Ultar Sar (in the center of the picture, the Southeast Pillar
Two alpine highlights at the start of the summer climbing season in the Karakoram in Pakistan: US-American Ethan Berman, Australian-Argentine climber Sebastian Pelletti and Dutch-born Maarten van Haeren opened a new route on the 7,388-meter-high Ultar Sar. The Frenchman Mathieu Maynadier and the Pakistani Mueez Ud din managed a first ascent on the 7,027-meter-high Spantik. Both teams were climbing in alpine style, i.e. they did without fixed ropes, fixed high camps, high altitude porters and bottled oxygen.
View from the helicopter cockpit of the Western Cwm (Lhotse in the background)
“I can’t tell you how many missions I’ve flown per day. It’s not the numbers that are important to me, but the quality of the missions.” This statement says a lot about Maurizio Folini‘s character.
The 59-year-old Italian is not only a helicopter pilot with heart and soul, but also a passionate mountain rescuer. Folini has been flying regular missions on the world’s highest mountains since 2011. In 2013, he achieved the highest helicopter rescue of all time on Mount Everest when he transported a Nepalese mountaineer down from 7,800 meters on a longline.
This Everest spring season, he has once again used his aircraft from the Nepalese company Kailash Helicopter Services to rescue many climbers suffering from high altitude sick from the mountain. “I flew a lot of missions in total. There were days when I landed six to eight times at Camp 2 (at 6,400 meters). On other days, I flew less,” says Maurizio.
A week ago today, German mountaineer Anja Blacha experienced something on Mount Everest that is now a rarity: she had the summit all to herself – because she was the last summit contender of the spring season to reach the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters and was on her way without a Sherpa companion. One day later, the Icefall Doctors declared the season over and began dismantling the ropes and ladders through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall above Everest Base Camp. This deprived Anja of the chance to attempt the neighboring 8,516-meter-high Lhotse without bottled oxygen.
So be it, Blacha can be pleased to be the first German mountaineer and only the eleventh woman in the world to have stood on Mount Everest without a breathing mask. A remarkable achievement that stands out from the almost 800 Everest ascents this spring.
This means that she has climbed twelve of the 14 eight-thousanders – in commercial teams, on the normal routes – without supplemental oxygen. Only Lhotse and Shishapangma in Tibet are still missing from her collection of eight-thousanders. After her safe return from the mountain, Anja Blacha answered my questions.
Anja, first of all, congratulations on your ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen. It was your third summit success on Mount Everest, and you used a breathing mask on the first two. How did you experience the difference – with/without additional oxygen?
“At the moment, I see it above all as an unbalanced combination of numbers.” That was Anja Blacha’s answer a week and a half ago when I asked her what it meant to her that she had climbed eleven of her twelve eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen. Now she has provided a balanced combination of numbers.
The 34-year-old German adventurer also scaled Mount Everest today without a breathing mask. “She was all alone on the summit,” Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, head of the expedition operator Imagine Nepal, informed me at around 8.30 a.m. Central European Summer Time. According to Mingma, Blacha had climbed to the highest point on earth without bottled oxygen and without a Sherpa companion.
View of Mount Everest (l.) and Lhotse (from Namche in fall 2019)
In probability theory, there is the law of large numbers. For example, if I throw the dice 10,000 times, I come closer to the probability of throwing a six every sixth attempt than if I only try 100 times.
There is also a law of large numbers in mountaineering: the more often I climb high peaks, the more likely I am to be noticed. On Mount Everest, where the season is coming to an end as the monsoon approaches, the personal records have been tumbling these days.
Tashi Gyalzen Sherpa reached the summit of Everest – as reported previously – four times this season, more often than anyone before in one year. At this point, it should also be mentioned that Gyalu Sherpa stood on the 8,586-meter-high summit of Kangchenjunga three times this spring. Without high-performing Sherpas – such as those mentioned here by way of example – only a fraction of the summit successes on Nepal’s eight-thousanders would be possible.
This also applies to Lakpa “Makalu” Sherpa. First he led the rope-fixing teams to the summits of Makalu and Dhaulagiri, then he led a successful expedition of Seven Summit Treks on Kangchenjunga – without climbing the third highest peak on earth himself. Hats off to these strong mountaineers from Nepal!
P.S.: The so-called “Race on Everest” between the speed climbers Karl Egloff – who has a Swiss and an Ecuadorian passport – and the US-American Tyler Andrews, which was hyped by many media, failed due to the weather.
Egloff, who set off without oxygen, turned back at Camp 3 at around 7,300 meters, Andrews above the South Col. Due to the stormy weather, Tyler had already decided before his start at base camp to use a breathing mask in the upper part of the mountain.
On 9 May, Tashi had been part of 8K Expeditions’ seven-man rope-fixing team, which had made the first Everest ascent of the season. This was followed by his summit success number two on 14 May, number three on 19 May and number four today, 23 May. Never before has a person stood on the summit of Mount Everest so many times in one season.
