Adventure Mountain

13. August 202213. August 2022

Tough struggle on Masherbrum

Masherbrum in clouds — Bad weather on Masherbrum

Marek Holecek is not at a loss for original images when he describes the difficulties on his extreme climbs. Like now on the 7,821-meter-high Masherbrum in Pakistan’s Karakoram. “Even a horse-drawn carriage would get tired of this terrain,” the Czech climber writes on Instagram today. “We are progressing at a snail’s pace and hoping that the snow conditions will improve with higher elevation.”

Deep and loose snow has robbed them of their strength, says the 47-year-old. “The weather forced us into the tent in the afternoon, as we could not see through the fog to the tip of the nose and it started to snow lightly.” Holecek and his team partner Radoslav Groh will spend their now sixth bivouac at an altitude of 6,800 meters, according to their own information.

12. August 202212. August 2022

Summit successes on Gasherbrum I

Kirsten Harila (center), Dawa Ongju Sherpa (l.) and Pasdawa Sherpa (r.) on the summit of Broad Peak at the end of July

From the 8,080-meter-high Gasherbrum I in the Karakoram, summit successes were reported yesterday and today via the normal route. Already on Thursday, according to the operator 8K Expeditions, the Nepalese mountain guides Dawa Ongju Sherpa and Pasdawa Sherpa with their Norwegian client Kristin Harila reached the summit of the eleventh highest mountain on earth – with bottled oxygen.

For the trio it was already the eleventh eight-thousander summit since the end of April. Now only Manaslu in Nepal as well as Cho Oyu and Shishapangma in Tibet are missing in their eight-thousander annual list. Whether the Sino-Tibetan authorities will open the two eight-thousanders in the upcoming fall season, however, is written in the stars. Since 2020, no foreign climbers have been allowed into Tibet because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Permits have been issued only to Chinese expeditions.

8. August 202212. August 2022

Summit successes on Gasherbrum II, attempt on Masherbrum

From Gasherbrum II in the Karakoram several summit successes of commercial teams are reported today. The Nepalese operator 8K Expeditions announced that five team members had reached the 8,034-meter-high summit – presumably all with bottled oxygen. Among them were the two Nepalese Dawa Ongju Sherpa and Pasdawa Sherpa as well as their Norwegian client Kristin Harila. For them it was already eight-thousander number ten this year.

Eight-thousander collector Grace Tseng from Taiwan also stood on the summit of Gasherbrum II with her Nepalese companions Nima Gyalzen Sherpa and Ningma Dorje Tamang, according to reports from Pakistan. Following information from her operator Dolma Outdoor Expedition, Tseng did without a breathing mask, as she had done previously on K2 and Broad Peak, while her Nepalese guides used bottled oxygen. Also at the top was 20-year-old Pakistani Shehroze Kashif. For him it was the eighth eight-thousander (with breathing mask). On Manaslu, he had not reached the “True Summit” in fall 2021 and declared that he would have to return once again to the mountain in western Nepal to make up for it.

5. August 202218. August 2022

Extreme danger of falling rocks: huts on Mont Blanc closed

Jean-Marc Peillex has enough. “I resign,” writes the mayor of the French municipality of Saint-Gervais, announcing that from today the refuges Tête Rousse (3167 meters) and Goûter (3835 meters) on the normal route on the 4,809-meter-high Mont Blanc will remain closed until further notice. “How sad that we are forced by some lawless daredevils to have to make a decision that really shouldn’t be.”

Repeatedly, the authorities had previously appealed to refrain from climbing Mont Blanc because of the current immense risk of falling rocks as a result of the summer heat. The region’s mountain guides are currently no longer taking clients up the highest mountain in the Alps. Nevertheless, according to Peillex, yesterday evening “79 climbers, mostly from Eastern European countries, played Russian roulette” and entered the Goûter hut.

