For many people in the mountain village of Thame in the Everest region, the zero hour struck on 16 August. As reported, large parts of the village were destroyed that day – by masses of water, debris and mud from two glacial lakes below Tesi Lapche La (also known as Tashi Lapcha). The 5,755-meter-high pass leads from the Rolwaling Valley into the Khumbu. According to the regional administration, the flood hit at least 18 buildings. These included an elementary school and an infirmary in Thame, both built and financed by the Himalayan Trust, the aid organization of the Everest first ascender Sir Edmund Hillary, who died in 2008.
K2, the second highest mountain on earth (in 2004)
The commercial mountaineering season in the Karakoram in Pakistan is over. The expedition operators have long been beating the drum for their offers for the coming fall in Nepal and Tibet. As in previous years, the eight-thousander Manaslu in western Nepal is likely to be particularly busy.
This mountain summer in Pakistan, most of the commercial teams gathered once again at the 8,611-meter-high K2. The “King of Eight-thousanders” was long considered too dangerous and challenging for commercial expeditions and was therefore reserved for the world’s best mountaineers. This has now changed radically. In summer, the second highest mountain on earth shares the same fate that has befallen the highest of all mountains, Mount Everest, in spring for many years: Full base camp, fixed ropes up to the summit, rubbish on the normal route, traffic jams at key points.
Five days after the avalanche accident on the 7,932-meter-high Gasherbrum IV in the Karakoram, the two injured Russian mountaineers Sergei Mironov and Mikhail Mironov have been flown by rescue helicopter to a hospital in the northern Pakistani city of Skardu. “Their condition is satisfactory”, informed the Russian embassy in Pakistan, without giving details of the nature of their injuries. Initial reports had spoken of fractures.
According to the Russian mountaineering portal mountain.ru, the search for Sergey Nilov, who died in the avalanche, has been canceled. Too much fresh snow had fallen in the past few days, it said. The snowfall had also delayed the evacuation of the injured. Two days ago, a five-man rescue team had brought the two Russian climbers to a spot at an altitude of about 6,000 metres where a helicopter could land.
Tragedy on the almost eight-thousander Gasherbrum IV in the Karakoram in Pakistan: Five Russian mountaineers who had set out to recover the body of their compatriot Dmitry Golovchenko, who died in an accident a year ago, were hit by an ice avalanche. “As the team ascended the mountain, an ice formation, possibly a serac, collapsed, unleashing a catastrophic event. The unforgiving nature of Gasherbrum IV, known for its hazardous terrain, turned their noble mission into a fight for survival,” wrote Karrar Haidri, President of the Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP), in a press release.
It took my breath away when I saw the pictures from Thame on the Internet today. The village lies at around 3800 metres in the Khumbu area, the region around Mount Everest. Masses of mud and water rolled through the village, which I visited in 2002 and 2019. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, around half of the village was severely damaged, especially the lower-lying areas. A school, a medical centre, seven houses and five lodges were swept away. Most of the houses were reportedly uninhabitable. At least one person is missing.
A stroke of luck: the water and mudslides hit the village in daylight. Most of the inhabitants were apparently able to reach safety in higher areas. The Gompa of Thame, one of the oldest and most important monasteries in the Khumbu, is located well above the village and is likely to have been spared from the disaster.
It’s climbs like this that keep the belief in true alpinism alive. At the beginning of August, 33-year-old Briton Tom Livingstone and 42-year-old Slovenian Ales Cesen mastered the West Ridge on the 7,952-meter-high Gasherbrum III in the Karakoram in Pakistan for the first time. They climbed in alpine style to the summit, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without fixed ropes, without fixed high camps, without high porters.
On the descent, they traversed to the eight-thousander Gasherbrum II and used the fixed ropes on the normal route of the commercial teams – “which changed our style a little, but made sense,” Livingstone wrote on Instagram. It was the much safer option for the return to base camp.
The 8,611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram (in 2004)
Even if it is difficult, it makes no sense to turn a blind eye: Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima paid for their adventure on K2, the second highest mountain on earth, with their lives. In consultation with the families of the two top Japanese climbers, the rescue operation on the second highest mountain on earth was halted yesterday – because the terrain where Hiraide and Nakajima had been located is too steep and too dangerous.
It was the project everyone whose heart beats for real alpinism was looking forward to this summer. The Japanese Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima, who are among the best mountaineers in the world, had set out to climb the extremely challenging West Face of the 8611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram in Pakistan – on a new route, in alpine style, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without high porters, without fixed camps and without fixed ropes. According to reports from Pakistan, Hiraide and Nakajima fell from an altitude of around 7,500 meters. They had set off on their summit attempt four days ago.
