Jost Kobusch after Everest attempt: “It would have been too dangerous to climb any higher”

Jost Kobusch kept a cool head on Mount Everest. On his first push this winter, the 32-year-old German climber reached an altitude of 7,537 meters on the West Ridge. The altimeter on his watch showed this value on 27 December. His GPS tracker measured the highest altitude at 7,488 meters. On another model, the figure was 7,553 meters. Such differences are not unusual for altimeters.

In any case, Jost climbed around 200 meters higher than during his most successful attempt to date in the winter of 2019/2020, when he turned back on the West Shoulder. This time, he sniffed into the upper part of the West Ridge. I asked Jost via WhatsApp if he hadn’t been tempted to pitch his tent there and climb further up.

Acclimatization was not yet sufficient

“The acclimatization was sufficient to reach this altitude, even at this speed and in alpine style. But it wasn’t good enough to climb even higher,” Kobusch replies by voice message. “Spending the night there would have been a risk. I could have become extremely weak in my state of acclimatization. And that was against the background that I was en route solo and would have to climb everything down again alone. In other words, my acclimatization was not good enough to climb higher with sufficient safety in these conditions.”

Over the next two days, Jost descended back into the Everest Valley – as far as the “Pyramid”, the Italian research station near the settlement of Lobuche at an altitude of around 5,000 meters.

Kobusch has set himself an extremely ambitious long-term goal: he wants to be the first person to achieve a solo winter ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen. And he wants to do this on the extremely rarely attempted, because challenging route via the Lho La, a pass between Nepal and Tibet at around 6,000 meters, then following the West Ridge and finally through the Hornbein Couloir in the North Face to the summit at 8,849 meters. From the point he reached on 27 December, Jost has still to climb around 1,300 meters in elevation to get to the highest point.

Long-term project

For this winter, Kobusch had set himself the goal of reaching higher than any previous winter expedition on the West Ridge. The expedition that reached the furthest on this route was a 17-member French one led by Eric Dossin: In January 1985, Benoit Chamoux and Vincent Fine capitulated to the bad weather at an altitude of around 7,500 meters.

Jost has now come this far. I want to know from Jost whether he is still motivated to set off again to possibly climb even higher in view of his early accomplished goal for the season. Kobusch answers cautiously. “I’m a bit hoarse, I was breathing pretty dry air up there,” says Jost, coughing. “I’m going to recover now and then evaluate how sensible it is to climb up there again. I’ve already got the really big learnings I was hoping for because I’ve achieved my goal. I have tested my theses.”

He will now “let everything sink in a bit” and see how the weather develops and what his body does, says Kobusch. Then he will decide whether he will climb up once more this winter or not. It has to fit into his overall concept. “Ultimately, I’m not interested in breaking any records in the short term. I want to achieve the project in the long term. That’s the focus,” says Jost. “In the long term, of course, I have already made a plan.”