3. August 20225. August 2022

Tourism excesses and environmental destruction on Nanga Parbat – Michael Beek sounds the alarm

"Fairy Meadows", Nanga Parbat in the background — Threatened idyll: “Fairy Meadows”, Nanga Parbat in the background

Once upon a time. The Fairy Meadows near Nanga Parbat has lost its fairy-tale quality. There are now 25 hotels on the Fairymeadow and there are so many people that the peace is over. Individuals incapable of walking are carried up on horses with their mobile phones in their hands, sometimes more than 600 in one day,” Michael Beek writes on Facebook after returning from one of his many trips to Pakistan. “Plastic waste is everywhere along the path, drinking bottles are simply thrown down into the Rakhiot River, nobody cares. It makes me sad. “

29. July 20223. August 2022

Denis Urubko: On his birthday without breathing mask on top of K2

The unstoppable. According to Denis Urubko, he stood on the 8,611-meter-high summit of K2 this morning, at 7:30 a.m. local time in Pakistan. In doing so, he gave himself the best present on his 49th birthday. As with all his many previous ascents, Denis climbed without bottled oxygen on the second highest mountain on earth. “I was alone above Camp 4,” Urubko let it be known via Facebook.

Within ten days, the climber, who was born in the Russian North Caucasus, thus reached three eight-thousand-meter peaks – in a rush via the normal routes, without breathing mask, without a companion. First Urubko scaled Broad Peak (8,051 meters) on 19 July, then Gasherbrum II (8.034 meters) on 25 July, and now K2.

28. July 20229. August 2022

Eight-thousanders collectors: Not without my Sherpas

The eight-thousander Broad Peak in Pakistan (in 2004)

Success stories continue to pour in from the eight-thousanders in the Karakoram, today especially from Broad Peak. Among those who reached the 8,051-meter-high summit were the collectors of eight-thousanders Kristin Harila, Adriana Brownlee and Grace Tseng. Without minimizing their achievements, I think it’s high time to recognize the Nepalese climbers who made their eight-thousander ascents possible.

27. July 202227. July 2022

Traffic jam in the K2 summit zone

Lucky! Damn good luck! This is the impression given by a video posted on social media by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa from 22 July, the record summit day on K2 (see below). On it, a long line of climbers can be seen at the so-called “Bottleneck” – above them huge ice towers that could collapse at any time. On Friday last week, some 120 members of commercial teams had reached (with bottled oxygen, except for a few) the summit of the second-highest mountain on earth – more than ever before in a single day in the history of K2.

25. July 202225. July 2022

Eberhard Jurgalski: “Achievements of climbing not diminished”

German chronicler of mountaineering, Eberhard Jurgalski.

“Actually, I had thought that with our list, after ten years of research, the main work was finished,” Eberhard Jurgalski tells me. “But that was a fallacy.” The list published by a team around the German chronicler, according to which – as reported – without a doubt only three climbers have stood on the highest points of all 14 eight-thousanders, continues to cause heated debate in the scene.

“I won’t let anyone tell me that such an ascent is not valid,” Reinhold Messner, for example, scolded in an interview with the Swiss newspaper “Tages-Anzeiger”. According to research by Jurgalski and Co., Messner and his South Tyrolean teammate Hans Kammerlander had turned around on Annapurna in 1985 at a point on the summit ridge five meters lower and 65 meters from the highest point. In the new list Messner, celebrated worldwide as the first man on all eight-thousanders, is therefore listed with “only” 13 eight-thousanders. Even though he and Kammerlander had opened a new route through the Northwest Face of Annapurna.

22. July 202222. July 2022

Summit wave and first fatality on K2

The 8,611-meter-high K2, the second highest mountain on earth (in 2004)

It seems almost surreal: Everest conditions on K2. After the first ascent of the second highest mountain in northern Pakistan on 31 July 1954 by the Italians Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, it took 40 years to reach the mark of 100 ascents. Today, Friday, according to reports from Pakistan, around 100 climbers are said to have reached the summit of K2 at 8,611 meters – in a single day!

