The ice high up on Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, is also under attack. If climate change continues unabated, climbers could find a completely ice-free Everest South Col at around 8,000 meters in 2050. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the University of Maine in the USA.
While the South Col Glacier (SCG) used to lie under a blanket of snow, the ice is now often exposed to solar radiation without protection, which could lead to “extremely rapid mass loss,” the scientists wrote: “At an estimated thinning rate approaching 2,000 mm (two meters) per year, even glaciers such as SCG that are above 8,000 m may disappear by mid-century.”
Jost Kobusch hasn’t lost his sense of humor yet. “And I’m still waiting for better weather…,” the 29-year-old German climber wrote on social media, posting a fake portrait showing him as an old man with a gray beard. For the past week and a half, Jost has been killing time in the village of Lobuche, located at about 5,000 meters in the Everest Valley. Snowfall and gale-force storms are currently making mountaineering impossible in the region around the world’s highest mountain.
“He can no longer be alive.” With these words, the Argentine doctor Carolina Codo, head of the Patagonian Mountain Rescue Center, ended on Sunday the already slim hopes that the Italian top climber Corrado, called “Korra” Pesce could have survived the Cerro Torre avalanche accident. The 41-year-old’s body was discovered by drone, she said, lying 50 meters below a rock platform where Pesce and his Argentine rope partner, Tomas Aguilo, had spent the night from Thursday to Friday. “At that altitude, and without adequate protection, death from hypothermia comes after a maximum of two hours.”
Better safe than sorry? Today another eight-member Nepalese climbing team of the commercial Nepalese expedition operator Pioneer Adventure started from the capital Kathmandu towards Cho Oyu. Its goal is the same as that of the ten-man team led by Gelje Sherpa, which set out on Tuesday: a winter ascent of the 8,188-meter-high mountain via a route on the Nepalese side of the mountain that can also be used by commercial expeditions in the future.
The start was a bit bumpy. Actually Gelje Sherpa and his Nepalese team wanted to fly from Kathmandu to Lukla today. But because of bad weather in the Khumbu, the ten climbers first had to change to jeeps. This did not dampen their good mood, as videos on social networks showed. As reported, Gelje Sherpa and Co. want to open up this winter (with bottled oxygen) a new route on the eight-thousander Cho Oyu, which is also suitable for commercial expeditions.
“The long term weather forecast confirms that there is not a decent weather window on the horizon. The jet stream is sitting very comfortably stable just above the summit of Nanga Parbat,” writes German climber David Göttler from base camp at the foot of the 8,125-meter-high mountain in Pakistan.
His Italian team partner Hervé Barmasse adds that wind speeds of 70 to 200 kilometers per hour are expected in the summit area. “And as it almost always happens, after such a strong wind, the heavy snowfalls will start again, making the wait at base camp pointless.” So after about four weeks, Göttler and Barmasse will pitch down their tents in Pakistan and return home.
Nima Gyalzen Sherpa, Chhiring Sherpa, Dawa Sherpa, Furi Sherpa, Ngima Tendi Sherpa, Ningma Dorje Tamang, Muhammad Sharif Rasool. To be on the safe side, I name the six Nepalese and Pakistani climbers who are currently on their way to K2 (today they reached the Goro II camp on the Baltoro Glacier at 4,200 meters). For all too often, those who have made successes on the eight-thousanders possible through their hard work are kept quiet afterwards.
The seven-member team of the Nepalese operator Dolma Outdoor Expedition wants to lead the Taiwanese Tseng Ko-erh, also called “Grace” Tseng, to the summit of the second highest mountain on earth this winter. Actually, Tashi Sherpa should also have been in the team. But he did not get an entry visa to Pakistan because of problems with his passport and was replaced by Rasool, as Dolma Outdoor Expedition told me.
Blank ice or deep snow – this is how the eight-thousanders are currently presenting themselves to climbers attempting them this winter. “Compared to last time, the conditions are much icier,” Jost Kobusch tells me.
