown almost the whole north face) or difficult (the buttress we climbed is fairly steep and rocky).”

The team spotted and chose their goal on Google Earth:

The team remained isolated for weeks and climbed alpine style in a single push between September 19-23. The grade of their route, called Tiger Lily Buttress, speaks for itself: AI5+ M6 A0 2,000m.

Shortly after returning, Steadman spoke with Explorersweb and on social media about the expedition.

Acclimatizing

The team set up their base camp in the valley at 4,000m and prepared for a long stay and a gradual acclimatization. In the short periods of acceptable weather between rainy spells, they made a first reconnaissance to Yashkuk I and II, to a 5,300m sub-peak, and then to a 6,200m peak named Sax Sar at the head of the West Yashkuk cirque.

Sax Sar's only ascent was from the opposite side in 1998. Climbing it required a bivouac at a col just below 6,000m. It was the highest bivy ever for the climbers. The climb and the summit views was a high point of the expedition.

"We were floating in the sky, higher than I’d ever been, at the junction of three of the great ranges of Asia," Steadman reported. "The line we’d come to climb was beautiful. We were more psyched than we’d ever been."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The climb

On the morning of September 18, the team left base camp with a week of high pressure in the forecast. That night, while the climbers were in their tent pitched still far from the north side of the peak, they had quite a scare.

"In the middle of the night, we were woken by a roar, and when we looked out the door, we saw an enormous avalanche raging down from the serac crown, well to the left of our route but with a rapidly spreading powder cloud," they reported. "We held the tent up through the wind blast that followed, then tried to go back to sleep."

On the following morning, they started the climb anyway, simul climbing and then traversing on fragile rock slabs until the night caught them. They set up their ice hammock, already 1,000m up the wall.  On the second day, the team climbed 400m on moderately difficult ice to a narrow ridge, where they set up their second bivouac.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

That night, just after we’d tucked in for bed, another roar echoed across the mountain. No worry, just another serac avalanche that didn’t threaten us. But we looked outside, just in case, and were horrified to see it ripping down the central ice gully we had intended to climb through the upper headwall. A snow mushroom must have released, and there were countless more like it on the headwall. Everything had seemed to be going so well, but suddenly bailing seemed likely.

We poured over photos of the wall, and eventually pieced together a possible line up the eastern prow of the headwall, safe from the mushroom sea and maybe climbable. It was worth a shot.

The team had to rappel down diagonally in order to get to the east side of the buttress. From there, an ice arete led to the base of the headwall. The next bivy was set up atop a mushroom that overhung the vertical mile of the wall.

Even more difficult

On the next day, the mixed climbing got more and more difficult with each pitch until the technical crux: a gently overhung wall of shattered gneiss plastered with snow, with the whole north face sweeping below.

Above, we climbed two traversing rope lengths weaving through the forest of snow mushrooms atop the headwall, to the exit: an overhanging ice tube up to the cornice. But over the cornice wasn’t sun and easy terrain like I’d hoped, and when I pulled over the third cornice, after trenching through snow deeper than myself, I finally saw sunlight to the west, but with it came a biting wind.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The following night proved the hardest, due to the unforgiving wind at 6,500m. Luckily, the summit was really close, and the climbers stepped on the highest point of the peak at 7am on September 23.

The descent took 1,500m of rappelling and down-climbing the west and northwest faces until the bergschrund.

"We were safely back on the dry glacier as the sun set on our fifth day on the mountain," Steadman said.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

A nerve-wracking wait for news

Meanwhile, outside Pakistan, we patiently waited for news. The team's outfitter finally announced that they had summited, but another several days went by before the team was confirmed safely down.

"Some experiences are simply so dense and too rich to fully comprehend," August Franzen wrote on social media. "The two months spent in Pakistan with Dane Steadman and Cody Winckler was a journey that will take quite a while to process. For now, I’m content sitting with the nostalgia of an expedition that has left a mark on me in ways I can’t yet articulate and memories that feel more like dreams than reality. In many ways, my mind is still there, bivvied near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in our shared sleeping bag among the greatest mountains on earth."

Climbing is dangerous almost by definition, but an elusive red line marks the threshold of the "too risky, better turn around." The question is, where is that line?

This changes with each climber and each situation, but we asked some of the best in the world at the latest Piolets d'Or where their red line is.

Helias Millerioux was awarded a Piolet d'Or in 2018 for his new route on the South Face of Nuptse with Frederic Degoulet and Niçois Benjamin Guigonnet. This was Millerioux's third attempt on the peak. On a previous try in 2016, he retreated when he realized the constant falling rock and ice were "a guillotine."

Asked about their new route on the West Face of Ama Dablam, Mykyta Balabanov and Mykhailo Fomin of Ukraine told ExplorersWeb that they went for it "because it was new, it was aesthetic, and it was safe."

It may not be romantic, but relative safety against objective dangers is paramount for most high-level alpinists -- at least for those who want to remain living alpinists. On the other hand, the Piolet jury usually considers commitment and exposure as added merits when selecting the best climbs of the year.

High stakes

Both Millerioux and Fomin were at the recent Piolets d'Or in Italy. As we pointed out in a story last week, the tributes to four excellent climbers, past recipients of the award who died this year, somewhat overshadowed the general joy. The families of Kazuya Hiraide, Kenro Nakajima, and Archil Badriashvili reminded everyone of alpinism's high stakes.

Yet all the awarded climbs required significant commitment to uncertain success -- at times, uncertain survival. We spoke informally with the awarded climbers about how they assess the dangers, the risks they are willing to take, and their personal red lines.

Safety first, but accept risks

Veteran climber Jordi Corominas, awarded a Piolet d'Or for Life Achievement, has always accepted the risks involved and the potential consequences, even the most serious.

"Death is there, we all know that one day we may not make it back home, and it is something we have freely chosen," he said.

But he also remarked that safety comes first when he teaches younger climbers and most of all, when he guides.

"Being a guide, assessing and minimizing risks is essential," he said. "Basically, that is what your clients pay for."

To what extent do climbers feel the pressure from sponsors and the public? Corominas and Simon Elias (a UIAGM guide based in Chamonix) conceded that some young climbers might feel compelled to take too many risks because of the idealized world of social media.

Risk-averse society

Three young climbers from Switzerland won a Piolet d'Or for an impressive line on Flat Top, a mountain in the Indian Himalaya. During their presentation, they described how for most of the climb, they didn't know whether a route would open to the summit or whether their line would dead end.

Asked whether the current generation of climbers is more reckless than the pioneers, the youngsters said it is quite the opposite.

"Our modern society of comfort tends to delete risk from the equation in everything we do," they said. "If anything, people are more afraid than ever."

For risk management, the Swiss consider three elements: conditions, terrain, and the human factor.

"I try to tick at least two of these three boxes in green before starting a climb," said one of them, Nathan Monard.

Alps vs expedition

Yet decisions that are easy to make in the Alps are harder when you only have a single weather window during a month-long expedition in the Himalaya.

"We keep the same criteria but, well, we climbers tend to push the threshold of risk further on an expedition," said Hugo Beguin. "But going on an expedition is an extra risk in itself. We don't have rescue teams ready to fly and help, the communications, the accessibility, etc."

"I personally base my decision-making on how I feel," added Matthias Rigi. "Conditions may be perfect, but If I don't feel well during the climb, I'll turn around."

About pressure from sponsors, Beguin pointed out that "Most of the time, climbers push themselves out of personal motivation."

"In fact, it is hard to feel completely without pressure," Gribi added. "There is always something pushing you."

Jannu north face

Then there was the first alpine-style ascent of the mighty north face of Jannu by Americans Alan Rousseau, Matt Cornell, and Jackson Marvell. Every step up the 2,700m face was high risk. After Rousseau noticed he had frostbitten fingers some 100 vertical meters below the summit, the team agreed to continue after a brief discussion.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Marvell said that they are ready to discard a potential line or postpone a climb because of the risk of avalanches, rockfall, or dangerous weather. Cornell pointed out the team's slow, cautious approach to Jannu. It took them three attempts to succeed. The first trip was a reconnaissance to check if climbing the face was even an option. On the second attempt, they tried a line. On the final trip, they made their choice and went for it, "ready to accept whatever comes," they said.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Leader Alan Rousseau is an ambitious climber determined to push limits a bit at a time.

"Once on the face, I go body length by body length," he explained. "The face is so big, it can be overwhelming, it can't be figured out...You'll never get anything done if you keep looking too far ahead. You focus on the three meters around you, and in the passages without protection, you don't make a move you can't reverse."

Rousseau admitted that as a team, he, Marvell, and Cornell became pretty good at creating that sort of three-meter bubble and not looking beyond it when they are on unknown terrain.

The Piolets d'Or ceremony, held last Tuesday in San Martino di Castrozza, was not just about awarding climbs and climbers. Mountains and conditions on them are so different that how do you rank one or two expeditions above the rest?

On the surface, the three-day gathering, which always takes place in classy European mountain hubs -- Chamonix sometimes, the Dolomites this year -- may seem like a venue where aging veterans applaud competitive younger alpinists willing to risk their lives for a "best of the year" trophy. In fact, the organizers insist it is a celebration of the spirit of mountaineering. It is also a time to reflect on certain essential issues in alpinism.

Enhanced consciousness

"I wanted to make the impossible possible," said American recipient Alan Rousseau. After watching the video of his team's first alpine-style ascent of the north face of Jannu, his statement seemed closer to a statement of fact than to a promotional one-liner. The 2,700m Himalayan wall is simply insane. An endless face plastered with ice, vertical for most of its length and then, on the upper third, overhanging. Their climb was beyond superlatives.

Rousseau and partners Matt Cornell and Jackson Marvell described the four-day ascent. On the last two days, beyond exhaustion, they spoke of an "enhanced level of consciousness," which included a phantom fourth member that all of them perceived, listened to, and accepted.

Some 100 vertical meters below the summit, one of the climbers discovered that his fingers were frostbitten. After a five-minute discussion, they decided to continue to the top. They stood on the summit for just a few minutes, already hallucinating.

After rappelling down the face for two days, they finally stepped onto the glacier beyond exhaustion.

"At the end of the last rappel, we had just one Camalot left, a couple of hooks, and no screws," Rousseau said. Had they needed more than another two rappels, they would have been stuck.

Interestingly, no one in the audience seemed too surprised by the ghost partner and the hallucinations. Several climbers in the small auditorium had likewise experienced such sort-of-supernatural happenings.

