Anyone who regularly reads my blog knows that I have a very distanced relationship with supposed “records” in mountaineering. I make an exception for Dawa Yangzum Sherpa, because she is a true pioneer of women’s mountaineering. For more than a decade, she has been campaigning for women in her home country of Nepal to be given the opportunity to climb mountains and earn a living there. On 9 October, Dawa Yangzum summited the 8,027-meter-high Shishapangma in Tibet, becoming the first woman from Nepal to have saled all 14 eight-thousanders.
First Asian woman with an international mountain guide certificate
The Sherpani, who grew up with three brothers and two sisters in a small mountain village in the Rolwaling Valley, had already set milestones before. In 2014, she reached the summit of K2 with her compatriots Maya Sherpa and Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita. They were the first women from Nepal to scale the second highest mountain on earth. In 2017, Dawa Yangzum became the first woman in Asia to receive an international mountain guide certificate and has been working regularly as a mountain guide ever since, among others on Mount Everest.
Since 2020, she has been offering climbing courses for young Nepalese women in the Khumbu region. She herself has lived in Boulder in the USA for years and works for the expedition operator Alpine Ascents International. The 34-year-old Nepalese answered my questions.
Dawa Yangzum, first of all, congratulations on completing your collection of eight-thousanders. Would you highlight one of the 14 ascents in particular?
Thank you! The most important words belongs at the beginning. “All the construction work has been completed,” Nepalhilfe Beilngries lets me know. The school in the village of Rama in the Humla District in the far west of Nepal has been completed.
Around 350 children from Rama and the surrounding hamlets in the municipality of Tanjakot now have a safe roof over their heads as they study, hopefully giving them a good foundation for their future lives. Nepalhilfe Beilngries had two school buildings built on a mountainside at an altitude of around 2,600 meters – with a total of twelve classrooms, a kitchen block and separate toilets for girls and boys. The construction was made possible by your donations for “School up – far west”!
At the summit of Putha Hiunchuli, Alix von Melle leaves Luis’ ashes to the wind
I often think about Luis Stitzinger these days. Now that his widow Alix von Melle has spread his ashes on the 7,246-meter-high Putha Hiunchuli in western Nepal. The same place where I first attempted a seven-thousander in 2011 – in vain, I had to turn back at 7,150 meters. Alix’s expedition leader on Putha Hiunchuli was now the Austrian Herbert Wolf – as he was for me 13 years ago.
And with Eva-Maria Ramsebner, from Austria too, there was also someone en route from the team with whom I was able to celebrate the first ascent of the 7,129-meter-high Kokodak Dome in western China in 2014. Expedition leader at the time: Luis Stitzinger. So many interfaces – no wonder I remember him so often these days.
For the second time in five years, the Piolet d’ Or will be awarded posthumously to two mountaineers. As announced by the jury, the late Japanese climbers Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima are among this year’s winners. They will be awarded the “Oscar of Mountaineering” for their first ascent of the North face of Tirich Mir in summer 2023. The 7708-meter-high Tirich Mir is the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush. The jury emphasized that the Japanese had almost no prior information about the remote North Face. It was a “splendid traverse of a high-altitude mountain”, it said.
View from the East Ridge at around 7,300 meters towards the summit of Cho Oyu
“We have decided to go down. We can’t get to the night camp behind the hollow (on the summit ridge) in one day. We have neither the time nor the strength to make it. Today we’ll collect the equipment. Tomorrow – down.” With these words, the Russian mountaineer Andrej Vasiliev announced to the portal mountain.ru the end of the summit attempt on the Nepalese side of the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu.
Vasiliev and his compatriots Vitaly Shipilov, Kirill Eizeman and Sergei Kondrashin turned back on the summit ridge at an altitude of around 8,000 meters. They had previously reported deep snow on the route. It was their fourth unsuccessful attempt since the start of their expedition at the end of September, which is now likely to be over.
The small spark of hope that the Slovakian climber Ondrej Huserka could be rescued alive from a crevasse on the 7,227-meter-high Langtang Lirung in Nepal has been extinguished. His Czech climbing partner Marek Holecek reported on Facebook that Ondrej died in his arms after falling into a crevasse on the descent on Thursday.
“I was rappelling down from (an) Abalakov thread. Ondra rappelled after me. What held fine for me proved fatal for him. (The) Abalakov thread cracked, and he fell into an ice crevasse. First, he hit an angled surface after an eight-meter drop, then continued down a labyrinth into the depths of the glacier. I rappelled down to him and stayed with him for four hours until his light faded. There’s nothing more to add.”
There is a fine line between triumph and tragedy on the world’s highest mountains. Three days after the news of the first ascent of the extremely challenging East Face of the seven-thousander Langtang Lirung in Nepal by the Czech Marek Holecek and the Slovak Ondrej Huserka, there is bad news: Ondrej fell into a crevasse on the descent two days ago, reports Slovakian mountaineer Eva Milovka, who is part of Huserka’s home team, on Facebook.
