Hervé Barmasse, Felix Berg, and Adam Bieleki (from right to left) at the summit of Numbur
Once again, there has been a great achievement of true alpinism in the Himalayas in Nepal: by “the three Bs.”
Felix Berg from Germany, Hervé 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 from Mount Everest – and they did it alpine style: without bottled oxygen, without fixed ropes, without fixed high camps, and without Sherpa support.
“For me personally, it was nice to be able to do some alpine climbing again after recently being busy leading and guiding (commercial) tours,” says Felix Berg, managing director of expedition operatur SummitClimb. “I have to say, it’s one of my highlight tours in Nepal.”
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 such a challenging, long and difficult face in alpine style, on a summit that had never been climbed before, had a profound effect on me. It was a dream that Nicolas and I achieved together.” When they reached the highest point, tears flowed, said Benjamin.
Urubko and his Spanish wife Maria “Pipi” Cardell had already travelled to Pakistan at the beginning of June to acclimatize for their project on the 8,125-meter-high Nanga Parbat. Their goal: a new route through the Diamir Face, the western flank of the ninth highest mountain on earth. In alpine style, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without fixed ropes, without fixed high camps and without high altitude porters.
David Göttler (r.) with French ski mountaineers Tiphaine Duperier (l.) and Boris Langenstein on the summit of Nanga Parbat
Even after returning to his home in Spain, David Göttler still seems to be floating on cloud nine. “It will probably take a month before the euphoria subsides and I can realize it all,” the 46-year-old German climber tells me.
On Tuesday last week, Göttler – together with French female climber Tiphaine Duperier and her compatriot Boris Langenstein – scaled the 8,125-meter-high Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.
It was only the eighth ascent of the mountain via the challenging Schell route. An Austrian expedition led by Hanns Schell first climbed this route to the summit of Nanga Parbat in 1976. It leads via a pillar on the left side of the Rupal flank to the almost 7,000-meter-high col between the Mazeno Ridge and the Southwest Ridge. At 7,400 meters, the route changes to the Diamir side.
Mick Fowler (l.) and Viktor Saunders on the summit of Yawash Sar
They climb and climb and just keep going. The two British mountaineers Victor Saunders, 74, and Mick Fowler, 68, don’t care about their advanced age or health restrictions. This fall, they made the first ascent of the 6,258-meter-high Yawash Sar in the Karakoram. The remote mountain in the Karakoram – around 130 kilometers northeast of K2 as the crow flies – is the highest peak in the Khunjerab massif, not far from Pakistan’s border with China.
Two years ago, in fall 2022, a five-member British team cut their teeth on Yawash Sar – also known as the “Matterhorn of Khunjerab” due to its beautiful shape. In a total of three summit attempts via the southern flank of the mountain, the climbers had reached a maximum altitude of around 6,000 meters. The rock was too brittle, the technical difficulties too great, they said.
Complex wall, good conditions
Fowler and Saunders succeeded in climbing the Northwest Face. “The face was complex and we were fortunate to find good climbing conditions,” said Fowler. Before they got on, they studied the wall very carefully with binoculars so as not to end up in impasses, said Mick. In total, it took them seven days to climb up and down to the summit and back to their base camp.
Northwest Face of the 6,258-meter-high Yawash Sar
“A notable feature of the climb was a lack of good bivouac sites and at one point, we endured an excruciatingly uncomfortable hanging bivouac in strong winds,” said Mick. He spoke of “one of the best ascents that we have done together. It was absolutely brilliant!”
Three decades on separate paths
Fowler and Saunders had already climbed together in the Karakoram in the 1980s. In 1987, they caused a sensation when they mastered the 2,200-meter-high “Golden Pillar”, the Northwest Pillar of Spantik (7,027 m) for the first time. After that, the two went their separate ways as mountaineers for almost three decades.
Victor Saunders on the ascent
Saunders worked mainly as a mountain guide and expedition leader. He climbed the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on all continents. Between 2004 and 2013, Victor reached the summit of Mount Everest six times (with bottled oxygen). He stood on the eight-thousander Cho Oyu four times, once of which (in 1997) without a breathing mask. Fowler formed a powerful team with Paul Ramsden for a long time. Three times – in 2003, 2013 and 2016 – the duo was honored with the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of mountaineering”, for spectacular first ascents on six-thousanders.
Now he has made an astonishing comeback as an alpinist alongside Saunders. I got in touch with the two of them. Victor Saunders is still leading a trekking tour in Bhutan until the end of the month. So only Mick Fowler was able to answer my questions.
Mick, first of all congratulations on your great first ascent of Yawash Sar in Pakistan. Can you reveal the secret of why a 68-year-old (you) and a 74-year-old (Victor) are still able to achieve such impressive feats on the mountain?
