“Entertaining” – that’s how my wife summed up the Netflix documentary about Nirmal Purja‘s “Project Possible” when the 101 minutes were over. And I think she is right. Some of the film sequences of the 14 highest mountains in the world that the Nepalese summited in 2019 in just six months and six days are…
It’s about time. This Saturday in Briancon, France, when Yasushi Yamanoi from Japan receives the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of mountaineers”, for his lifetime achievement, this prestigious award will go to Asia for the first time. At the age of 56, Yasushi is also the youngest of the 13 mountaineering legends to be honored. The…
Four peaks above 6,000 meters, frostbite on three fingers – that’s the balance of Stefan Köhler‘s Nepal trip this fall. “Despite the somewhat unfortunate ending, I had a great time in Nepal,” the 61-year-old tells me after his return. At the end of June, Köhler had resigned from his post as first mayor of the…
His 70th birthday next Monday, French climber Marc Batard is likely to celebrate at the foot of Mount Everest. The “sprinter”, as Marc was called in the 1980s, has his sights set on scouting out a new route from Everest Base camp to Camp 1 this late fall – across the Nuptse flank, away from…
0.0 – that’s how high the chance of survival would have been if someone had been right at the foot of the mountain. The force of the avalanche that swept down yesterday from the 6380-meter-high Manapathi near the eight-thousander Dhaulagiri in western Nepal was so great that it also jumped over the next mountain range…
This goal was almost never missing from anyone’s list of remaining ultimate alpinistic challenges in the Himalayas and Karakoram: the Southeast Ridge of the 7555-meter-high Annapurna III in western Nepal. Now this project can be crossed off the lists. According to Ukrainians Nikita Balabanov, Mikhail Fomin and Viacheslav “Slava” Polezhaiko, they climbed the route completely…
It reminds me a little of the video proof introduced in European football. Spontaneous joy in the stadium over a goal is hardly possible anymore, because in the back of the mind there is always the thought: Hopefully the video assistant referee won’t take the goal back. In mountaineering, there is no such referee, but…
The two top British climbers Tom Livingstone and Matt Glenn have succeeded in a sensational first ascent in the Khumbu. According to Tom, they opened a new route via the Northeast Pillar of the 6,487-meter-high Tengkangpoche. “We spent seven days on the route, which was one of the trickier things I’ve done,” the 30-year-old wrote…
Great concern for the French top talents Thomas Arfi, Louis Pachoud and Gabriel Miloche: the three young climbers have apparently been buried by an avalanche at the 6,017-meter-high Minbo Ider in the Khumbu region in Nepal. The summit is not far from the shapely Ama Dablam (6,812 m). The French trio had set out last…