On Thursday, a five-member Sherpa team – Pasdawa Sherpa, Chhiring Namgyal Sherpa (both from the operator 8K Expeditions) and Siddhi Ghising, Dorjee Gyelzen Sherpa and Rinji Sherpa (from Madison Mountaineering) – had fixed the ropes up to the highest point, achieving the first summit successes on K2 this summer. They used bottled oxygen. So did the vast majority of members of commercial teams who summited today – among them Kristin Harila of Norway (eight-thousander number eight for her this year) and Samina Baig as the first woman from Pakistan.

19. July 202219. July 2022

Denis Urubko scales Broad Peak without breathing mask

Denis Urubko published this picture today on Facebook

He is still able to do it. Denis Urubko informed that he reached the summit of the 8,051-meter-high Broad Peak in the Karakoram today. In February 2020 – after a failed winter attempt on the same mountain – Denis had still declared his eight-thousander career over with the words “(It) Is Enough!”. By his own account, he had summited eight-thousanders 22 times by then, always without bottled oxygen, sometimes on new routes, in winter or solo.

17. July 202212. September 2022

The eight-thousanders shrink list

The 8,163-meter-high Manaslu in western Nepal (in 2007)

Eberhard Jurgalski polarizes. Some insult him as an armchair adventurer and runner-down. Others praise the 69-year-old German as a meticulous chronicler of mountaineering on the world’s highest mountains who simply works conscientiously. A week ago, Eberhard caused a medium-sized tremor in the high-altitude mountaineering scene. For ten years, Jurgalski and a handful of other chroniclers had reviewed summit photos of the 52 climbers so far who claimed to have scaled all 14 eight-thousanders. Had they, the chroniclers asked, really reached the highest point in each case or “only” a somewhat lower spot – whether deliberately or by mistake?

12. July 202212. July 2022

Sigurjonsson’s family asks the climbers on K2

John Snorri Sigurjonsson (1973-2021) on the summit of K2 in summer 2017

Actually, it should go without saying. But what is self-evident in times when, for some, the only thing that seems to matter on the mountain is making it into the headlines? It is not only the truth that tends to fall by the wayside, but also empathy. The family of Icelandic climber John Snorri Sigurjonsson, who died on K2 in the winter of 2021, has asked summit aspirants this summer season to show reverence and not to film or photograph John’s body.

The body of the Icelander is still lying in the summit area, above the so-called “Bottleneck”, the avalanche-prone key section of the normal route at around 8,400 meters – latched into the fixed rope. That the request of Sigurjonsson’s family is not superfluous is proven by the countless pictures circulating on the Internet of the corpses of climbers who have died on Mount Everest, for example.

7. July 20228. July 2022

When communication breaks down on the mountain

Broad Peak (with the shadow of K2, photographed in 2004)

4G network in the base camps at the foot of Mount Everest or K2 – climbers have now become accustomed to being able to communicate with their smartphones even on the two highest mountains in the world. In this way, they receive the latest weather reports in a simple and, above all, extremely fast way or can also maintain contact within their teams by cell phone. Not as in the past with radios or the considerably more expensive satellite phones. In recent days, however, expeditions in Pakistan have reported communication problems with their teams on the mountain.

6. July 20228. July 2022

Fatal fall on Broad Peak

The second fatality of the summer climbing season has occurred on the eight-thousander Broad Peak in the Karakoram. Pakistani climber Sharif Sadpara fell from the summit ridge and has been missing since. The hope of recovering him alive is close to zero.

Describing how the accident happened on Tuesday, Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures wrote on Instagram: “There is still difficult and limited communication (with Broad Peak base camp) but what we know so far is that our team started from Camp 3 in the night, also fixing the rope to the summit ridge. They were followed by climbers from other teams. Shortly before the summit a following Pakistani climber from a different team fell through a snow cornice on the summit ridge down to the Chinese side. That event halted the summit push for everyone for obvious reasons.”