Mick Fowler at the highest point
There is no secret. We are lucky to be reasonably healthy for our age but I think the main ingredients for success are motivation and willpower. And a basic level of ability of course. We spend a lot of time choosing a suitable objective and looking forward to it. All that anticipation helps motivate us and we are both the sort of people who will do our very best to succeed on something when we have set our heart on it. I suppose having climbed objectives like this for over 40 years also helps. We tend to know have a good idea of our ability and readily agree on when to push on or retreat.
How much fun did you have on your first ascent, how much torment?
Mostly lots of fun. We were lucky in that the conditions above the bergshrund were excellent and gave really enjoyable climbing. I found wading up the glacier to the bergschrund something of a torment but Victor seems to like that sort of thing. We did have a sitting/hanging bivouac which was amongst the most uncomfortable we have ever had.
View from the hanging bivouac
But then with the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to view such an experience in a better light and derive some warped retrospective pleasure from it. We laugh now about our antics to try and alleviate the discomfort that night!
Have you set yourselves an age limit for your extreme tours?
No. We will carry on doing our best to choose and climb appropriate objectives for as long as we are able.
Mick, you’ve been climbing with a colostomy bag since your bowel cancer. How does this hinder you – especially on steep walls in freezing temperatures?
The main problem I have is that the surgeons removed most of the fat from my buttocks to fill the hole where my anus was. That means I have virtually no padding in my buttocks which makes sitting bivouacs excruciatingly uncomfortable. The colostomy bag itself is not a problem when all is going well. But my harness does go right across my stoma and poo squidging accidents inevitably occur when there is lots of output and it’s not possible to change the bag for any reason – usually for reasons of bad weather or sustained difficulties. There is also the hassle factor of having to carry lots of colostomy bags as I really don’t want to run out. And the adhesive doesn’t work so well in really cold temperatures which can cause problems.
There is a lot of talk about the increasingly poor climbing style on the world’s highest mountains – cue: fixed ropes to the summit on commercial expeditions. What is your position on this?
Mick and Viktor’s route
I don’t really have a strong opinion on them. If people want to get to the top that way then that’s up to them. It’s just a pity that such expeditions clog up certain routes with ropes and worse. It all looks very unpleasant and dangerous to me. And I can’t see how anyone can possibly call it climbing. But then it’s great that we are all different.
It’s climbs like this that keep the belief in true alpinism alive. At the beginning of August, 33-year-old Briton Tom Livingstone and 42-year-old Slovenian Ales Cesen mastered the West Ridge on the 7,952-meter-high Gasherbrum III in the Karakoram in Pakistan for the first time. They climbed in alpine style to the summit, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without fixed ropes, without fixed high camps, without high porters.
On the descent, they traversed to the eight-thousander Gasherbrum II and used the fixed ropes on the normal route of the commercial teams – “which changed our style a little, but made sense,” Livingstone wrote on Instagram. It was the much safer option for the return to base camp.
Ascent and descent route by Paul Ramsden and Tim Miller on Surma-Sarovar in western Nepal
Paul Ramsden and Tim Miller have done it again: the two Brits managed another first ascent of a six-thousander in Nepal this fall – in alpine style (without bottled oxygen, without Sherpa support, without fixed ropes and without fixed high camps) and on a difficult route. Paul and Tim climbed the North Face of Surma-Sarovar in the far west of the country. The 6,574-meter-high mountain is located in the Salimor Khola Valley in the Gurans Himal, close to Nepal’s border with Tibet and India. “Possibly the most remote location I have ever been to, and we managed to climb a great route,” Paul wrote to me after his return from Nepal. He and Miller have thus achieved yet another feat of alpinism.
I had actually sent Paul some questions three weeks ago on the occasion of the Piolets d’Or award ceremony in Briancon on 15 November. Paul’s wife then informed me that he and Tim were still in Nepal. Ramsden and Miller will receive the “Oscar of Mountaineering” – as reported – for their first ascent of the 6,563-meter-high Jugal Spire in Nepal last year. Paul is the first mountaineer to be awarded the prestigious prize for the fifth time. Here are the answers from the 54-year-old top climber from Yorkshire in northern England.
Congratulations, Paul, on the fifth Piolet d’Or of your mountaineering career. What does the award mean to you?
Matt Cornell, Alan Rousseau and Jackson Marvell (from l. to r.) on the summit of Jannu.
It’s projects like this that show that alpinism is far from dead – even if the crisis of meaning in eight-thousander mountaineering sometimes makes it seem that way. The U.S. Americans Alan Rousseau, Jackson Marvell and Matt Cornell opened a new route on the 7,710-meter-high Jannu in eastern Nepal through the extremely steep, demanding and therefore rarely climbed North Face. It was the first time the 2,700-meter-high so-called “Wall of Shadows” had been mastered in alpine style – that is, without bottled oxygen, fixed high camps, fixed ropes or Sherpa support.
“So for three years I’ve been trying to climb the North Face of Jannu in alpine style with Matt and Jackson,” Alan Rousseau writes on Instagram. “We finally got it done! In a 7 day push BC (Base Camp) to BC.” The three climbers christened their route “Round trip ticket”.
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