Merry Christmas!
I wish you all a wonderful, peaceful, and blessed Christmas. Enjoy the holidays with your loved ones! 🙏🎄
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Simone Moro gives the all-clear after heart attack in Nepal
After several days of uncertainty, Simone Moro has spoken out. His most important statement: “Now I’m feeling good.” What happened? Over the weekend, Nepalese media reported that the 58-year-old top mountaineer from Italy had to be flown out of the mountains to Kathmandu by helicopter. That was true, but the medical details initially reported were…
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Pakistan’s mountain guides establish their own association
This is another important step on the long-overdue path to emancipation for Pakistani mountaineers. Last weekend, in a hotel in the city of Skardu in northern Pakistan, they launched the Karakoram Mountain Guides Association (KMGA), which they proudly announced afterwards as “the first national body created by mountaineers, for mountaineers.” The more than 100 participants…
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Lukas Waldner after the first ascent of Kimshung: “Cooperation is stronger than competition”
It was one of the many exciting alpinistic highlights of this fall season in the Himalayas. The two Austrians Lukas Waldner (24) and Benjamin Zörer (24) and the Italians Francois Cazzanelli (35) and Giuseppe Vidoni (31) succeeded in making the first ascent of Kimshung in Nepal in alpine style. The 6,781-meter-high mountain, also known as…
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Alpinistic highlight by James Price and George Ponsonby in the Karakoram: “Each pitch a question mark”
The members of the “Young Alpinist Group” from Great Britain and Ireland are actually only supposed to gain initial experience in the world’s great mountains. However, two of them have now achieved a real mountaineering coup in northern Pakistan. At the end of October, Briton James Price and Irishman George Ponsonby opened a difficult 3,000-meter…
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Himalayan mountaineering community mourns the loss of “Toddfather” Henry Todd
Henry Todd may not have been the greatest climber of his time, but he was undoubtedly an original. “As an expedition leader, mountaineer and later an oxygen provider to climbers, Henry was a pillar of the Himalayan climbing community,” writes German mountaineer, journalist, and chronicler Billi Bierling in her obituary in the Himalayan Times. “He…
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Severe avalanche accidents in Nepal and South Tyrol
“Nature is unpredictable and is becoming increasingly so,” mountaineering legend Reinhold Messner told the South Tyrolean internet portal altoadige.it: “It has changed radically and has also become more dangerous due to climate change, which has led to a rise in temperatures, making the mountains and glaciers much more fragile and unstable.” In recent days, there…
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Russian team opens new route on eight-thousander Manaslu
Classic alpinism is alive and well! For me, this is evident in the fact that I can hardly keep up with reporting on all the extraordinary climbs this fall season in Nepal. Like this one: According to Anna Piunova from the Russian mountaineering portal mountain.ru, Andrey Vasilyev, Sergey Kondrashkin, Natalia Belyankina, Kirill Eyserman, and Vitaly…
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Berg, Barmasse, and Bielecki – New route on the nearly-7000er Numbur in Nepal
Once again, there has been a great achievement of true alpinism in the Himalayas in Nepal: by “the three Bs.” Felix Berg from Germany, HervĂ© Barmasse from Italy, and Adam Bielecki from Poland opened a new route through the approximately 1,000-meter-high South Face of the rarely climbed 6,958-meter-high Numbur in the Rolwaling Valley, not far…
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Vedrines and Jean succeed in first ascent of Jannu East
“Sometimes an ascent can change your life. I think this one did,” writes Benjamin Vedrines on Instagram. The first ascent of the 7,468-meter-high Jannu East is “undoubtedly the greatest achievement of my mountaineering career,” said the 33-year-old Frenchman after his coup in eastern Nepal, which he accomplished together with his 27-year-old compatriot Nicolas Jean. “Climbing…
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Andreas Dahlmeier: “Laura remains on the mountain”
“We would have liked to bring Laura home. But it wasn’t possible to get her,” Andreas Dahlmeier, father of former world-class biathlete and mountaineer Laura Dahlmeier, who died in an accident on the six-thousander Laila Peak in Pakistan at the end of July, told the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. “It was too dangerous after the…
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Jim Morrison completes first ski descent of Mount Everest’s north face
When I close my eyes and think back to the North Face of Mount Everest 20 years ago, I see the so-called Supercouloir in front of me. The Japanese Couloir in the lower section and the Hornbein Couloir further up run through the wall like a straight line. An aesthetic line, a route that seems…
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Summit success reported from the north side of Mount Everest
On the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest, several members of the team led by American ski mountaineer Jim Morrison have apparently reached the summit at 8,849 meters today. This was reported by the Nepalese internet portal “The Tourism Times,” citing sources close to the expedition. The mountaineers climbed through the Hornbein Couloir, it said….
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Afsaneh Hesamifard is the first Iranian woman on all 14 eight-thousanders
I must admit that I have almost given up trying to keep track of who has climbed how many eight-thousanders, when, and in what style. There are now so many commercial expeditions that it is – at least for me – hardly possible to keep track of them all and verify their success stories, which…
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Mount Everest: A little less drama, please!
It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, because it’s nothing new. And yet I am always astonished at how quickly and comprehensively the media avalanche rolls in as soon as Mount Everest comes into play. That wouldn’t be so tragic if those involved in the information industry would take the trouble to check the facts before blasting…