The Jannu team was not alone in mentioning that state of enhanced perception. The young Swiss trio of Hugo Begin, Nathan Monard, and Matthias Gribi also had that state of mind as they followed a series of ice funnels on the north face of Flat Top. They were completely uncertain whether they would find an exit to the summit or if their route would dead end at some point.

The fallen

Then came the moving presentation of The Secret Line, Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima's pioneering route on the north face of Tirich Mir. This was Hiraide's fourth Piolet d'Or and Nakajima's third, but neither was alive to receive it. They both perished this summer while attempting Hiraide's lifetime dream: a new route up the West Face of K2.

As he explained in an interview with ExplorersWeb, Hiraide was slowly building toward K2 throughout the years.

"One mountain led me to the next," he said, and all mountains led to K2. The younger Nakajima had become Hiraide's partner after the death of Kei Taniguchi and accompanied him on that last fatal climb.

Hiraide and Nakajima's widows, Shoko and Tae, picked up their late husbands' awards. In an awkward moment, Hiraide's kids were also called onto the stage.

Shortly before, there was a minute of silence on behalf of the Japanese and other past Piolet d'Or winners who died in the mountains this year: Sergey Nilov, hit by a falling serac while trying to retrieve the body of his partner (killed in 2023) on Gasherbrum IV, and Archil Badriasvili of Georgia, struck by lightning while climbing at home in the Caucasus at only 38. Badriashvili's sister Rushka was also present.

This harsh reminder of death in the mountains and its terrible collateral damage for the climbers' loved ones showed the flip side of extreme alpinism. High-level triumphs often only occur at the risk of death. The consequences of these risks are too grave to ignore.

Quiet climbers

The awards for life achievement and for female mountaineering (a new category this year) were good examples of how not all climbers are driven by the same ambitions or attracted to the same kind of goals.

Jordi Corominas, who received a lifetime achievement Piolet d'Or, is virtually unknown. Google acknowledges him mainly for the first repetition of K2's Magic line in 2004 and for his work as a mountain guide. He refuses to use social media and rarely checks WhatsApp or even turns on his phone. He avoids exposure, ignores the media, and minimizes public appearances. His world is the corner of the Spanish Pyrenees, where he lives and climbs daily.

No wonder he is a listener and a reader rather than a speaker. Few know he has opened dozens of routes on high mountains, especially in the Andes, including first ascents of Siula Chiko, Cerro San Lorenzo, and Chakraraju East.

A decade before Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker made Meru Peak in the Garhwal Himalaya famous, thanks to their award-winning film Meru, Corominas opened a new route on Meru East. His resumé also includes Thalay Sagar, Dhaulagiri solo in light style...and a number of other climbs he has not bothered to publicize.

Yet his reputation as one of the main figures in contemporary Spanish alpinism hangs mainly on his work as a guide and adviser to young climbers: from the national team of young alpinists to his mentorship of a young trail runner and skimo racer who once asked his advice on how to get started on the 8,000'ers: Kilian Jornet.

A special woman

Nives Meroi is the first Italian and second woman ever to complete the 14x8,000'ers without supplementary oxygen or sherpas. But she has also attempted a number of new routes and still managed to climb some 8,000'ers the lonely way. She first attempted K2 from its North Side in China and finally summited with husband Romano Benet via the Abruzzi Spur in 2006.

"We were completely alone without ropes on the Bottleneck, as no one had climbed the mountain that year or the year before," Meroi recalled. "We called our K2 expedition 'K for 2' and have wonderful memories of it."

She received her Piolet d'Or, in particular, for her 2023 first ascent of Kabru South, a 7,000m peak in the Kangchenjunga area, with partners Romano, Peter Hamor and Bojan Jan.

Meroi has climbed over 90% of her mountains with Romano Benet. Asked by journalists at the Piolets about dealing with the 8,000m world as a woman, she saw it as no problem.

"Unlike sport climbing, where men and women are equally gifted, in high altitude alpinism, men have a physical advantage, thanks to greater strength and size. But we women have other skills that we use...We don't climb better or worse, we just climb big mountains differently."

She insists that gender is no excuse not to climb in style. "Style is the combination of ethics and aesthetics," she says.

After four decades, the Piolets d'Or remains a vital yearly reminder for the climbing community about what's important. It is not about ranking climbs but reminding us that alpinism is a human passion that extends beyond sport, records, and egos. It is a path to an enhanced level of consciousness and a way to live our fragile lives to the fullest.

Organizers at the Piolets d'Or insist this is not a competition but a celebration of alpinism. This might be hard to believe, even disappointing, for audiences searching for a "best of" contest.

The first word that comes to mind when meeting the guests and organizers at the Piolets d'Or is "familiar." Most of those in attendance have been here before; some many times. Everyone cheerfully greets each other as old friends and immediately starts to chat. It emphasizes how mountaineering is an activity fed by the warmth of friendship and the love of wild nature.

A gala evening

The gala at which the Piolets d'Or awards are given is happening as we post this story, but related events started three days before. The 2024 edition is taking place in San Martino di Castrozza, a resort town in the Italian Dolomites. After a remarkably mild autumn, the snow has just started to accumulate.

As the big day approached, the last guests arrived, many driving from Chamonix, like climbers Helias Milleiroux and Masha Gordon, and researcher Rodolphe Popier. Nives Meroi and Romano Benet came from the Slovenian border. Mikhailo Fomin of Ukraine also showed up.

The Swiss team awarded for their new route up Flat Top in India's Kirstwar Himalaya came with an entire delegation. There were the three young climbers, all in their 20s -- Hugo Beguin, Matthias Gribi, and Nathan Monard -- plus their sponsors, parents, and friends. They seem to be the happiest people at the venue.

"We still can't believe we got a Piolet d'Or; we are so surprised and happy," they said.

Hiraide and Nakajima

At lunch in the Rosetta hut, while the media interviewed the climbers, two little kids scampered among the tables. They were Kazuya Hiraide's children. Their mother and Kenro Nakajima's widow came from the other side of the world to receive this recognition on behalf of their late husbands. Their Piolet d'Or comes for their new 2023 route on Tirich Mir. Hiraide and Nakajima sadly perished this summer while attempting the West Face of K2.

Lifetime award recipient Jordi Corominas pointed out that death is part of mountaineering and a topic that should be discussed among families and assumed as a real possibility. Yet all those present at the venue clench their teeth while watching the kids and their mothers. Hiraide's kids point to their dad on the big screen.

It is hard to imagine the effort that Joko Hiraide has made to go on stage and discuss her husband's and Nakajima's climb of Tirich Mir. She presented bravely but broke down at the end. The audience gave her a long, emotional ovation.

Currently, Americans Jackson Marvell, Matt Cornell, and Alan Rousseau have taken the stage to present their climb of the north face of Jannu. Then Nives Meroi will recount her climb of Kabru South, also in the Kangchenjunga region.

Their stories and photos provide the background for another story about the remarkable awards in which no one loses and the spirit of alpinism wins.

The 2024 edition of the Piolets d'Or awards is taking place over the next few days in San Martino di Castrozza in the Italian Dolomites. Organized by the Group de Haute Montagne, a Piolet d'Or been the most prestigious recognition in mountaineering since the awards began in 1992. Piolet d'Or is French for "Golden Ice Axe."

The Piolets d'Or originally promoted French alpinism and awarded a single climb as the best of the previous year. Since then, it has evolved to be more international. A crisis in 2007-08 caused by the aversion of many climbers to competition prompted a rethinking.

Now, several climbs are recognized each year for their excellence. The committee also introduced a Lifetime Achievement award. The first recipient was Walter Bonatti, and the second was Reinhold Messner. This year, it will go to Jordi Corominas of Spain.

The latest addition is a special mention for female mountaineering, given this year to Nives Meroi of Italy.

At ExplorersWeb, when we introduce a climber as a Piolet d'Or recipient, it implies that this person is a highly skilled alpinist with an impressive record of alpine-style climbs. Alpine style signifies a particularly pure form of climbing, where small teams attempt difficult goals in a minimalist way.

Who judges these awards, and what criteria do they use?

What makes a 'good' climb?

Social media boasts enthusiastic claims of mountaineering "records" and "historic feats." Yet publicly celebrated climbers like Nirmal Purja and Kristin Harila, the two fastest to climb all 14 8,000m peaks, were not even nominated for their achievements. Nor have extreme athletes with unquestioned skills and worldwide fame, such as Kilian Jornet. Meanwhile, Paul Ramsden of the UK holds a record five Piolets d'Or but is little known beyond the community of hard-core alpinists.

This year, three teams will receive one of these coveted Piolets d'Or:

• Americans Matt Cornell, Jackson Marvell, and Alan Rousseau for a new route on the North Face of Mount Jannu in Nepal's Kangchenjunga region.
• Hugo Beguin, Matthias Gribi, and Nathan Monard of Switzerland for a new route on a 6,000m peak in the Indian Himalaya.
• Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima of Japan will receive theirs posthumously for the first ascent in 2023 of the North Face of Tirich Mir in Pakistan. It will be the fourth Piolet d'Or for Hiraide and the third for Nakajima. Sadly, both perished earlier this year while trying to open a new alpine-style route on the West Face of K2. True to a pure mountaineering style, they were attempting this bold new line on the world's second-highest peak without previously fixed ropes or camps, in a single push from base to summit, just two men alone on unknown terrain.

"The awards aim to celebrate commitment, the taste for adventure, and the sense of exploration," the organizers state on the Piolet d'Or website. The summit matters less than how the climbers attempt to reach it.

Sending a message

According to the organizers, the goal is not merely to award the best climbs.

"The purpose [is] to use these ascents to promote clear ethical messages regarding our practices as alpinists around the world, in line with the UNESCO classification of alpinism as an intangible cultural heritage," the Piolets d'Or organizers state.

Each year features many remarkable climbs from around the world. Previously, the jury came out with a shortlist, then chose two or three award winners from them. Recently, they have decided to highlight all significant ascents. This year, the list includes over 50 expeditions. In an environment as variable as the mountains, picking two or three among these seems anything but easy.

Their criteria include style, level of commitment and self-sufficiency, the spirit of exploration, and the technical ability required, among others. The jury also factors in respect for other climbers, local communities, and the environment, as well as how the teams try to minimize resources.

Not everyone happy

Not everyone in the mountaineering community loves the Piolets d'Or. Some climbers dislike the whole idea that one climb is somehow better than another and refuse to accept an award if given; others ask the jury not to nominate them.

The committee tries to avoid the flavor of winners and losers and instead promotes a collective celebration of excellence in alpinism. That is why the selected climbs are announced in advance. However, the awards are still a great distinction, and of course, the climbers' sponsors love them.

