Second attempt: A team from the commercial Nepalese expedition operator Makalu Adventure is making another attempt this winter to take Iranian mountaineer Abolfazl Gozali to the 8,485-meter-high Makalu – with bottled oxygen.
As Gozali revealed yesterday in an Instagram story, the team fixed the ropes up to an altitude of 6,000 meters and transported equipment there.
It is the only expedition on an eight-thousander in Nepal this winter so far. Simone Moro’s winter project on Manaslu ended in mid-December before it had really begun. As reported, the Italian suffered a heart attack during acclimatization in the Khumbu region.
Last October, Mingma Gyalje Sherpa announced a possible winter expedition to Mount Everest, with the goal being the first winter ascent of the world’s highest mountain by a woman. Nothing came of it, “because of financial issues,” as the head of the operator Imagine Nepal wrote to me.
Experienced Sherpa team
The expedition on Makalu is led by the very experienced Sanu Sherpa. Born in 1975, the Nepalese has summited all 14 eight-thousanders at least twice each. Six other climbing Sherpas are also part of the team, including Phurba Ongchu Sherpa, who has scaled Mount Everest 19 times.
Last year, Sanu’s team reached an altitude of around 7,800 meters with Gozali before gusts of wind reaching speeds of around 80 kilometers per hour and freezing temperatures halted the ascent and forced the climbers to turn back.
Gozali has scaled two eight-thousanders so far
Iranian Gozali, who celebrated his 42nd birthday yesterday, has summited two eight-thousanders so far: Manaslu in 2022 with bottled oxygen and Lhotse in 2023 without a breathing mask.
He also scaled the five so-called “snow leopard” peaks, five seven-thousanders in the territory of the former Soviet Union: Pik Ismoil Somoni (formerly Pik Communism), Pik Ozodi (formerly Pik Korshenevskaya) and Pik Avicenna (formerly Pik Lenin) in the Pamir Mountains, as well as Jengish Chokusu (formerly Pik Pobedy) and Khan Tengri in the Tian Shan Mountains.
The communist state once awarded the Snow Leopard Order for climbing these five mountains. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lists were continued. Gozali completed his collection in 2019.
