French climbers Benjamin Vedrines and Nicolas Jean have filled in a blank spot on the map of high mountains. The strong duo climbed the 6,808-meter-high Anidesh Chuli in eastern Nepal, not far from the eight-thousander Kangchenjunga, in one day – in alpine style, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without fixed high camps, without fixed ropes, and without Sherpa support.
On to the Jannu East North Face
Vedrines described the route via the North Ridge of the predominantly snow- and ice-covered mountain as an “wild and untouched line” on Instagram, and the accompanying video confirmed his words. The first ascent is said to have been only the overture of the expedition. The main goal of the two Frenchmen is the still unclimbed North Face of the 7,468-meter-high Jannu East, a secondary summit of Jannu (7,710 meters). The wall is considered one of the most difficult in the Himalayas.
“It will demand patience, a touch of wisdom, and that fragile balance that sometimes leads into the unknown,” Benjamin wrote.
Two teams on the summit of Cho Oyu
The stable autumn weather in the Himalayas has also played into the hands of commercial expeditions. Today, the first summit successes of the season were also reported from Cho Oyu in Tibet. Teams from the operators Furtenbach Adventures and Imagine Nepal reached the highest point at 8,188 meters. Previously, more than 350 people had already stood at the top of Manaslu in western Nepal at 8,163 meters. There were also a dozen summit successes on nearby Dhaulagiri (8,167 meters).
Asma al Thani and Elite Exped cancel Shishapangma
For the eight-thousander Shishapangma, located entirely in Tibet, the Chinese-Tibetan authorities had issued two special permits for foreign female mountaineers this fall – for Asma al Thani from Qatar and Anja Blacha from Germany. The two teams were supposed to work together.
However, Al Thani canceled shortly before the planned departure for Tibet. Her expedition operator, Elite Exped, then withdrew all resources for the jointly planned ascent, leaving Blacha empty-handed. The two female mountaineers have each summited twelve of the 14 eight-thousanders, Al Thani with a breathing mask, Blacha without bottled oxygen.
Asma still needs to climb Cho Oyu and Shishapangma to complete her collection of eight-thousanders, while Anja only has Lhotse and Shishapangma left. Last spring, Blacha scaled Everest without a breathing mask – after previously climbing the world’s highest mountain twice with bottled oxygen (in 2017 and 2021).
Update 2 October: Mingma Tenzi Sherpa was among those who reached the summit of Cho Oyu yesterday. The 41-year-old Nepalese climber has now completed his collection of eight-thousanders. Mingma Tenzi is one of the three directors of the operator Elite Exped, alongside founders Nirmal Purja and Mingma David Sherpa. He was also part of the ten-member Nepalese team that made the first winter ascent of K2 in 2021. He has scaled Mount Everest eleven times to date. – About a dozen more ascents were reported from Dhaulagiri today.