One source of debate among wider audiences is how far we should encourage high-risk alpinism. It is hardly a coincidence that over a dozen former Piolet d'Or winners have later died in the mountains. In 2024 alone, the organizers will pay tribute to Hiraide, Nakajima, and three more: Russians Dmitry Golovchenko and Sergey Nilov, and Archil Badriashvili of Georgia. All perished while climbing in the last two years.

Marek Holecek has two Piolets d'Or in his career. Last month, he climbed the terrible east face of Langtang Lirung, ordinarily a sure awards candidate for 2025. But Holecek's partner, Ondrej Husherka, died in a crevasse fall during the descent, which eliminates the climb, excellent though it was, from Piolet d'Or contention. Some years ago, a Russian expedition received a Piolet d'Or, despite losing two members. A controversy erupted, and since then, the jury only awards climbs in which everyone survived.

In a surprise, the best climb done by Russians in 2024 went to three women: Olga Lukashenko, Darya Serupova, and Anastasia Kozlova. The all-women team won their country's version of the Golden Ice Axe for a new big wall route on Argo Peak (4,750m) in Kyrgyzstan's Pamirs.

The women are not new to mountaineering awards. Last year, Lukashenko won the Steel Angel, an independent prize for female teams, for a new route in the Tien Shan. Serupova and Kozlova were finalists. However, this year, the three women bagged the overall (not female) prize as a team.

Russia's best

The Argo expedition prevailed through the various selection stages. "First, we chose a long list of highlighted expeditions. Then the jury selected six or seven ascents for the shortlist," the Russian Federation of Mountaineering (RFM) told ExplorersWeb.

"The final choice was made between the two most significant ascents: Olga Lukashenko, Darya Serupova, and Anastasia Kozlova's new route on Argo, and another first ascent of Peak 4810 by Ivan Temerev and Anton Kashevnik."

"In the end, the Golden Ice Axe was awarded to the women's team because their style was more in line with the spirit of the award," Irina Morozova of the RFM said. "The Peak 4810 team bolted the route, with about 100 bolts installed in the wall with a drill hammer."

Meanwhile, the women free-climbed the route on Argo. They graded it ED, 29 pitches, 1,250m long, 950m elevation gain, 7b, M5, А3.

In addition, the team previously climbed another new route on the southwest face of nearby Parus Peak (4,850m) for acclimatization. That line was graded as ED-, 28 pitches, 1,460m long, 1,150m elevation gain, 6c, M3, A2.

Hardship matters, not gender

Argo is a point of the Ashat Wall in the Gissaro-Alai range, a remote area where no female teams had ventured before. After the climb, leader Olga Lukashenko told Explorersweb:

Frankly, I don’t really care about the difference between male and female climbers, I’m just highlighting that this climbing area is genuinely serious and challenging. This discovery [that no women had previously attempted it] only added to the thrill of tackling such an uncharted and demanding climb.

The climbers faced not only highly difficult pitches but also rough conditions, with thick fog and wet rock part of the time.

For the 2024 expedition, the team received a Grit & Rock Expedition grant, promoting women climbers attempting new routes and exploratory expeditions.

Steel Angel

The Steel Angel, the award specifically reserved for international female teams, went to Slovenians Anja Petek and Patricija Verdev for their first ascent of 6,243m Lalung I in India's Ladakh. Petek and Verdev were part of an all-female team that also included Ana Baumgartner and Ursa Kesar.

The women split into two teams. Petek and Verdev climbed Lalung I, while the other pair climbed two new routes on lesser peaks.

David Goettler of Germany and Nicolas Hojak of Switzerland have done a rare ascent of the north face of 6,378m Ganchenpo in Nepal's Langtang. Goettler admits that they do not know if their line is new. We might need the collaboration of the climbing community to solve the riddle.

Goettler told ExplorersWeb that they found the face in excellent condition. It allowed a quick, single-push ascent, with no need to rope up for most of the route.

Change of plans

The climbers started from Kyanjing Gompa village. After trekking for five hours, they camped for the first night at 4,700m, just before the glacier. Ganchenpo is also known as Fluted Peak because of its icy, fluted north face. Goettler and Hojak had planned to go up a mixed line running along the right side of the north face, but conditions were not as expected. There was a lack of continuous ice, leaving only crumbly-looking rock.

After some discussion, the pair chose to go up the center of the face, completely on ice and snow.

"We had no bivouac equipment with us, so our our style was to simply climb up and down as quickly as possible," Hojac wrote on Instagram. "We were also worried by the forecast, which reported winds of over 70kph at 7,000m."

The following day, they crossed the glacier and the bergschrund to the base of the north face. They then climbed one of the face's ice gullies without ropes until the last 60m. Here, they found sugary snow and a five-meter section of 80º ice that ended at the ridge next to the summit.

"We made the last few steps to the summit and shook hands," said Hojak. "What a wonderful moment to be standing up here! In the distance, we could see 8,027m Shisha Pangma, [and] to the left, Langtang Lirung."

The whole ascent took just four hours.

New 'official' route

On the descent, the climbers took the peak's normal route back to their tent at 4,700m. The entire return trip took 12 hours.

"Despite strong winds in the forecast, we were very lucky with almost no wind when we topped out," Goettler said.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Hojac posted on his social media that they tried to climb the classic north face route.

"Although this has already had two ascents, it is still a cool line on this mountain," Hojac said.

Goetller was less sure their line had been climbed before, at least legally. "Our line is different to what Freire and his partner climbed last year, but maybe some other parties [without a permit] climbed this exact line before," he told ExplorersWeb.

Joshua Harrin and Oswaldo Freire climbed a line up the center of the north face of Ganchenpo last fall. They called their new 1,000m route Cold Therapy and graded it AI4+. According to The Himalayan Database, theirs was the first ascent of the north face. The other few climbs on Ganchenpo were done via from the south and west.

Yet this peak has a history of unauthorized climbs. It is possible that one or more of these teams could have been on the north side and possibly even on Goettler and Hojac's exact line. If anyone in the climbing community can provide clarity, please contact us. Note that Ganchenpo is often spelled Ganchempo.

Goettler and Hojac have now finished with autumn climbing in Nepal. This winter, Goettler does not intend to attempt a bigger peak, as he has done in recent years. Previously, he and Herve Barmasse attempted winter alpine-style climbs on Nanga Parbat's Rupal side and on Dhaulagiri.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Nathan White, Jack Morris, Connor Holdsworth, and Dave Sharpe of the UK took advantage of a short weather window last month to set two new lines on 6,000'ers in Nepal's Rolwaling Valley.

The team reached Rolwaling on October 22 and acclimatized on Pachermo, an easier peak in the area. When they returned from the mountain, they found that crows had ravaged their camp, and a significant amount of food was either eaten or soiled.

With their supplies down to a minimum, they had no time to waste. They headed back to the peaks right away, seizing a tight weather window that had just opened. For efficiency, they split into two climbing pairs.

Two peaks

After a two-day approach, Dave Sharpe and Connor Holdsworth climbed Takargo East (6,152m) via the east face, a first. Nepal's Nima Tenji Sherpa's team had previously climbed the northeast ridge in 2014, and John Kelley of the U.S. soloed the south face in 2016. The Brits tried to link the summit of Takargo East with Takargo Main's peak (6,771m), but they retreated short due to illness.

Holsworth reported that they climbed the 600m face without roping up, on difficulties they assessed as "mostly Scottish II with some steps of III and finally one harder, looser step of IV right at the top."

The climbers set their first bivouac shortly after reaching the summit. Incredibly, in the morning, there were snow leopard pawprints all around their tent. They spent the next two days on the long ridge leading to Takargo Main, but except for short sections of good ice, all they found was "very loose rock and bottomless untransformed snow," said Holsworth.

On the third day, Holsworth's health declined. "I had been feeling pretty rough since we left the glacier, and some specks of blood in my vomit made it feel like the right decision was to head down," he said.

The weather was also turning for the worse, and the climbers made it back to camp just before a snowstorm hit.

Linkhu Chuli 2

Meanwhile, Nathan White and Jack Morris went for an impressive ridge that splits the north and northwest faces of 6,659m Linkhu Chuli 2.

"While the serac-covered walls were very active, the ridge line provided an incredibly direct and objectively safe passage through the chaos," the climbers reported.

A couloir led the climbers to the ridge, where they found sustained difficulties and a precarious bivouac location. Check the video below.

Eventually, they climbed beyond a "point of no retreat" on very steep terrain, hoping the route would ease near the summit. Just the opposite.

"We faced a final impenetrable rock band, so we had to traverse towards the serac on the northwest face to outflank and unlock the final part of the route," White wrote.

This way, they reached the northwest summit. They aborted their plan to continue to the main point, just a couple of hundred meters away, as a storm was imminent, and the team still had to find a suitable descent route.

Nick of time

"Due to the unconsolidated nature of the snow, loose rock, and lack of ice, the line of
ascent wasn’t a viable option for the descent, so we opted to go down the west
ridge onsight," White wrote. "With much downclimbing and abseiling through seracs, we arrived on the glacier just as the weather was deteriorating."

The team proposed ED2, M6, WI3 for the 2,500m route, which they climbed in four days. According to The Himalayan Database, an international team first climbed the peak in 2019 by the west ridge to the west summit.

As the team noted, 24 hours after they finished, the snowstorm dramatically changed conditions. The popular Tashi Lapcha Pass was impassable, and several trekking groups in the area had to evacuate Rolwaling because of the deep, unstable snow.

The team admitted that they had "threaded the needle" between the difficult
line and the brief weather window.

One of the most remarkable climbs of the year took place earlier this fall in Pakistan's Hindu Raj, close to the Afghan frontier. Yudai Suzuki, Kei Narita, and Yuu Nishida of Japan explored that wild, isolated place last year during their first ascent of Ghamubar Zom V. This year, they came back for more, and Suzuki summarized the expedition in a detailed, engaging report to ExplorersWeb.

In a nutshell, on September 23, the team completed the first ascent of the west face of 6,523m Thui II. The peak had only been climbed once, 46 years ago, from a different side. The story of this new Japanese climb, in the purest style and overcoming extreme difficulties, is simply epic.

The steepest, most seductive

"Last year, I stood on the summit of  Ghamubar Zom V and could not forget the beautiful view of the sun setting over the mountains," Suzuki recalls. "One of those peaks was Thui II, the steepest and most seductive."

The team agreed then to go for that peak as soon as they could. But researching that obscure area was not easy. Thui II had been climbed only once before, back in 1978, 11 years after the first attempt by a British team in 1967.