Previously, it was considered the second highest unclimbed mountain in the world, but the highest accessible: the 7,570-meter-high Gankhar Puensum on the border between Bhutan and China is closed to climbers. In Bhutan, the mountains are considered the abode of the gods and are therefore not allowed to be climbed. Since 2004, only trekking has been permitted in the Himalayan state.
While the summer season has started in the mountains of the Karakoram in Pakistan, the past spring season is still being dealt with in Nepal. Nepalese mountaineering star Nirmal Purja is in a lot of trouble. According to the newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, the Department of Tourism within the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation recommended strict action against Purja and his commercial expedition company Elite Exped.
Both had violated several mountaineering rules of the Nepalese Tourism Act in the past season, it is said. “Now the ball is in the Ministry’s court,” the newspaper quotes a source from the Department of Tourism. Among other things, it is responsible for issuing permits to climb the high mountains of Nepal.
Symon Welfringer (l.) and Charles Dubouloz on the summit of Hungchhi
Ask anyone what name of a mountain spontaneously comes to mind and you will probably get the answer Mount Everest, with a few exceptions. Quite simply because the highest mountain is synonymous with mountains in general. This also explains the overwhelming interest of the general public in everything to do with the 8,849-meter-high mountain in the border region between Nepal and Tibet. The Everest hype still leaves a little attention for the other 13 eight-thousanders. But what happens below the magical but actually arbitrary limit of 8,000 meters is of little or no interest to the masses.
Yet for years, the real alpinism has been on the seven-, six- and five-thousanders. This is where the world’s best mountaineers not only find their technical playgrounds, but also the peace and quiet they need to face great challenges. Like the two Frenchmen Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer this spring.
Big business as usual. That’s how you could summarize the past spring season on Mount Everest. It got off to a slow start at first because the Icefall Doctors took longer than planned to complete their work in the Khumbu Icefall on the Nepalese south side of the mountain. Fewer snow bridges, huge crevasses – climate change is also making itself felt on the world’s highest mountain.
Once the route through the icefall and a little later up to the summit was secured mit fixed ropes, the commercial climbing machine, which had been well-oiled for years, started up as usual: On the good weather days, long queues formed at the key points, and at times, as many climbers crowded together at the summit as at an open-air concert by Madonna.
Now no other woman from Germany has stood on eight-thousanders more often than Anja Blacha. The mountaineer, who celebrates her 34th birthday on 18 June, achieved a last-minute summit success on the 8,586-meter-high Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, at the end of the spring season on the eight-thousanders in Nepal. She had already scaled the 8,485-meter-high Makalu, the fifth-highest of all mountains, on 12 May. On both mountains, Anja climbed on the normal routes, with teams from the commercial expedition operator Seven Summit Treks (SST) and did without bottled oxygen herself.
These were her seventh and eighth eight-thousanders after Mount Everest (in 2017 and 2021), Broad Peak, K2 (both in 2019), Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and II (these three in 2023). Only on Everest did she use a breathing mask on her ascents. This means that the German mountaineer now has one more eight-thousander summit success to her name than Alix von Melle, who has summited seven eight-thousanders to date. Anja Blacha answered my questions after her return from Kangchenjunga.
Congratulations, Anja. You scaled Makalu and now Kangchenjunga at the end of the spring season without bottled oxygen. With eight eight-thousanders to your name, you can now call yourself the most successful German female high-altitude mountaineer. How does that feel?
It was Gelje’s fourth attempt to reach the summit this way. In addition to him, Tenging Gyaljen Sherpa, Lakpa Temba Sherpa, Chhangba Sherpa, Lakpa Tenji Sherpa and Ngima Ongda Sherpa as well as their 19-year-old French client Alasdair Mckenzie stood on the highest point. For Mckenzie, it was the thirteenth of the 14 eight-thousanders. All the climbers used bottled oxygen. It was the first Cho Oyu summit success from the south since 2009, when Denis Urubko and Boris Dedeshko climbed a new route through the Southeast Face without breathing masks.
Noell Odell is collecting fossils on the Tibetan north flank of Mount Everest when the weather suddenly clears. “The entire summit ridge and the last ridge of Everest became visible,” the British mountaineer later wrote about this moment in the midday hours on 8 June 1924.
“My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow-crest beneath a rock-step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock-step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more.” Odell is apparently the last person to see his expedition colleagues George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on their summit attempt. They never return. At the time, Mallory is 37 and Irvine 22 years old.
