For the second time in five years, the Piolet d’ Or will be awarded posthumously to two mountaineers. As announced by the jury, the late Japanese climbers Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima are among this year’s winners. They will be awarded the “Oscar of Mountaineering” for their first ascent of the North face of Tirich Mir in summer 2023. The 7708-meter-high Tirich Mir is the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush. The jury emphasized that the Japanese had almost no prior information about the remote North Face. It was a “splendid traverse of a high-altitude mountain”, it said.
Death on K2 West Face
A year later, at the end of last July, Hiraide and Nakajima fell to their deaths on the 8,611-meter-high K2, the second-highest mountain on earth. They had attempted to climb the extremely challenging West Face of the mountain on a new route – in alpine style, i.e. without using bottled oxygen, without porters, without fixed high camps and without fixed ropes.
The 45-year-old Hiraide and the 39-year-old Nakajima were considered one of the world’s most powerful rope teams. The top duo had already been awarded the Piolet d’Or twice before for successes in the Karakoram: for their first ascent of the south face of the 7788-metre-high Rakaposhi in 2019 and for their first ascent of the north-east face of the 7611-metre-high Shispare in 2017. They did not live to see their third joint success in the prestigious award.
In 2019, the Piolet d’Or was also awarded to climbers who were no longer able to receive the prestigious prize themselves: to the top Austrian climbers David Lama and Hansjörg Auer, both for successful solo projects in 2018. The following year, the two Austrians and the American Jess Roskelley died in an avalanche accident on the 3295-metre-high Howse Peak in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
Piolets d’Or for routes on the 7000er Jannu and the 6000er Flat Top
Another Piolet d’or this year go to the Americans Jackson Marvell, Alan Rousseau and Matt Cornell for their partly new route through the extremely steep, challenging and therefore rarely climbed North Face of the 7,710-meter-high Jannu in eastern Nepal. “An extraordinary ascent that has taken technical alpine style climbing at high altitude to a new level,” said the jury.
The three Swiss climbers Hugo Beguin, Matthias Gribi and Nathan Monard, who, in fall 2023, opened a new route through the North Face and via the North Spur of the 6,100-meter-high Flat Top in the Indian Himalayas and then descended via the West Face of the mountain, will also receive a “Golden Ice Axe”.
A bow to Nives Meroi
Nives Meroi receives a “special mention in female alpinism”. In 2017, the 63-year-old Italian was the second woman – after Austria’s Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner in 2011 – to climb all 14 eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen. She shared all of these summit successes with her husband Romano Benet. They were always en route without Sherpa support. Even after they had completed their collection of eight-thousanders, they continued to attempt high Himalayan mountains in their own style. In fall 2023, for example, they succeeded in the first ascent of the West Face of the 7318-metre-high Kabru South in eastern Nepal with Peter Hamor from Slovakia and Bojan Jan from Slovenia.
Lifetime achievement award for Jordi Corominas
This year’s Piolets d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award goes to a Spanish mountaineering legend: the now 66-year-old Jordi Corominas. The Basque mountain guide is known for his pure climbing style. Light and fast – that was always his motto. Corominas’ most famous coup was the first and so far only repetition of the so-called “Magic Line” via the South-Southwest Ridge of K2 in 2004. The route was opened in the summer of 1986 by the Poles Przemslaw Piasecki and Wojciech Wroz and the Slovakian Petr Bozic.
Corominas climbed the last 300 vertical meters to the summit alone, after his two companions Oscar Cadiach and Manel de la Matta had turned back at around 8,300 meters. Manel died in Camp 1 at just below 6,300 meters, having previously complained of severe abdomen pains.
The Piolets d’Or will be awarded this year on 10 December in San Martino di Castrozza in Trentino, Italy.