The only information the Japanese could find about the west face and the approach to it over the Rishit Glacier came from a French team that had visited the place a few years ago.

But the French were there in spring, and the Japanese wanted to climb in September, as they had done on Ghamubar Zom V. Then they came across a short but fascinating note in The Himalayan Encyclopedia: "Thui II is the third highest peak in the range...and its triangular spire is said to be the most magnificent solitary peak in the Hindu Raj," it promised alluringly.

"From my research on Google Earth, the west wall of Thui II has ice and rock formations suitable for mixed climbing all the way to the summit," said Suzuki. "It is in an unexplored area on the northwestern frontier of Pakistan, so it looks like it will be a long and adventurous climb."

Just what they were looking for.

On the Afghan border

Arriving in Pakistan in September, the team drove north for two days from Chitral to a small village called Shost on the Afghan border. They continued up steep trails to a hamlet called Trikand, then walked for six to seven hours from Trikand to their base camp on a grassy plain at 4,300m.

After some days of rain, a long weather window opened, and the climbers headed to nearby Rishit Peak to acclimatize.

"It took about five days to reach 6,000m, and we were able to spend two nights at a col at 5,740m just north of Rishit Peak," wrote Suzuki.

On the way, the climbers had a chance to study their targeted peak.

"Our planned route consisted of a lower snow slope and mostly nearly vertical ice and rock," Suzuki noted. "The crux, in particular, seemed to be just below the summit at over 6,200m, so it looked like it would be an adventurous climb of nearly 1,500m.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They wanted to summit in a clean, single push, although some passages were not clear. But first, they had to wait out a week-long stormy spell.

"After the sun returned...we couldn't see the condition of the snowfields above from base camp," Suzuki recalled. "We were worried about avalanches, but we seized the good weather period, returned to ABC, and set off toward the mountain with four to five days of food and some gear."

Unknown terrain

"From the base, we simul-climbed two long pitches at a good pace until we reached the point where the actual steep climbing began," Suzuki said. "From the start, there was some suspicious melting ice."

They completed the first part on a smooth mixed wall, looking for its weak spots, with the melting ice showering on their heads.

"Fortunately, at 5,600m, there was a crack next to the ice, and we managed to climb up by dry tooling and jamming. It was an M7 pitch with snow and ice stuck in the crack."

The crack was too wide for the Camalots they had brought, so they had to free-climb it. Then followed more difficult pitches, including sections on completely vertical rock and then on a layer of melting ice. Finally, a snow band offered just enough space for a bivouac.

"As the sun was about to set, we expanded the space of about two meters [by adding snow to a groundsheet] and made our first bivy at 5,810m, protected by a big boulder."

"On the second day, we first ran up the snow band with about three pitches of simultaneous climbing," Suzuki recalls. "Then we got into a steep mixed couloir, progressing fast on hard ice in the early hours of the morning."

The team did seven 60m pitches and then "climbed a steep couloir with hanging belays along the way," said Suzuki. "There was a vertical chimney section without ice or snow, but luckily it was very narrow, so we managed to climb it with our bare hands."

Finally, they crawled up the fragile rock to a small ridge-like slanted area. Again, they extended the space for a third person on a second bivouac at 6,250m. By now, they had climbed about 25 pitches.

The long summit day

On the third day, the team had only 300 vertical meters left. They considered leaving part of their gear at the bivy site and returning after they reached the summit, but the upper slopes looked difficult. They were also not sure how the day would unfold. In the end, it was good they took everything with them, as difficulties confronted them immediately.

"On the first pitch, we did a nasty 10m down-climbing traverse," said Suzuki. "On the second pitch, we climbed a thin layer of ice stuck to the concave parts, which was a truly mixed climbing pitch. There was very little protection, but we managed to insert a small Camalot on the side wall. I was climbing second, but it was probably M5+/M6."

Finally, the climbers had to decide how to approach the last and most technical pitches.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The finale

Suzuki's account of those upper pitches deserves to be quoted in full:

We could go left or right, but if we went left, the route would just turn into a couloir and become boring, so we decided to consider the vertical [rock] wall on the right. At first glance, it looked impossible to climb, but miraculously, it was connected by hard and high-quality grabs, and the rock quality was excellent.

Nishida went up by dry tooling. We were already over 6,300m, and every vertical movement left me out of breath, and my head hurt. The fourth pitch was also an excellent mixed climb at an angle of about 80˚. It was unbelievable that the sections of the line were so well connected.

 

On the fifth pitch, I took over the lead, but the wall had changed completely. Looking up, I saw a big slab covering the area. What should I do?

First, I climbed to the base of the slab and found a single, thin crack. I expected it would be difficult to make a big traverse from here, so I gambled and went straight up the crack. Although the sun was shining, it was still cold to climb with bare hands at 6,400m, but I couldn't do it with gloves, so I climbed while jamming with bare hands.

When I had climbed about halfway, the footholds disappeared and I took off my crampons, but I couldn't free-climb anymore, so I switched to aid-climbing. I decided on small Cams and Tri-cams, and slowly climbed with a few free moves where the crack was broken in places.

Eventually the crack completely broke, but I managed to mantle back, because I found a rock flake one meter away, where I placed a tiny piece of gear. It was quite doubtful whether we could go straight up from this point, so we decided to stop at the terrace.

On the sixth pitch, we could see fine flakes when we looked straight up, but we didn't know what lay beyond that. We figured if we couldn't see the top, it meant that the slope was flattening out and we could manage it.

 

We climbed straight up about five meters using the grabs, and we could see the ice slope as far as the eye could see. This would connect us to the summit! As we moved from rock to ice, we immediately realized that this was blue ice. But we figured we should be able to reach the summit soon.

The climbing up to this point was more technical than we had imagined, and it was already past 3 pm. We pounded our axes into the hard ice with all our might -- torture! -- but we were at over 6,400m and couldn't go fast, despite the late hour. We took turns climbing the last four pitches of ice.

As Nishida was climbing, the other side suddenly dropped off, and we jumped onto the summit. The sky was already deep orange, and we were exhausted by the 6,523m altitude and strong winds. We spent about an hour and a half preparing a summit bivouac.

 

On the fourth day, when I woke up in the morning, Ghamubar Zom V, which I had climbed last year, towered majestically in front of me. From this angle, I could see the line from last year as clearly as if it were in my hands. It was moving to realize that I had climbed a longer ridge than I had imagined.

The descent

All that remained was to descend. This would take a whole day.

At 8 am, the wind was still strong and cold when the climbers started rappeling down. But Suzuki was "grateful" for the wind, as it blew away the heavy snow. 

"I had thought of climbing down the ridge a little and descending on the Lisit Peak side, but the ridge still looked bad," he noted. "I decided that it would be safe to rappel along the climbing route. 

The climbers used V-threads whenever possible to rappel on the ice and rock, as they had just 25 meters of spare rope that they could abandon on the wall if needed.

"I drove two short pitons into the only place where there was nothing and rappeled all the rest from rocky outcrops," wrote Suzuki. "After rappelling about 23 times from the summit, I finally reached the top of the first simultaneous climbing section. There, I left all 25m of rope and the four slings behind."

32 to 34 pitches

It was after 7 pm, already dark when the exhausted Japanese reached their bivy tent, which they had struggled to pitch in high winds and bitter cold.

"But the snow was firm, and there was no risk of anything falling from above," Suzuki noted. Counting the simul-climb and the standard climbing, the line took 32 to 34 pitches.

A long descent followed on the next day down the same route. The climbers repeated the simul-climb sections when down-climbing.

"In places, we encountered black ice, which is unique to the Himalaya, but we calmly dealt with it while deciding on the screws and cams, and landed on the Risht Glacier at 10 pm," Suzuki said.

In one more hour, the climbers had stumbled back to their Advanced Base Camp.

"We took off our harnesses for the first time in four days after 11 o'clock that night," said Suzuki. "I was filled with an indescribable sense of fulfillment and slept peacefully in the thick air until 10 the next morning."

Back home

Now back home, Suzuki considers the climb a combination of high-altitude, high-difficulty, and high-quality mixed climbing.

"We also rock climbed with our bare hands and tackled a headwall that got steeper as we climbed," he says. "In addition to the severe aid-climbing, the final section was, as always, torturous blue ice; plus, the two bivouacs using snow hammocks and the miserable bivouac at the summit were also memorable.

"This climb made me realize once again how all-round, free, and wonderful alpine climbing is. Above all, I am happy that I was able to climb this beautiful and wild unclimbed wall in the remote border of Pakistan directly to the summit in a simple, beautiful, and satisfying style."

The team named the route The Spider's Thread after the ice formations that spread like a spider's thread on the huge rock wall -- and the countless giant spiders they found at base camp! The proposed degree of difficulty is ED+, M7, A2 for the 1,450m route.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Stefan Siegrist and Jonas Schild of Switzerland returned to India's Garhwal Himalaya recently for a third attempt on 6,540m Shivling. As often happens with alpine-style teams, they ended up opening a new route on a different peak instead -- the southwest ridge of Bhagirathi III.

"You can make a great ascent even if things don't go as planned," Schild admitted.

Siegrist and Schild first tried Shivling in 2021 but aborted due to health problems. The following year, a late monsoon burdened the mountain with tons of snow.

"We couldn't even approach the peak due to the high risk of avalanches," Schild explained.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Shivling stays elusive

This time, despite heavy rains that delayed their trek in, the weather improved quickly. Siegrist and Schild, accompanied by Hugo and Kaspar Grossniklaus, reached base camp in good time. They immediately went up for a three-day acclimatization trip and prepared for the final push.

"The whole team was in excellent health, the weather was stable, and the conditions on the mountain got better every day," Siegrist reported.

The first two days went well, and they had reason to hope. On the first day, they climbed a rocky pillar to a first camp at 5,700m. Very early the following day, they continued up in great conditions.

"The climbing was perfect, the cracks ideal," Schild recalled. "This time, I free-climbed the crux section, which I had only managed with aid in 2021. Pure climbing fun at around 6,000m!"

He also noted that the route had changed dramatically since their last attempt. In particular, he mentioned a dihedral that does not exist anymore. (See photo below.)

Then, at dinnertime, things suddenly went south. Kaspar Grossniklaus fell ill with high-altitude pulmonary edema in Camp 2 at 6,100m.

"Stef and I looked at each other in disbelief," Schild wrote. "It was the same story, the same place, and the same elevation as our first attempt in 2021. We had to abort 400m below the summit and rappel down."