“His partner – Marek Holecek – was not able to recover him and after shouting to him and hearing no response, he assessed that Ondrej is dead and descended alone to the base camp. Yesterday was a helicopter rescue flight and nobody was willing to descent onto to glacier due to some objective dangers of the place. We have hope that Ondrej is still alive.”
Marek Holecek gave himself an early present for his 50th birthday on 5 November. The Czech top mountaineer, together with 34-year-old Slovakian Ondrej Huserka, climbed the extremely challenging 2,200-meter-high East Face of the 7,227-meter-high Langtang Lirung for the first time. Holecek let it be known via satellite phone that it took them a total of five and a half days to complete the climb and that they reached the summit yesterday, Wednesday, at 11 am. The two were climbing in alpine style – i.e. without fixed ropes and without fixed high camps.
Mick Fowler (l.) and Viktor Saunders on the summit of Yawash Sar
They climb and climb and just keep going. The two British mountaineers Victor Saunders, 74, and Mick Fowler, 68, don’t care about their advanced age or health restrictions. This fall, they made the first ascent of the 6,258-meter-high Yawash Sar in the Karakoram. The remote mountain in the Karakoram – around 130 kilometers northeast of K2 as the crow flies – is the highest peak in the Khunjerab massif, not far from Pakistan’s border with China.
Two years ago, in fall 2022, a five-member British team cut their teeth on Yawash Sar – also known as the “Matterhorn of Khunjerab” due to its beautiful shape. In a total of three summit attempts via the southern flank of the mountain, the climbers had reached a maximum altitude of around 6,000 meters. The rock was too brittle, the technical difficulties too great, they said.
Complex wall, good conditions
Fowler and Saunders succeeded in climbing the Northwest Face. “The face was complex and we were fortunate to find good climbing conditions,” said Fowler. Before they got on, they studied the wall very carefully with binoculars so as not to end up in impasses, said Mick. In total, it took them seven days to climb up and down to the summit and back to their base camp.
Northwest Face of the 6,258-meter-high Yawash Sar
“A notable feature of the climb was a lack of good bivouac sites and at one point, we endured an excruciatingly uncomfortable hanging bivouac in strong winds,” said Mick. He spoke of “one of the best ascents that we have done together. It was absolutely brilliant!”
Three decades on separate paths
Fowler and Saunders had already climbed together in the Karakoram in the 1980s. In 1987, they caused a sensation when they mastered the 2,200-meter-high “Golden Pillar”, the Northwest Pillar of Spantik (7,027 m) for the first time. After that, the two went their separate ways as mountaineers for almost three decades.
Victor Saunders on the ascent
Saunders worked mainly as a mountain guide and expedition leader. He climbed the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on all continents. Between 2004 and 2013, Victor reached the summit of Mount Everest six times (with bottled oxygen). He stood on the eight-thousander Cho Oyu four times, once of which (in 1997) without a breathing mask. Fowler formed a powerful team with Paul Ramsden for a long time. Three times – in 2003, 2013 and 2016 – the duo was honored with the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of mountaineering”, for spectacular first ascents on six-thousanders.
Now he has made an astonishing comeback as an alpinist alongside Saunders. I got in touch with the two of them. Victor Saunders is still leading a trekking tour in Bhutan until the end of the month. So only Mick Fowler was able to answer my questions.
Mick, first of all congratulations on your great first ascent of Yawash Sar in Pakistan. Can you reveal the secret of why a 68-year-old (you) and a 74-year-old (Victor) are still able to achieve such impressive feats on the mountain?
Mick Fowler at the highest point
There is no secret. We are lucky to be reasonably healthy for our age but I think the main ingredients for success are motivation and willpower. And a basic level of ability of course. We spend a lot of time choosing a suitable objective and looking forward to it. All that anticipation helps motivate us and we are both the sort of people who will do our very best to succeed on something when we have set our heart on it. I suppose having climbed objectives like this for over 40 years also helps. We tend to know have a good idea of our ability and readily agree on when to push on or retreat.
How much fun did you have on your first ascent, how much torment?
Mostly lots of fun. We were lucky in that the conditions above the bergshrund were excellent and gave really enjoyable climbing. I found wading up the glacier to the bergschrund something of a torment but Victor seems to like that sort of thing. We did have a sitting/hanging bivouac which was amongst the most uncomfortable we have ever had.
View from the hanging bivouac
But then with the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to view such an experience in a better light and derive some warped retrospective pleasure from it. We laugh now about our antics to try and alleviate the discomfort that night!
Have you set yourselves an age limit for your extreme tours?
No. We will carry on doing our best to choose and climb appropriate objectives for as long as we are able.
Mick, you’ve been climbing with a colostomy bag since your bowel cancer. How does this hinder you – especially on steep walls in freezing temperatures?
The main problem I have is that the surgeons removed most of the fat from my buttocks to fill the hole where my anus was. That means I have virtually no padding in my buttocks which makes sitting bivouacs excruciatingly uncomfortable. The colostomy bag itself is not a problem when all is going well. But my harness does go right across my stoma and poo squidging accidents inevitably occur when there is lots of output and it’s not possible to change the bag for any reason – usually for reasons of bad weather or sustained difficulties. There is also the hassle factor of having to carry lots of colostomy bags as I really don’t want to run out. And the adhesive doesn’t work so well in really cold temperatures which can cause problems.
