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.
“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.
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.
Twice diagnosed with bowel cancer
In 2016, Fowler and Saunders teamed up again – for a first ascent of the North Face of the six-thousander Sersank in the Indian Himalayas. Further projects were to follow, but then Mick was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2017. Chemotherapy followed. The cancer returned in 2018. Fowler had to undergo surgery and was fitted with an artificial bowel outlet, known as a so-called stoma.
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?
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.
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?
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.