A ready alternative

The climbers were not ready to return home empty-handed. With Kaspar Grossniklaus recovered, they embraced a Plan B that was right in front of them: the southwest ridge of 6,454m Bhagirathi III. They had studied the potential line from base camp, just a football field away. It was an obvious alternative.

"Only four days after our return from Shivling, we set off, crossing the Gangotri Glacier and climbing up to 5,600m," Schild wrote. "We found an incredibly beautiful bivouac site and spent a cold night in the tent."

The following morning, they passed the snowfield leading to the ridge, which was totally on rock -- poor rock, actually. The climbers described it as a band of dark, brittle rock that makes up the upper part of the Bhagirathi group and is notorious for its fragility.

Rotten rock techniques

Schild noted that the difficulty was UIAA 4th or 5th grade, but the biggest challenge was finding solid holds and places to put protection.

Schild told ExplorersWeb that they secured themselves with Friends or by passing a rope around a rocky outcrop, as they did back in the Swiss Alps when guiding clients. He and Siegrist are IFMGA guides, and the method he describes is very common in the Alps, including on the Matterhorn.

"For me, this is the safest when climbing on loose, brittle rock," he explained.

Carefully but steadily, the four of them progressed. "By lunchtime, we were happily hugging each other on the summit," Schild recalled.

For the descent, the team rappelled down the same route.

"To build safe anchors, we had to use our creativity, but with some pitons, beaks, and stoppers, we managed well and made it down in three or four rappels," said Schild.

No record of other climbs

The climbers are sure theirs was the first ascent of the southwest ridge.

"We have found no info on other climbs on the internet or from the Indian Mountain Federation," they said. But they have also asked other climbers to contact them if they know anything to the contrary.

"In any case, it was an extremely valuable climb for our team after another disappointment on Shivling," Schild noted.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

This was the second time in a row that the Swiss climbers found a cool alternative after failure on Shivling. In 2022, the year that avalanche conditions were too high, they likewise found a perfect alternative. It was a 4,950m rock tower, which included a nose-like roof like on El Capitan, rising from the Kirti Glacier. The climbers called the route the Kirti Nose.

Shivling and the Bhagirathi massif lie in the heart of Garhwal Himalaya. It is a well-known spot for climbers, especially for Siegrist. Twenty years ago, he was a member of the team that made the first ascent of the northwest pillar of Thalay Sagar, also in the area.

Siegrist has climbed around the world but has a special affection for the North Face of the Eiger and for Patagonia, where he has led nearly 20 expeditions. He has often paired with Thomas Huber on new routes like Har Har Mahadev on Cerro Kishwar in 2017 in the Indian Himalaya. Siegrist also worked on the In Memoriam project, a new route with Thomas and Alex Huber on the Eiger North Face, and the first repetition of Jeff Lowe's Metanoia.

Jonas Schild, born in 1992, is an IFMGA mountain guide specializing in high-level sport climbing, but also ice climbing in winter and trad routes on rock in summer.

A seven-man Italian team is heading home from Kimshung in Nepal's Langtang. The main, unclimbed summit eluded them twice. The first time, bad weather forced them back. Then on November 1, they gave up their second attempt to hurry to nearby Langtang Lirung to rescue Ondrej Huserka if needed.

Yet Francois Cazzanelli, Roger Bovard, Emrik Favre, Jerome Perruquet, Stefano Stradelli, Francesco Ratti, and Giuseppe Vidoni are not leaving empty-handed. Three of them summited 6,305m Kimshung Sar, a neighboring point on the massif.

Two groups, two goals

The team reached Langtang region on October 8 and spent two weeks acclimatizing. Finally, in late October, they launched an alpine-style summit push up Kimshung, but divided into two teams with different goals. Cazzanelli, Perruquet, Ratti, and Vidoni set off on October 24, Aosta Sera reports. From the bergschrund at the base of the face, they climbed eight pitches on ice and reached a point between the central and the northern, or main, summit.

At that moment, the wind increased dramatically. The climbers still managed to climb two more pitches on mixed terrain but finally turned around at 6,550m, with the main summit still unclimbed.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The Lovers Ridge

Meanwhile, the second group of Favre, Stradelli, and Bovard aimed for the south ridge of Kimshung Shar, the lowest point of the massif. The team climbed a 50º snow ramp to the ridge and then followed it on mixed terrain. They avoided several gendarmes and overcame some exposed sections until they reached the 6,305m summit of Kimshung Shar at 2 pm.

The climbers considered continuing to Kimshung's main summit but soon discarded the idea because of poor snow quality and overhanging cornices on the final stretch.

They named the AI3/4+ route the Arète Des Amoureux ("The Lovers Ridge") after World Cup skier Jean Daniel Pession and his girlfriend, Elisa Arlian, who died together in a mountain accident earlier this year.

Called to Langtang Lirung

On November 1, as the team prepared for a second attempt on Kimshung Main, they received an SOS about a crevasse incident from nearby Langtang Lirung.

David Goettler of Germany and Nicolas Hojac of Switzerland, who were also climbing in the area, also responded, according to the Italian team.

After the SOS, Cazzanelli, Bovard, Perruquet, and Vidoni headed toward the Lirung Glacier, looking for Holecek and Huserka along their probable descent route. The Czech-Slovak duo had completed the first ascent of the east face of Langtang Lirung and were descending (apparently via another route) when Huserka had what was ultimately a fatal fall into a crevasse.

Ratti and Stradelli went to the base camp to help with communications, and Emrik Favre and photographer Damiano Levati scouted the mountain with their photo gear and located the area where Huserka had fallen. A helicopter tried to do a reconnaissance flight but had to turn around because of low clouds and darkness.

Help no longer needed

The report shared by Aosta Sera is sketchy at this point, but we can infer that the Italians retreated to the village of Kyangi Gumpa that evening, ready to continue the search the following morning. However, one of the "survivors" (obviously Holecek) told them that their help was not needed any longer, as the Czech-Slovak team "had decided to continue on their own," the report read.

On Saturday, November 2, friends of Huserka asked the climbing community for help and arranged a long-line rescue. Marek Holecek returned to Kathmandu and, later that day, wrote on social media how Huserka had been seriously injured in the fall and eventually died in his arms.

The long-line rescue was still scheduled for November 3 but was called off because of bad weather. It is unclear if they will try to retrieve Huserka's remains on another long-line attempt.

The Italians have left their camp and are currently on their way back to Kathmandu, as seen in a photo they shared on social media.

On Friday, Mykyta Balabanov and Mykhailo Fomin of Ukraine stood on the summit of Ama Dablam after pioneering a new route up the West Face.

Three years after opening the Southeast Ridge of Annapurna III and a war that shattered their lives, the climbers showed that they have managed to retain their skills, fitness, and willingness to attempt beautiful new lines.

The climbers described their climb to ExplorersWeb from Namche Bazaar today.

"It is a new line up to the shoulder at 6,250m," Fomin said. "From that point, it follows the British 2001 line to the 6,812m summit. We climbed onsight in a four-day single push," they noted.

Thus, about 80 percent of their line is new. The climbers propose a difficulty of ED, M5, AI4, 80º for the 1,600m route.

"We had originally planned for three days, but sugary, unstable snow above the shoulder added one more day," they explained."

No go on Makalu

The Ukrainians' original goal this season was a new route on Makalu. However, shortly after reaching Base Camp, they experienced the snowstorms that hit Nepal last month.

"In a day, we had 1.5 meters of fresh snow, and that slowed down the acclimatization process too much," Fomin noted. "For instance, just moving from Base Camp to Advanced Base Camp, which is usually a short day in running shoes, became a two-day [slog] through deep snow."

"In such conditions, it soon became clear that we were out of schedule to acclimatize properly for such a technical climb," Balabanov added. "There was simply no chance.

They quickly devised a Plan B. They packed their stuff, hired three porters, and set off on foot toward the Khumbu Valley over the Sherpani Col (6,155m) and Amphu Lapcha Pass (5,845 m). Both were overloaded with snow. "Yeah, it was an extra trip to add to the expedition," the Ukrainians said.

South Face not an option

Ama Dablam was the goal, but the climbers admitted that their first idea was not a new route on the West Face but rather the South Face.

"I had in mind a line that I had seen three years ago," Balabanov said. "It was not doable in spring [when the face is drier and icier], but I thought perhaps it could be in better condition this fall after the snowfall. I was wrong."

When they reached the mountain, they went to look at the south side, and their hopes dropped instantly. "The face looked worse than ever," said Balabanov.

"Global warming has completely changed the conditions on the face, which is more and more dangerous each year," Fomin noted. "Perhaps it would be possible in winter if there were enough snow, but not now."

When asked if they were not concerned that someone might steal their idea (it's happened in some other cases recently), the Ukrainians shrugged.

"Well, good luck with that!" Fomin said.

"Yeah, they can have the idea if they want it, we're not going to use it," Balabanov added.

Safe, beautiful, unclimbed

With the South Face out of the question, the climbers proceeded to check other options. They quickly spotted a possible route up the West Face.

"It was not an entirely new line, but it was until 6,250m," Fomin said. "Otherwise, it met all of our expectations. It was safe, it was beautiful, and it was unclimbed."

The weather was okay, so they went for it the very next day, October 28.

On the lower part, the route follows an obvious feature: a big rib, like a buttress.

"It is not super-technical but rather moderate mixed terrain, with lots of rock climbing, some snow...varied terrain," Balabanov explained. "After the rib, there is a characteristic rock barrier, which is one of the steepest parts of the route.

The one dangerous section

The hardest and most dangerous part of the route lay above the rock barrier.

"This 'fun' part of the route was covered in sugary, unstable snow, and it was simply impossible to place any kind of protection," Balabanov explained.

"It took us an extra day to pass that section of unconsolidated snow," Fomin added. "For a few hundred meters, all we could do was climb unprotected to the end of the pitch, then dig a hole in the snow with a shovel, sit there, and belay the other climber from that place. When the second climber reached that point, we shifted places, and the other climber would belay from the same hole, knowing the climber above him wouldn't be placing any protection as he progressed."

Beginning at the shoulder, the final part of the route consisted of some safer pitches on ice and mixed terrain.

The climbers summited on November 1 and then went down the normal route.

"It was crowded and there were jams on the rappels, but it would have been stupid to go down any other way," they said. "The normal Southwest Ridge is the most obvious option."

During the climb, the Ukrainians were alone on the West Face. Alexandr Moroz and Mark Ablovacky, the only other team to climb the face this season, had just left. They repeated the American Direct route.

