The veterans are still rocking it at over 60. Italian couple Nives Meroi and Romano Benet, both aged 63, and 60-year-old Slovakian Peter Hamor opened a new route through the virgin West Face of the 7,412-meter-high Kabru on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim.
“No one had previously attempted to reach this peak from the western, Nepali side – the face had remained untouched until now,” Hamor’s home team announced on Facebook. Following their summit success on Sunday, the three climbers are back at base camp safe and sound. Initially, it didn’t look like they would succeed. The trio had to endure two weeks of bad weather with heavy snowfall and strong winds at base camp.
In alpine style
Two years ago, Meroi, Benet and Hamor had already opened up another route in the massif. Together with the Slovenian Bojan Jan, they had first climbed through the West Face to the summit of Kabru South, a 7,318-meter-high secondary summit of Kabru. This time, as then, they were climbing in alpine style, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without Sherpa support, without fixed high camps and without fixed ropes. Both the main and secondary summits of Kabru were first ascended by an Indian military expedition in 1994, at that time from Sikkim.
Before setting off for Kabru, Peter Hamor had announced that they not only wanted to attempt the Kabru West Face, but also the Southeast Face of the nearby 7,590-meter-high Yalung Peak in the massif of the eight-thousander Kangchenjunga. Last year, the trio had turned back there at an altitude of around 6,400 meters due to strong winds.
On all 14 eight-thousanders
Peter Hamor, Nives Meroi and Romano Benet are among the veterans in Himalayan mountaineering. All three completed their collections of the 14 eight-thousanders in 2017 – although on Manaslu they did not reach the “True Summit“, but a preceding elevation on the summit ridge. Meroi and Benet were always on the move in a small team without Sherpa support and did without bottled oxygen, Hamor only resorted to a breathing mask on Mount Everest.
US-American with cancer dies during attempt on Makalu
A death is reported from the 8,485-meter-high Makalu. The 39-year-old US-American Alexander Pencoe died after descending from Camp 3 (7,450 m) to Camp 2 (6,800 m), the expedition operator Himalayan Guides Nepal announced. The mountaineer had already felt uncomfortable on the way down, it said.
After Pencoe had a brain tumor successfully removed during an operation 20 years ago, he had stood on the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on all continents, between 2016 and 2019 and – on last-degree expeditions – reached both the North Pole and South Pole on skis.
Pencoe was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) in 2023. This is a blood cancer that cannot yet be cured and usually progresses slowly. Pencoe wanted to use his ascent of Makalu to raise funds for a blood cancer program for young people. “It’s going to be a huge challenge for me – climbing at altitude is plenty hard without a chronic ailment,” Pencoe wrote on his website before setting off for Nepal. “But I look forward to rising to the challenge.”
So far this spring, the Nepalese government has issued 41 climbing permits for Makalu.
Rope-fixing team on the south side of Everest at the South Col
The number of permits for the Nepalese south side of Mount Everest has now risen to 444. The operator 8K Expeditions, responsible for securing the normal route from Camp 2 (6,400 m) to the highest point at 8,849 meters, announced that its rope-fixing team had reached the South Col at just under 8,000 meters today and would continue from there towards the summit. The first major summit wave of the commercial teams is expected in the middle of the month.
Update 7 May: Last Sunday (4 May), according to a report by ExplorersWeb, 36-year-old Australian Matthew Scholes reached the summit of Makalu alone and without bottled oxygen. The fixed ropes to the highest point had been in place since 10 April. Scholes paid for his ascent with frostbite on his toes, which are now being treated in a hospital in Kathmandu.
