August 2025 - Adventure Mountain

26. August 202528. August 2025

Drama on Kyrgyzstan’s highest mountain – rescue operation called off

Jengish Chokusu, also known as Pik Pobeda

Translated, the 7,439-meter-high mountain on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China means “Victory Peak” in both Kyrgyz (Jengish Chokusu) and Russian (Pik Pobeda). But these days, there are no victors on Kyrgyzstan’s highest mountain.

On 11 August, Russian climbing legend Nikolai Totmyanin – winner of the Piolet d’Or award for the first ascent of the North Face of Jannu (7,710 m) in eastern Nepal in 2004, among other achievements – died at the age of 66 in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, after most likely suffering from high altitude sickness while descending from the summit of the seven-thousander. But that was only the beginning of the drama.

In the days that followed, two Iranian and one Italian climbers lost their lives on Pik Pobeda. It is highly doubtful whether a female Russian climber, who has been stranded on the summit ridge at around 7,200 meters with a broken leg for two weeks, is still alive. And even if she is, it will probably be of no use to her. According to Anna Piunova from the Russian mountaineering portal mountain.ru, the rescue operation was finally called off yesterday due to bad weather with snowfall and temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees Celsius at night.

24. August 202524. August 2025

Ski descent from Mount Everest – Third attempt by Pole Andrzej Bargiel

Ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel (2022 at Mount Everest)

“I’m drawn to Everest,” said Andrzej Bargiel in an interview with his sponsor Red Bull. “Partly out of curiosity, I want to see how my body copes at such altitude. And also because, although this place doesn’t have the best PR, there are moments, like autumn, when it’s peaceful and you can work there independently – without all the commotion.”

The 37-year-old Polish ski mountaineer set off for Nepal this week with eight companions to achieve his big goal on his third attempt: to climb the 8,849-meter summit of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen and ski down from there to base camp.

Bargiel abandoned his first attempt in fall 2019 because a monster serac around 50 meters high and 30 meters wide was hanging over the Khumbu Icefall and threatening to break off. His second attempt ended in fall 2022 at the South Col at just under 8,000 meters, where the wind was so strong that Andrzej and his companion Janusz Golab couldn’t even pitch their tent.

21. August 202521. August 2025

Pakistani climbers open new route on the seven-thousander Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush

Team led by Abdul Joshi (2nd from l.) on the summit of Tirich Mir

Long gone are the days when Pakistani mountaineers did nothing but haul equipment up mountains for foreign expeditions. They now rightly claim to be recognized and respected as mountaineers with their own sporting ambitions. This applies, for example, to Abdul Joshi.

The 40-year-old led a five-member Pakistani team that reached the summit of the 7,708-meter-high Tirich Mir on 1 August – opening “a brand new route overcoming highly technical terrain, deep crevasses, and dangerous ice-rock transitions,” as the expedition report states. The route leads through the southern flank of the mountain.

20. August 202520. August 2025

45 years ago: Reinhold Messner’s solo ascent of Mount Everest

Everest North Face in the last daylight (in spring 2005)

“In 1980 on Everest, I was more wiped out than ever before and not even after that,” Reinhold Messner told me five years ago when we talked about 20 August 1980—the day he stood alone on the summit of the highest mountain on earth.

“I had fantastic weather, was very well acclimatized and made very good progress in the lower part of the mountain. That made me feel cheerful and confident. A few hundred meters below the summit, however, the weather closed up. Fog crawled up from the south side, spilling down over the ridges and the summit to the north. I was suddenly afraid that I would lose orientation. Tiny snowflakes were drizzling.”

14. August 202514. August 2025

K2: “Rocks whizzing in all directions”

The 8,611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram (in 2004)

“(I am) Grateful that I’m alive and ok,” Turkish mountaineer Gülnur Tumbat wrote on Instagram today. The professor of marketing, born in 1975, lives and works in San Francisco.

On Monday, she reached – with bottled oxygen – the summit of K2, the second-highest mountain on earth, as one of around 40 mountaineers from commercial expedition teams. Gülnur was the first Turkish woman to scale the 8,611-meter-high mountain in the Karakoram in Pakistan.

At that point, she probably had no idea how dangerous the final phase of her descent would be: from Camp 1 at around 6,000 meters down to the Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at around 5,300 meters. As reported, a Chinese climber died in a rockfall during this passage on Tuesday. Gülnur reports that a rescuer who tried to recover the Chinese woman’s body was also hit.

13. August 202513. August 2025

Chinese female climber dies in rockfall on K2

The 8,611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram (in summer 2004)

On Monday, expedition operator Imagine Nepal proudly announced that its entire team of 15 members had reached the summit of K2, the second-highest mountain on earth. Now, a death has cast a shadow over the success.

According to consistent reports from Pakistan, a Chinese female climber from the team was hit by falling rocks yesterday, Tuesday, and died. The accident occurred between Camp 1 (at around 6,000 meters) and the Advanced Base Camp (5,300 m), it said.

On Monday, around 40 climbers from several teams had stood on the summit of K2 at 8,611 meters.

11. August 202513. August 2025

Summit successes reported from K2

K2 (in summer 2004) — The 8,611-meter-high K2 in the Karakoram (in 2004)

It took a long time, but now the moment has arrived. Today, the first more than two dozen summit successes of the summer season were reported from K2, the second highest mountain in the world, located in the Karakoram in Pakistan. The Nepalese expedition operator Imagine Nepal provided the largest group with 15 members at the summit.

The team was led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, the head of the company. For him, it was his sixth K2 summit success. Mingma and Imagine Nepal had taken on the task of fixing the ropes to the highest point at 8,611 meters.

8. August 202511. August 2025

Pakistan: When a body needs to be retrieved from the mountain

The six-thousander Laila Peak in the Karakoram

Following the tragic death of German mountaineer Laura Dahlmeier on the 6,096-meter-high Laila Peak in the Karakoram in Pakistan, many are asking themselves: Should the body of the deceased be recovered after all? Or should her last will be respected?

Laura had written in her will that her body should remain on the mountain if others had to risk their lives to recover it.

This was exactly the case immediately after Dahlmeier’s death: the rockfall that had claimed Laura’s life at around 5,700 meters continued and would have posed a potentially fatal danger to the members of a recovery team.

And if conditions on the mountain improve? Even then, it would remain a dangerous undertaking, Dan Stretch of the US organization Global Rescue informs me.