The good weather window will be only open for a short time. But Denis Urubko and Don Bowie want to take the opportunity to climb “through the window” to the 8,051-meter-high summit of Broad Peak in the Karakoram. As Urubko announced on Facebook, the former Kazakh citizen, who now has a Polish and a Russian passport, and his Canadian teammate left base camp today. They climbed up to Camp 2 at about 6,400 meters in one go. Tomorrow the 46-year-old Denis and the 50-year-old Don plan to reach Camp 3 at 7,000 meters, on Friday the highest point.
For the possible summit day rather cloudy weather is predicted, but there should be almost no wind – an important condition for success, as Urubko and Bowie are en route without bottled oxygen. Their Finnish team partner Lotta Hintsa stayed behind at the base camp.
“Don’t feel fully prepared”
The K2 winter expedition, led by the Nepalese Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, was surprisingly abandoned without a summit attempt. The team had arrived at the foot of the second highest mountain on earth only on 21 January. “Team members Mingma G. of Nepal and Gao Li of China have both expressed that they don’t feel fully prepared to make the scheduled attempt of personal reason,” Icelandic John Snorri Sigurjonsson wrote on Instagram. “Taking this into consideration and after much deliberation, it has been decided that the mission will not go forward.” Sigurjonsson had climbed on the route via the Abruzzi Spur up to about 6,300 meters last Saturday
Txikon on Everest in Camp 2
On Mount Everest in Nepal, the Spaniard Alex Txikon and his teammates today reached Camp 2 at about 6,400 meters in the Western Cwm. This is shown by his GPS tracker. The German mountaineer Jost Kobusch, who wants to climb via the West Ridge, is still in base camp, but gave a cautious all-clear via Facebook yesterday. His left foot, which had been hurting a lot in the past few days, “feels much better,” wrote the 27-year-old, “and if it stays like this, I can put weight on the foot again!”