Just over a week ago, he had climbed Mount Everest towards the West Shoulder, on the same route that had taken him to just below 7,400 meters during his first winter attempt two years ago. As he did then, this year Jost is again climbing solo and without bottled oxygen. “There wasn’t as much snowfall as last time. And the little snow didn’t stay on the ice, of course, but was immediately blown away.”
A rising star in the German mountaineering sky has gone out much too early. Robert Grasegger died in an avalanche accident in Patagonia. The mountaineer from the village of Grainau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen was only 29 years old. His partner, a 28-year-old female climber from Austria, was rescued seriously injured, her condition is stable, according to Argentine media reports.
It will probably be a base camp weekend. Whether on Mount Everest and Manaslu in Nepal or on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, meteorologists are expecting snowfall this weekend on all eight-thousanders where climbers are already staying in order to climb these mountains this winter.
Jost Kobusch is recovering – according to his GPS tracker – in the village of Lobuche at nearly 5,000 meters from his previous days’ climb towards the West Shoulder of Everest. The maximum altitude his tracker showed was 6,464 meters yesterday (Thursday) before he descended back into the Khumbu Glacier Valley via the Lho La, a 6000-meter pass between Nepal and Tibet.
The “naked mountain” – that’s Nanga Parbat translated – is still naked as far as successful winter ascents via the southeast-facing Rupal flank, the highest mountain wall in the world, are concerned. The only two winter summit successes so far on the 8,125-meter-high mountain in Pakistan have been via the northwest side, the Diamir flank: the first winter ascent in 2016 by Spaniard Alex Txikon, Italian Simone Moro and Pakistani Muhammad Ali “Sadpara” (South Tyrolean Tamara Lunger turned back 70 meters below the summit) and the second one by Frenchwoman Elisabeth Revol and Pole Tomek Mackiewicz (who died on the descent) in 2018.
This winter, top German climber David Göttler (43 years old) and Italian Hervé Barmasse (44) plan to climb Nanga Parbat via the Rupal side – in clean style, without fixed ropes and bottled oxygen. The American Mike Arnold (34), who accompanied the two to Pakistan, will “as planned soon travel back towards home,” as David writes me from the base camp at 3,500 meters. “Only Hervé and I will attempt the mountain.”
As long as COVID-19 has the world in its grip, it will remain lonely on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest. It’s not official yet, but hardly anyone on the scene still doubts that China will not allow foreign climbers into Tibet for the third spring in a row because of the pandemic.
“No change. See you in 2023!” – that’s how Kari Kobler, head of the Swiss expedition operator Kobler & Partner, sums up the reactions of those responsible in Tibet to his inquiries regarding Everest. “I think expeditions to Tibet’s eight-thousanders are impossible in spring,” Kari, who has been organizing expeditions to the Himalayas for three decades, writes to me. For the 2022 fall season in Tibet, he sees a 50/50 chance at most, “but even that looks chanceless from my point of view at the moment.”
The only thing that helps is shoveling, shoveling and shoveling again. The winter climbers at base camp on the eight-thousander Manaslu have their hands full trying to cope with the masses of fresh snow. “We are involved in a great snowstorm, it has been snowing continuously for more than 24 hours, the shock waves of big avalanches almost touch Base Camp,” the Spaniard Alex Txikon posted today on Twitter. “The tents hold up very well despite the fact that there is more than a meter and a half of snow.”
However, the previous work on the route has been ruined, writes the 40-year-old. “Now we will have to start from scratch, opening the way and marking it all with bamboos.”
The base camp at the foot of Nanga Parbat is pitched. And when the German David Göttler, the Italian Hervé Barmasse and the American Mike Arnold look out of their tents, they see the Rupal Face of the eight-thousander Nanga Parbat – “an almost 4,500-meter-high wall of snow, ice and rock,” as Hervé said in an interview with the Italian sports newspaper La Gazetta dello Sport: “It is the highest wall in the world, and no one has ever managed to climb it in the coldest season.” By comparison, the Rupal Face is about 1,000 meters higher than the North Face of Mount Everest and two and a half times higher than the Eiger North Face.
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