Climbing in a time of war

Returning to the mountains while their country is in a terrible war was a difficult decision for Fomin and Balabanov.

"We thought that even in times of war, our athletes should go to the Olympics," Fomin said. "They should participate in international competitions, and we should climb again to show that the country is still alive despite all the suffering. Climbing is what we do, and it is our best option to show that Ukraine is still there."

Yet, the war with Russia is painfully present in their lives. In fact, the day they summited, they learned that a close friend of theirs had died at the front. They named the new route Chegi, his nickname.

"He was one of my best friends, and also my mentor, who taught me everything I know about mountaineering and with whom I had climbed over 100 routes on so many mountains," Balavanov said.

Alexandr Moroz and Mark Ablovacky wanted to climb Ama Dablam while avoiding the normal route, at least on the way up. They decided to follow the most logical line on the West Face, which turned out to be one of the rare repetitions of the American Direct route.

Climbers are rarely lonely on Ama Dablam during the fall climbing season. Nepal's Ministry of Tourism has granted 158 permits so far. Until now, all summiters have used the normal route, which is fixed along its entire length. The mountain will be open throughout fall and likely in winter too. But the story changes completely near the Southwest Ridge.

The lonely side

After acclimatizing on Mera Peak, Moroz and Ablovacky went to Ama Dablam, looking for a suitable line.

"We chose the West Face because it is visible from the normal-route Base Camp," Ablovacky told ExplorersWeb. "That allowed us to check conditions and count on some nearby support in case of trouble."

From a lodge near Base Camp, they checked the face, looking for the most obvious safe line that did not intersect with the normal route.

"When the time came to climb, we walked under the peak until we stopped below the West Face and set our Advanced Base Camp at 5,500m," Ablovacky said.

The climbers climbed alpine style in a single three-day push to the summit. No fixed ropes, no tracks. They used the normal route for the descent.

The climb

The pair faced some difficult conditions, as a thin layer of ice covered the rock sections.

"Even when the climbing was simple (up to UIAA V), the terrain was quite sketchy," the climbers said. We tried to progress on snow as much as we could."

"The first day and the following morning were okayish, with climbing difficulties ranging up to  WI4," Ablovacky said. "But around midday on the second day, the weather changed drastically."

Constant spindrift poured on their heads. Once, the powdery snow became a proper avalanche.

"Luckily, we were firmly holding with crampons and ice axes on good snow, and managed to handle the snow falling on us," Moroz recalled. "[But] we had to crawl under the snow and find a place to shelter...We were lucky to find a crack at 6,480m, where we cut out a platform for the tent."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The change of conditions forced the climbers to do a sharp turn to the right, under the Dablam (the characteristic hanging serac on the upper third of the face). Their route ran under constant sluffs of snow.

"The third day, October 22, when we pushed for the summit, included two added challenges," they said. "We had to traverse to the left under the Dablam on quite thin ice. When we finally reached the upper ramps, they were overloaded with heavy, deep snow. We had to crawl on a 70-80˚ slope, sinking in 40-50cm of fresh snow."

At 3:30 pm, the climbers finally reached the summit. They started down the normal route but eventually deviated from the fixed ropes and returned to the tiny ice cave where they had spent the previous night. There, they bivouacked again.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Different conditions

Back in Base Camp, the climbers knew they had followed the American Direct line. However, they were surprised at how much the conditions differed from what the last team to repeat that route had experienced. That was Zdenek Hak and Jakub Kacha of the Czech Republic in 2021.

"We were surprised at their bivy spots," Ablovacky said. "For us, it would have been impossible to stop there. And the American pioneers climbed it in winter, so conditions were even more different [for them]."

Glen Dunmire and Chris Warner opened the American Direct line in 1990. Warner confirmed to ExplorersWeb that their route was almost identical to the one he had followed.

"We took a slightly more direct line under the Dablam," Warner explained. "After bivying in the crevasse at the top of the Dablam, we finished via the normal route. Also, we slept on top of the orange rock (lower down). Whereas the recent climbers turned left on snowy terrain, we tackled that rock buttress directly. I recall that Glen actually belayed me from the tent on that first buttress pitch."

Otherwise, Warner was happy and proud to see his route repeated. "I feel honored, it's so great that some badasses are climbing Ama in great style!" he said.

Marek Holeck and Ondro Huserka reached the summit of 7,234m Langtang Lirung today at 11 am Nepal time. They are currently on their way down.

Holecek has just reported the good news over satellite phone. The pair has completed the first ascent of the mountain's 2,200m+ east face after six hard days of climbing.

Holecek of the Czech Republic and Huserka of Slovakia had hoped to reach the top yesterday, but deep, sugary snow forced them into a fifth bivouac just below the highest point.

The climbers covered the last meters to the top this morning and immediately started down. It may take them one more day to safely reach base camp.

Marek Holecek and Ondro Huserka hoped to summit Langtang Lirung yesterday, but the mountain was not ready to reward the climbers for the first-ever ascent of its east face.

Ondra Mrklovsky, the third expedition member, dropped out from the final summit push. He spent the day watching the summit ridge, trying to spot his teammates on the final leg of their climb.

Holecek and Huserka's plan had been to quickly reach the top and then descend as far as they could, aware that they would need at least one more bivy night on the way down. However, summit news never arrived.

"Yesterday can be described in one word: hell," Holecek finally reported over satellite phone today. "We spent the whole day digging through loose sugar snow to the summit ridge. In the early evening, completely exhausted, we built the fifth bivouac under the top. In the morning [today], we hope to reach the top and hurry down."

Holecek of the Czech Republic and Huserka of Slovakia launched their summit push on the east face of Langtang Lirung six days ago. On Monday, they pitched their bivouac tent for the fourth time, 50m below the peak's summit ridge.

After waiting for two days in a damp tent at the base of the east face, Marek Holecek and Ondro Huserka leave for the summit of 7,234m Langtang Lirung tonight.

Langtang Lirung won the first battle against the two Czechs, attempting the first ascent of its terrible east face. Last week, relentless rain triggered avalanches down the face that forced the climbers back. After resting in a lodge at Ghompa, the team returned to the hardships of the face. Or at least two of them did.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

A third member of the team, Ondra Mrkovsky, dropped out of the second attempt.

Reaching the bivouac below the rocky face earlier this week, the climbers planned to leave on Wednesday night. However, another snow spell prompted them to stay patient until the skies cleared and the face lost its new layer of snow.

No snow is forecast for the next few days, and the pair has just enough time for a final attempt before they have to head back to Kathmandu. They plan to begin their attempt tonight at midnight.

A team from Japan's Himalaya Camp project has summited Sanctuary Peak, an isolated 6,207m peak in western Nepal. The young climbers completed it in a single push -- not bad, for a first high-altitude experience.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They launched their summit push from their only camp, Camp 1 at 5,300m. They summited on October 19 and returned to Camp 1 on October 20, which suggests that they descended through the night.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They had originally planned to set up a second camp but finally decided to go for the top from that point, despite the long distance. Luckily, they all safely reached base camp, where they are now resting.

Isolated ranges

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Sanctuary Peak lies in the isolated upper Dolpo region. The students trekked for nine days, then set up their Base Camp at 4,650m on the plains of Jagadura Khola. The peak, at the end of a long glacier, was not even visible from that spot. The approach and the trek back will have taken much longer than the climb itself.

Details on the first ascent will have to wait until the climbers return from the mountain in early November.

First ascent?

There is some uncertainty around the actual location of Sanctuary Peak and whether it is unclimbed. The American Alpine Journal mentions an expedition led by Paulo Grobel that reportedly climbed and named a Sanctuary Peak in 2012. However, Nepal's Himal Peak Profile (admittedly, rarely updated) lists the peak as unclimbed.

Sanctuary Peak marks another success for a number of Japanese teams currently attempting new routes, mainly in alpine style, in Nepal. Recently, another team of young climbers bagged the first ascent of Phungi (6,524m), near Manaslu.

Danika Gilbert of the U.S. and Pasang Kidar Sherpa of Nepal have climbed an aesthetic new route on 6,125m Beding Go in Rolwaling.

Pasang Kidar, an IFMGA guide and Managing Director of Khangri Trek based in Kathmandu, was climbing nearby Dolma Kang last year with Gilbert, when they saw the unclimbed northwest ridge of Beding Go (also spelled Bedding Go). The peak, part of the Gaurishankar massif, had had only one previous ascent, which was made by an international team up the south face in 2015.

"The good thing is that the climb starts virtually at the door of Pasang's home," Gilbert told ExplorersWeb.

From Beding village, the climbers trekked to the base of the mountain, aided by a porter who carried their gear to the 4,900m base camp. From there, they launched a single push, summiting on October 13.

Shared the permit

The pair minimized the cost of the climbing permit, which would have been quite pricey for Gilbert, by sharing it with a Japanese team. The Japanese group consisted of clients and several strong sherpas who had fixed ropes to a high camp at 5,100m. Pasang Kidar and Gilbert didn't need the ropes but used the broken trail to 5,100m. From there, they launched their final push ahead of the Japanese.

The two followed a route through glaciated terrain to a ridge separating Tibet from Nepal.

"After 400m along this ridge and over several false summits, we reached the final 130m ridge traverse," the climbers reported. "[There was] wild exposure on both sides: 1,350m down to the Rongshar Valley to the north and 700m back down to the Gaurishankar Khola Valley to the west."

"We set off at 3:55 am, and reached the summit at 12:07 pm. It was much longer and more exposed than we had expected," Gilbert admitted.

Pasang did most of the hard trail-breaking. Then on the long, sharp summit ridge, they faced several false summits and faceted snow. This prompted them choose their route carefully to minimize the high avalanche risk.

"There was no place to secure the route," said Gilbert. "We progressed roped up and ready to each jump to opposite sides of the ridge if the snow gave way under our feet."

On the highest point, they found some rope belonging to the first summiters. They mostly retraced their steps on the way back. They named the line Friendship Ridge and rated it at Grade V, AI 3+, TD.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Possible with clients

Back in high camp, they described the ridge to the sherpas on the Japanese team.

"We told them it was very exposed, with no way to fix ropes properly, so we suggested they would need to go with two sherpa guides per client," the climbers said.

The Japanese team tried the following day, but they soon retreated due to unstable snow conditions. Yet Pasang and Gilbert believe the route might be done with clients. Just not any client.

"In fact, this was one of the goals of the climb: to check if it would be a doable [commercial] route," they said. "We think it is possible with a 1:1 guide-client ratio, as long as the [client] is a strong, experienced climber since there will be no fixed ropes from the high camp."