There is a lot of talk about the increasingly poor climbing style on the world’s highest mountains – cue: fixed ropes to the summit on commercial expeditions. What is your position on this?
Mick and Viktor’s route
I don’t really have a strong opinion on them. If people want to get to the top that way then that’s up to them. It’s just a pity that such expeditions clog up certain routes with ropes and worse. It all looks very unpleasant and dangerous to me. And I can’t see how anyone can possibly call it climbing. But then it’s great that we are all different.
“I lifted up the sock and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it. We were all literally running in circles dropping F-bombs.” This is how the US climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin described to the magazine “National Geographic” the moment when he and his team discovered remains of Andrew Irvine on the Central Rongbuk Glacier at the foot of the North face of Mount Everest .
They found an old boot with a foot in it and the sock in question, which bore witness to who had once worn it. At the beginning of June 1924, the British mountaineers George Herbert Leigh Mallory, then 37 years old, and Andrew Comyn Irvine, 22 years old, had set off on a summit attempt on the then unclimbed Mount Everest. According to their expedition colleague Noell Odell, they were last seen on 8 June on the Northeast Ridge, after which their trail was lost. To this day, the mystery of how close they came to the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters is unsolved.
Another top alpinist has been lost forever in the mountains. Mike Gardner fell to his death last Monday on the still unclimbed 7,468-meter-high Jannu East (also known as Kumbhakarna East) in eastern Nepal. Mike was only 32 years old.
Together with his friend and rope partner Sam Hennessey, the mountain guide from the US state of Colorado had attempted to climb the extremely challenging 2,400-meter-high North Face of Jannu East in alpine style – i.e. without bottled oxygen and without fixed high camps – for the third time after 2019 and 2023. It is still unclear exactly how the fatal fall occurred.
Hennessey had alerted the French climbers Benjamin Vedrines, Leo Billon and Nicolas Jean, who had also attempted the wall in alpine style. The French trio had already decided to turn back because Billon was not feeling well. Together with Hennessey, the Frenchmen abseiled down to the base of the wall. Their search for Gardner – on foot and with the help of a drone – was unsuccessful. They only discovered some of the fallen climber’s equipment.
Shishapangma, the only eight-thousander located entirely in Tibet
Today the list of people who have stood on all 14 eight-thousanders has virtually exploded – it has grown by 15 names. The reason was a successful summit day of commercial expeditions on the 8,027-meter-high Shishapagma in Tibet. According to the largest Nepalese operator Seven Summit Treks, 29 team members reached the summit of the lowest eight-thousander. Twelve of them completed their collection of eight-thousanders: Nepalese Nima Rinji Sherpa, Mingtemba Sherpa and Lakpa Temba Sherpa, Pakistani Sheroze Kashif, Japanese Naoko Watanabe, Polish Dorota Rasinska-Samocko, British Adriana Brownlee, Russian Alina Pekova, Taiwanese Ko-Erh (called “Grace”) Tseng, French Alasdair McKenzie, Romanian Adrian Laza and Italian Mario Vielmo.
The expedition operator Climbalaya also reported three team members who had now stood on all 14 eight-thousanders after their summit success on Shishapangma: Dawa Yangzum Sherpa and Mingma Tenzing Sherpa from Nepal as well as the Chinese woman He Jing.
At first it was an apprehension, now it is a sad certainty: five Russian climbers with whom radio contact was lost on Sunday on the eight-thousander Dhaulagiri in western Nepal are dead. According to the newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, the crew of a rescue helicopter discovered the bodies of the five missing mountaineers at an altitude of around 7,100 meters. It is assumed that Alexander Dusheyko, Oleg Kruglov, Vladimir Chistikov, Mikhail Nosenko and Dmitrii Shpilevoi fell around 500 meters to their dead, it said.
Now she’s in double figures. Last Saturday (5 October), Anja Blacha and Ngima Dorchi Sherpa scaled the 8,188-meter-high Cho Oyu via the Tibetan north side, her fourth eight-thousander this year – “Ngima with, me without a breathing mask,” as Anja writes to me. “It was a bit windy, but otherwise the conditions were great.”
For the 34-year-old German, it was the tenth of the 14 eight-thousanders, the ninth without bottled oxygen. “I know my body well enough by now to know how it reacts to altitude and that it can usually cope with it. So why not do without this aid if I can?,” Blacha wrote to me at the end of September after her summit success on Manaslu.
The first summit successes of the fall season on the eight-thousanders in Tibet are now perfect. The expedition operator Imagine Nepal announced that an eleven-member team led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa reached the summit of Shishapangma at 8,027 meters today. Five team members had completed their eight-thousand-meter collection, it said: the Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa and Dawa Gyalje Sherpa, the US-American Tracee Lee Metcalfe, the Japanese Naoki Ishikawa and the Pakistani Sirbaz Khan.