The eight-thousander Broad Peak (with the shadow of K2, photographed in 2004)
The uprising of the Pakistani tourism industry has been at least partially successful. The regional government of the Gilgit-Baltistan province has slightly reduced the higher prices for climbing permits for Pakistan’s highest mountains that were decided for this summer.
The Pakistan Association of Tour Operators (PATO) had filed a complaint against the original price increase. The PATO had argued that this was severely damaging mountain tourism in the country. The Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Court initially put the decision on hold. The new revised price list is now available.
The Brits arrived at Everest Base Camp (EBC) by helicopter on Saturday and left for high camp that evening with a strong Sherpa team. They are expected back at base camp today or tomorrow morning at the latest and will return home on Friday, Lukas writes to me from EBC. The goal: to be back in London within seven days.
Regardless of how you think about it, Furtenbach’s controversial experiment to radically shorten the time for an Everest expedition by using xenon for pre-acclimatization was a success. Provided, of course, that nothing happens to his clients on the descent.
“I am delighted for Sirbaz that he has now also completed the 14 eight-thousanders ‘topless’,” writes Ralf Dujmovits, Germany’s most successful high-altitude mountaineer. “My heartfelt congratulations to him.”
Sirbaz Khan has fulfilled his self-proclaimed “Mission 14”: On Sunday at 11.50 a.m. Nepalese time, the 37-year-old reached the summit of Kangchenjunga at 8,586 meters with the team from expedition operator Imagine Nepal. Sirbaz also scaled the third highest mountain on earth without a breathing mask. This makes him the first Pakistani to climb all 14 eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen.
Junko Tabei ont the summit of Mount Everest in 1975
“I can’t understand why men make all this fuss about Everest – it’s only a mountain,” Junko Tabei once said. Fifty years ago today, on 16 May 1975 at 12.30 p.m. local time, the Japanese woman became the first woman to reach the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters. She was accompanied by Ang Tshering Sherpa (1949-2012), both using bottled oxygen. It was around two decades before commercial mountaineering on Mount Everest as we know it today took off.
“I did not want to climb a single step. Never again,” Junko later said about the moment she reached the summit with Ang Tshering. They stayed at the top for 50 minutes, then set off on their descent. Back home in Japan, Tabei was later celebrated as a hero, which she could do little with: “I’ve only done what I wanted.”
“So, what’s next? Another record-setting expedition? Maybe. As a by-product,” writes Anja Blacha on her website. “Rather than defining my goals based on records, I like to let curiosity guide my way. Following my interests, and living up to my values, virtues, capabilities. The art of striving well. Eudaimonia.” This term from Greek philosophy is made up of “Eu” (good) and “daimon” (demon, spirit). In other words, Anja is trying to live out her own good spirit.
And the 34-year-old German adventurer does this very persistently. This is how Blacha reached the South Pole on skis in the winter of 2019/2020, after pulling her sledge almost 1,400 kilometers from the coast of Antarctica, alone and without outside support.
She has scaled Mount Everest twice – in 2017 via the Tibetan north side and in 2021 via the Nepalese south side. And with her successes on Annapurna I and Dhaulagiri this spring, she has summited twelve of the 14 eight-thousanders in commercial teams via the normal routes – with the exception of Everest, all without bottled oxygen. After her second eight-thousander summit success this season, Anja Blacha answered my questions.
Anja, first of all, congratulations on your 12th eight-thousander. The weather conditions were difficult at first. Then a weather window opened up. How did you experience the ascent and descent on Dhaulagiri?
Among the many summit success stories from Mount Everest today is the news of the first death of a foreign climber on the world’s highest mountain this spring season. The Nepalese expedition operator Snowy Horizon Treks announced that a 45-year-old client from the Philippines died last night on the South Col. The mountaineer had been preparing for his summit attempt when he passed away, it said. He was probably suffering from high altitude sickness.
Tashi Gyalzen Sherpa has set himself the goal of scaling the highest peak on earth four times this spring (with bottled oxygen). Last year, Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, Climbing Sherpa of the operator Seven Summit Treks, summited Everest three times in eight days. Nepalese journalist Purnima Shrestha also reached the summit three times during the season as a client of a commercial team – with breathing mask and Sherpa support.
Fierce gusts of wind have caused a forced respite on Mount Everest and the other eight-thousanders in Nepal. This gives me the opportunity to summarise the events of the past three days.
After the rope-fixing team from the Nepalese expedition operator 8K Expeditions – as reported – achieved the first summit success of the spring on Mount Everest last Friday, around a dozen other mountaineers followed in their footsteps on Sunday – with bottled oxygen and Sherpa support – to reach the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters.
She has done it again. Today, Anja Blacha – along with the rope-fixing team of the Nepalese expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) led by Lakpa “Makalu” Sherpa – reached the 8,167-meter-high summit of Dhaulagiri in western Nepal.
According to SST, the 34-year-old German mountaineer was one of a total of 13 people to achieve the first summit success this spring on the seventh highest mountain on earth. Anja once again did without bottled oxygen during the ascent – as did Pakistani Sajid Ali Sadpara and Taiwanese Lu Chung-Han.