This is a promising trend for the future of climbing in Nepal. Beyond the fixed ropes on 8,000'ers, experienced guides and skilled clients have endless possibilities on technical routes on the country's 6,000m peaks.

"It's a purer, more sustainable way to do mountaineering in the Himalaya, and for me as a guide, it's much more fun," Gilbert said.

Pasang agreed. As they describe it, the route is slightly harder than Ama Dablam -- and definitely lonelier. They compare it to the north face of Huandoy in Peru.

Joint project

Like Mingma G, Pasang Kidar Sherpa belongs to that generation of Rolwaling climbers pursuing personal climbing objectives in addition to their guiding. In 2017, he was part of the local team led by Nima Tenji Sherpa that bagged the first ascent of Langdung (6,326m).

Danika Gilbert is also a mountain guide based in Ridgway, Colorado, although she spends long periods in Nepal. The pair met climbing but joined forces to bring Afghan women and blind climbers to Nepal in order to expose them to trekking and climbing.

The goodwill project started in 2017 when they took a group of Afghan girls trekking in Langtang. When the Taliban took over, most of these girls fled Afghanistan and now live as refugees around the world.

"We are making an enormous effort to bring them from their foster countries, as they have serious difficulty obtaining traveling visas," the climbers explained. "Luckily, the Nepalese government has been helpful, and some weeks ago, we managed to bring a group of them, currently living in Germany."

The girls climbed Yalung Ri and another nearby peak with Pasand, Gilbert, Mingma Cherri Sherpa, and an American group.

"By now, Nepal feels like home to them, and climbing mountains crosses frontiers and nationalities," Gilbert explained. "It's a place where they can be utterly happy and hide from their terrible reality. They feel exiled in a foreign land and cannot ever return to their home countries. In Nepal, they find themselves just mountaineers. And they have found great role models in female sherpa climbers such as Pasang Lamu Akita, Dawa Yangzum, and Maya Sherpa."

No one expected that Langtang Lirung would make things easy for Czech climbers Marek Holecek, Ondrej Huserka, and Ondra Mrklovsky. However, nobody expected that an optimistic forecast would turn into relentless rain, which triggered avalanches everywhere.

The team had patiently waited for a good forecast. When it came, they launched their summit push up the east face of Langtang Lirung on October 9. They planned a four-day ascent and two more days of descent.

Then rain started to pour that morning, forcing the team to improvise a bivouac under a rock wall. They needed shelter from the gigantic avalanches that, as Holecek reported via satellite phone, started falling around...and on them.

Hiding from avalanches

"It always gets completely dark, and a mass of snow flies over with a terrible crash," Holecek said. "The pressure squeezes the walls of the tent...Then for another minute, I listen to the snow disappearing into the valley."

The climbers endured the night there until the avalanches stopped. That morning, they returned to base camp and then down to the nearest village.

They are not ready to surrender quite yet. "We still have time...we are thinking about another attempt," said Holecek.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Months after their winter attempt on Pakistan's Trango Tower, Poland's Maciej Kimel and Michal Krol have returned for another high-altitude project, this time with Mariusz Madej. The three will attempt the northeast face of 6,186m Kyajo Ri in Nepal's Khumbu.

Kyajo Ri (sometimes spelled Kiazo Ri) is a common background view for visitors to Namche Bazaar. It ranks as a trekking peak, but even the normal route up the southwest ridge is technically hard. The Poles are aiming for a new line up the 1,000m northeast wall that faces the village of Machhermo.

Strategy

They plan to set up Base Camp at 4,400m, right below the face, and start by looking for a suitable route down while they acclimatize. Once ready, they will proceed alpine-style up their new line.

"We chose this wall because of its unique charm and the possibility of a new line," Michal Krol told Polski Himalaizm Sportowy. "It will be a mixed climb, with more ice and snow on the lower parts of the north face. But as we progress across to the eastern flank, we expect to find rockier terrain."

Past attempts

According to The Himalayan Database, there are no direct, complete routes up the northeast face. In 2009, an Italian team opened The Phantom of the Opera on that face but they ended their climb on the ridge shortly above 6,000m, not at the summit. Marina Kopteva of Ukraine and Vladimir Belousov of Russia did the first ascent of the east face, a 28-pitch route they called Stealing Beauty, in 2013. And in 2018, Marek Holecek and Zdenek Hak climbed the impressive Lapse of Reason. Their traversing line crossed the west face, the north ridge, and the northeast face.

Last February, Kimel and Krol attempted a winter climb of the Nameless Tower in Pakistan's Trango. It was their second attempt. Their first try, in 2022, included Janusz Golab. Kimel was also in Nepal last fall when he opened a new route on Chobutse with Wadim Jablonski.

Nilgiri North gave Japanese Tatsuya Aoki and Takuya Mitoro no chance: They had to retreat from 6,600m.

The climbers were attempting a new alpine-style route up the west face of the 7,061m peak in Nepal's Annapurna region. The pair reached base camp at the end of September. It is not clear what pushed the climbers back, although before the summit push, Aoki mentioned he had stomach problems. They will update once they return home.

Nilgiri North is the highest peak of the Nilgiri Himal. Legendary alpinist and Annapurna pioneer Lionel Terray and two Dutch partners first climbed it in 1967. In the 1970s, Japanese expeditions made the first ascents of Nilgiri South and Nilgiri Central. We will post a story about the massif's fascinating climbing history this weekend.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The Japanese Alpine Club (JAC) has reported summiting 6,524m Phungi, a peak near Manaslu on the border with Tibet.

Phungi opened for climbing in 2014. Another Japanese team tried it two years ago, but according to the JAC and The Himalayan Database, it remained unclimbed until this latest attempt.

Some confusion

The peak is part of a massif with several points that might lead to confusion, as it can be mistaken with another Phungi, climbed by Piolet d'Or winner Yury Koshelenko and Aleksei Lonchinskii of Russia in 2017. They summited after a two-day, alpine-style push up its southeast face.

The Himalayan Database registered the Russians' ascent as Phungi Himal and categorized it as a peak and not as a range (which is strange because Himal is Nepalese for range). This Phungi Himal is also listed as 6,538m high, some meters higher than the point recently summited by the Japanese.

The JAC has shared no further details on the climb. We will have to wait until they find an internet connection.

Japanese teams in action

The group that climbed Phungi is just one of several Japanese teams currently in Nepal. The Phungi team, led by Takumi Inoue, is comprised of university students involved in a mentorship and training program by the JAC. Its overall aim is to continue the tradition of alpine-style climbing in the Japanese mountain culture. Other members are Ryoya Odaka, Fumiya Yokomichi, Masahiro Nakazawa, and Taiyo Ashizawa. They flew to Nepal on September 5.

Another team of young Japanese students are attempting the first ascent of Sanctuary Peak (6,207m) in the Kanjiroba Himal. Dubbed the Himalaya Camp Expedition, the team reached base camp at 4,600m today after a nine-day trek.

We also expect to hear soon from Tatsuya Aoki and Tayuka Mitoro, currently attempting Nilgiri North.

Marek Holecek and his Czech team have completed their acclimatization and are now ready for their main goal, the unclimbed east face of 7,234m Langtang Lirung.

While it was clear that Holecek wanted to climb Langtang Lirung, he has only recently confirmed that he, Ondrej Huserka, Ondra Mrklovsky, and Pavel Hodek will attempt the east face. Exposed and highly difficult, it has never been completed. Dangerous conditions thwarted last year's attempt on the face by Topo Mena, Roberto Morales, and Joshua Jarrin of Ecuador.

Acclimatizing the hard way

First, the climbers needed to increase their oxygen-carrying blood cells, so off they went to 5,846m Naya Kanga, near Langtang Lirung. But their acclimatization proved anything but a high-altitude stroll. It turned out to be a three-day climb in deep snow with two bivouacs.

"If outfitters offer Naya Kanga as a trekking trip, I'll consider these trekkers as brothers in arms," Holecek joked.

Judging from the photo below, it does look hard.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBFkj8tSl3T/

After Naya Kanga, the team briefly went to a village down the valley. Today, they returned to their camp at the base of the east face of Langtang Lirung to wait for the right weather forecast before heading up.

Italians on their way

Meanwhile, a second team is also approaching the mountain after arriving in the Langtang region yesterday. Italians Francois Cazzanelli, Roger Bovard, Jerome Perruquet, Stefano Stradelli, Emrik Favre, Francesco Ratti, and Giulio Vidoni plan to climb 6,781m Kimshung, then Langtang Lirung, as we reported earlier. They have not specified any route.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Adam Bielecki and Louis Rousseau have decided to stop their summit push on the unclimbed and unnamed 6,000'er in Pakistan's Hunza Valley.

According to Bielecki's social media, he and Rousseau started up on October 9. The route to the peak was complicated, and the duo spent that night on a crevassed glacier. A promising weather forecast did not pan out.

"Heavy snow in some places, no visibility at all, and constant snowfall," recalls Bielecki.

They spent a freezing night on the glacier. In the morning, Rousseau said that he was cold at night and didn't get enough sleep.

At 9 am that morning, they reached the wall and climbed a couloir at an altitude of about 5,200m. From there, Bielecki and Rousseau started simul climbing, first on snow and then on ice. By the end of the day, they had reached 6,000m.

They searched for a bivouac spot but couldn't find anywhere suitable. In the end, they decided to stay where they were, overnighting under a rock wall to avoid having to hang in their harnesses all night.

Retreat

At 4 am on October 11, numerous spindrift avalanches woke them up. The spindrift covered them repeatedly for the next four hours, but the sluffs had diminished by 8 am. It seemed that they would finally have a long-awaited day of good weather.

Rousseau had been lightly dressed and had not slept for two nights in the freezing temperatures. It was -20˚C.

"Unfortunately, at this stage, my partner...firmly decided to withdraw," said a disappointed Bielecki.

They descended and reached base camp on the evening of October 11. The porters were scheduled to arrive yesterday, and the climbers may already have started the trek out.

A Slovenian women's team has climbed four new, highly committed routes in the Indian Himalaya. It included the first ascent of 6,243m Lalung I, in pure alpine style.

In late August, Anja Petek, Patricija Verdev, Ana Baumgartner, and Ursa Kesar headed to the remote Lalung Valley in Ladakh. This region had been closed for many years because of political reasons, but a few years ago, it again opened for climbers. The Lalung Valley has many difficult, unclimbed peaks and remains poorly explored.

Even local porters didn't know the area very well. They told the women that their base camp would be around 5,000m. It was, in fact, at 4,100m. It also featured a hazard not common in high-altitude mountaineering -- bears. But more on that later.

The Slovenians split into two groups. Petek teamed up with Verdev, and Baumgartner joined Kesar. Both targeted different goals.

On August 31, after acclimatizing, Petek and Verdev climbed a new route in 15 hours on one of the walls of an unnamed 5,332m peak. They named the 1,400m route Connection (VI-/V-IV).

Meanwhile, on September 10, Baumgartner and Kesar climbed a new 800m route on the same peak in eight hours (V-/IV-III).

Three days later, the Baumgartner-Kesar duo climbed another difficult rocky line on this peak in six hours (V+ / IV, 670m).

The first ascent of Lalung I

Between September 9 and 14, Verdev and Petek summited the previously unclimbed 6,243m Lalung I by its difficult east ridge in alpine style.

Inees Dean, Alex Mathie, and Timothy Elson last attempted Lalung I via its north ridge in the autumn of 2022. They also tried Chiling II on the same expedition. In their report for the American Alpine Journal, Elson noted that Lalung I looked spectacular from a distance, but frozen soil and loose rock made up its north ridge, making it very unappealing.

A storm hits mid-climb

Petek and Verdev accessed the peak by a crevassed glacier and then began climbing the east ridge of Lalung I.

On the second day, the two women had to shelter in their tent because of a big storm that lasted until the end of the third day. The duo climbed during the night on the fourth and fifth days. On that fifth day, they managed to solve the last section.

A hundred meters below the summit, they were preparing the tent for the night when suddenly, the wind swept away the tent poles. Petek and Verdev then bivouacked high on the mountain.

They awoke the next morning to fog and continued the last short distance to the summit.

”[At first,] when we approached the top, there was a strong diffused light, and...we weren’t sure where exactly the summit was,” recalls Petek.

But then, when they were 30m below the summit, the sun finally broke through.

After summiting, Petek and Verdev descended down the west ridge and the north face. They reached the glacier in the late afternoon and made it back to Advanced Base Camp in eight hours. The next day, they continued to Base Camp.

They named the 2,000m route Here Comes The Sun (ED, M6+, AI5+). ED stands for Extremely Difficult, the highest level of the French six-point scale.

Meanwhile, the bears

Apart from the difficulty of the new routes, the Slovenian climbers had to deal with two opportunistic bears that made several visits to base camp looking for food, according to Kesar. At first, the cooks successfully chased them away, but the bears stubbornly continued to return.

The bears made a total of 10 visits. They ate some of the expedition’s food, destroyed one tent, and also knocked down the toilet tent.

Finally, the team decided that enough was enough and abandoned base camp after their successful first ascent of Lalung I.

Back home in Slovenia, Verdev told ExplorersWeb about the ascent of Lalung I, including how the terrain on the ridge was harder than it appeared from the north-northwest side of the mountain.

”[Yet] this expedition was really successful because we all came home with smiles on our faces,” recalls Verdev.

More about the climbers

Anja Petek is one of the most prominent Slovenian female alpinists. A psychotherapist by profession, she has already done expeditions in Kyrgyzstan and Peru and several difficult routes in the Alps. She climbed the east wall of 6,165m Hualcan in Peru with Andrej Jez and Aritza Monasterio and the north face of Triglav in Slovenia with Peter Boric, including the second winter ascent of the Cop Pillar on Triglav.

Patricija Verdev is an agricultural engineer with a wide experience climbing in the Alps and Tatra mountains. On this expedition, she served as organizer.

Ana Baumgartner will complete her doctoral degree in pharmacy this year and has climbed in the Central and Slovenian Alps. Her partner on this expedition, Ursa Kesar, has just finished her doctoral thesis in biomedicine and has climbed in Peru and Kyrgyzstan.

Petek, Verdev, Baumgartner, and Kesar follow in the footsteps of great Slovenian climbers like Vanja Furlan, Tomaz Humar, Andrej Stremfelj, Marko Prezelj, and Viki Groselj.

Past Slovenian women alpinists

Slovenian female climbers may be less known, but they also have a rich history. Barbka Lipovsek-Scetinin was the first Slovenian woman to climb a 7,000m peak. In 1967, she summited Ibn Sina Peak (then called Lenin Peak).

Marija Frantar led the first female expedition from the former Yugoslavia to Ismail Samani Peak in 1982 (called Communism Peak at the time). Seven members of the team summited. In 1990, Frantar ascended the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat.

Vlasta Kunaver climbed 7,021m Trisul I in 1987 and paraglided down in what was at the time a female altitude record for paragliding.

In 1986, on Broad Peak, Marija Stremfelj became the first Slovenian woman to summit an 8,000m peak. She then climbed Everest in 1990, Cho Oyu in 1995, and Dhaulagiri I in 2004.

Irena Mrak summited Gasherbrum II in 2004. In 2006, she reached the foresummit of Broad Peak with Mojca Svajger. The two women climbed the Diamir Face of Nanga Parbat in 2011.

Tina Di Batista, Tanja Grmovsek and Sandra Voglar ascended the Eternal Flame route on 6,251m Nameless Tower in 2006.

We would like to thank Planinska Zveza Slovenije (the Alpine Association of Slovenia) and Patricija Verdev for their help with this story.

Two expeditions are currently targeting the Langtang massif on the Nepal-Tibet border. Marek Holocek is -- seemingly -- going for 7,227m Langtang Lirung. Meanwhile, Francois Cazzanelli and his team aim for unclimbed Kimshung (also known as Tsangbu Ri). They will then climb Langtang Lirung, too.

Playing clue with Holecek

Holecek has not revealed his exact plans but is dropping plenty of weighted hints. He mentions a "lifetime dream" and "an untouched wall, rising almost two thousand meters from its base." At the same time, he posts photos of Langtang Lirung almost daily.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

The 2,000m wall could refer to either the south face, where Tomaz Humar died during a solo attempt in 2008, or the east face, attempted last year by Topo Mena, Roberto Morales, and Joshua Jarrin of Ecuador.

“It’s one of the most impressive walls I have ever seen,” said Morales before the attempt, which was thwarted by constant rockfall.

But then, Holecek said, "untouched." The east face has been attempted several times but never completed. The normal route goes up the southeast face. Adam Bielecki and Felix Berg attempted a new route up the northwest face in 2019. An Iranian team did the south face in 2010. A handful of climbers have done the southeast ridge, and some have also succeeded on the southwest ridge. But whichever route the Czech team chooses, it will not be easy.

Italians to try two

Meanwhile, Cazzanelli has returned to take on his old nemesis, 6,781m Kimshung. He previously attempted it in the spring of 2015 and the fall of 2016. This time, he is taking a strong group of climbing partners from the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps: Roger Bovard, Jerome Perruquet, Stefano Stradelli, Emrik Favre, Francesco Ratti, and Giulio Vidoni.

Perruquet and Ratti opened two new routes in Ladakh last year. Stradelli and Favre have partnered with Cazzanelli on many bold routes in the Alps, such as a new route on Matterhorn earlier this year.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DA2_uEGo3Vf/?img_index=1

The team also stated that they would attempt Langtang Lirung but didn't provide details on their route.

In our story earlier today about Jannu East (7,468m), we described how Benjamin Vedrines, Leo Billon, and Nicolas Jean turned around near the summit ridge as they attempted a new route up the highly difficult north face. However, something happened during their descent: American Sam Hennessey called for their help after partner Mike Gardner suffered a fatal fall.

Vedrines didn't mention anything about this on his social media but told the story to the French mountain site Alpinemag. He noted that his team decided to turn around because Leo Billon was feeling sick.

As they rappelled down the middle of the face, Vedrines saw American Sam Hennessey waving at him. Apparently, the line the Americans were climbing crossed the French route.

"But I couldn't see his partner, Mike [Gardner]," Vedrines told AlpineMag. "I took my hood off and paid attention to what Sam was trying to tell me."

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

Body still missing

Hennessey explained that his partner had fallen all the way to the base of the face. When the two parties reached the point where their routes intersected, the French told Hennessey to descend with them.

They rappelled down the last 700m together. Once at the base of the face, they looked for Gardner's body, but all they found was some clothing.

We are waiting for more details about the cause of the accident. Hennessey was on his third attempt to climb the north face of Jannu East in Nepal's Kangchenjunga region. Two of his attempts were with Gardner. Hennessey had received an American Alpine Club Cutting Edge Grant for this project.

Mike Gardner was a second-generation mountain guide from Idaho. In the Arcteryx video below, he describes himself as a climber, skier, but most of all, as a skateboarder.

Benjamin Vedrines, Leo Billon, and Nicolas Jean have aborted their summit push on Jannu East because of the health problems of one of them. A pity, since they had finished the most technical part of the climb, a beautiful ice line up the huge north face.

Hurried push

After some hesitation in the wake of the huge snowstorm that hit Nepal two weeks ago, the French team returned to base camp from the village of Kangbachen, where they had sat out the bad weather. Then they patiently waited for the snow to settle. Finally, they launched their only push up the north face of Jannu this past Sunday at 2 am.

View this post on Instagram

See this post on Instagram

They had planned to open a new route to the east point of the massif in pure alpine style, but they had to adopt a Plan B when they had only a three-day weather window instead of the five days they needed. Same alpine style, same wall, just a slightly different line.

"The final route will be technically easier but just as long [as the original] and doable over a short period of time," said the team before starting. "We will have to go up and down faster before the strong winds [come]. To do this, we have minimized everything: a single rope, a reduced number of cams, [and] a drastic intolerance to grams, to allow us to progress quickly."

The climb

Vedrines summarized what followed in a series of Instagram stories:

Through the first night and day of climbing, the team gained the snow slopes at the base of Jannu East and began the vertical north face. By 5 pm, they had carved a tiny cave in the ice at 6,300m, where they spent the night.

On the following morning, the team resumed climbing at 6:30 am.

The climbers said they had found great ice conditions and managed to link a series of long pitches.

"Unfortunately, due to health reasons of one of the team's members, we had to turn around midway," Vedrines texted on the post below, with a topo:

The climbers rappeled down the entire length of their route and managed to reach base camp safely at 8 pm that evening.

Americans still there

This is the end of the attempt for the French trio of young climbers. Vedrines will not be able to add Jannu East to what was otherwise a remarkable climbing year. After some fine early work in the Alps, he summited K2 solo, without oxygen or sherpa support in a mind-blowing 11 hours and then paraglided from the summit back to Base Camp. He even had the steam to return to Camp 2 to retrieve his tent.