The North Face of Jannu is one of the largest and most formidable ice walls on Earth, and Benjamin Vedrines is one of the most outstanding alpinists of the new century. Combining the two could only result in an epic achievement, thanks also to Vedrines' young climbing partner, fellow Frenchman Nicolas Jean.

An American team did the main summit of 7,710m Jannu via the North Face in 2023, but Vedrines and Jean had an alternative goal: the unclimbed East summit (7,468m). In 2024, they launched their first attempt, sharing the wall with Americans Mike Gardner and Sam Hennessey, who were on their second and third attempts, respectively.

Vedrines and Jean's attempt ended when the third member of the 2024 team, Leo Billon, fell sick due to acclimatization problems. It ended worse for the two Americans: Gardner fell to his death from a bivy ledge.

The return

Vedrines left Jannu, promising he would return. So did Nicolas Jean, while Billon decided not to join this time. In the preceding months, Vedrines and Jean trained intensively at home in the Alps, including climbing and skiing nonstop the four faces of Mont Blanc.

Vedrines also made a record speed traverse that he called the Great Alpine Trilogy: a nonstop, human-powered traverse of the ridges of the Grandes Jorasses, the Matterhorn, and the Eiger. Climbing, paragliding, and cycling from one peak to the next, Verdrines finished in a stunning 39 hours.

Vedrines and Jean adapted as a team of two, although it meant carrying heavier backpacks and climbing less efficiently, since only two climbers must lead all the pitches. Three is the ideal partnership for these big walls.

“Luckily, Nicolas [Jean] and I have climbed extensively as a pair in the Alps, so we are used to working together,” Vedrines said. “Besides, I’ve always liked to climb in a team of two, so this was quite natural."

The preparation

They, along with cameramen Thibaut Marot and Quentin Degrenne, landed in Nepal at the beginning of September. Vedrines and Jean then started a careful acclimatization plan to prepare for their alpine-style attempt on Jannu East. They took it easy at base camp and gradually gained altitude.

Their preparations included a first ascent of 6,808m Anidesh Chuli, a beautiful snowy peak also known as the White Wave. After this, they waited patiently for the right weather window to begin. Vedrines planned a fast, three-day ascent. They needed the right conditions on the wall, as well as stable weather. In the end, it took them four days.

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The summit news

We heard about their success on October 19, after the climbers had returned safely to base camp. Jannu's vertical North Face and the sharp and icy summit ridge looked breathtaking. Both climbers agreed it had been the peak of their climbing careers.

"Concentration, commitment, self-improvement, and emotion…all the ingredients of high-altitude Himalayanism," Nicolas Jean said.

"I feel like I drew on all my knowledge and abilities to ascend this 2,300m Himalayan wall," wrote Vedrines. "Once we reached the summit, after so many trials and tribulations, tears flowed. A dream had come true."

We had all the details from Vedrines when he returned to Kathmandu, in an exclusive interview.

The climb

The climbers had intended to start on October 11 but had to postpone at the last minute because the gale-force winds that were supposed to drop kept hitting the peak at over 100kph. The following day, the two climbers moved from base camp to Advanced Base Camp, trusting in their meteorologist, who remained confident of a weather window.

On October 13, they started off from ABC (5,100m) at 5 am, simul-climbing part of the time — “soloing in a team of two,” is how they put it. They set their first bivouac at 6,200m.

The following day, they passed the point where Leo Billon had retreated in 2024, and the altitude from which Mike Gardner fell to his death. Beyond that, they were entering unknown terrain.

For the sake of transparency, Vedrines notes that they fixed 100m of rope through a particularly difficult section, right before their second bivouac at 6,900m.

At 3:30 am on October 16, the climbers left their bivy in –20°C, toward the razor-sharp summit ridge, which they reached at dawn. But their difficulties were far from over.

“The ridge was completely wind-loaded,” Vedrines wrote. "It was impossible to go straight up, so I had to traverse slightly into the face on the right side, on steep snow, with no solid protection. [At 7,400m,] I found a thin ice band, just enough to climb 10 meters and get back on the ridge. It was [exposed, but it was] the only option.”

At 1 pm, the duo thought they had reached the summit, but drone pilot Thibaut Marot warned them over the radio that the highest point was actually a second peak at the end of a corniced ridge. Disappointed and exhausted, Vedrines and Jean pushed themselves forward for another hour until they stood on the true summit of Jannu East at 1:40 pm.

Vedrines said they enjoyed very good ice conditions until the second bivy spot.

"After 7,000m, we reached the most exposed part," he explained. "It was all soft snow, and we didn’t have anywhere to put an anchor or a belay. We had no idea how we would manage to get down."

"However, we were so motivated to go to the top that we went on, and left the questions about the return until after the summit," Vedrines added. "In that sense, the real crux of the climb was the descent.”

The descent

The descent started at 6 am on October 16. Vedrines describes it as “wild.” All 50 rappels were delicate, but the upper 400m were the worst.

“We couldn’t place protection, and we had only three snow pickets,” Vedrines said. “It was clearly not enough, so we had to make a difficult decision to go down a different line, on a completely unknown face. It was very stressful, and the conditions were very, very bad.”

They only allowed themselves to relax back in base camp, which they reached at 5:30 pm, “mentally and physically done.” Both managed to evade frostbite despite the extremely low temperatures.

Made it look easy

In 2023, Americans Alan Rousseau, Jackson Marvell, and Matt Cornell achieved the first ascent of the North Face of Jannu to the massif’s main summit. The herculean effort pushed the climbers beyond their physical limits. Rousseau was frostbitten, and the team suffered hallucinations from extreme exhaustion during the last part of the climb.

While extremely tired at the end, Vedrines and Jean never reached that state. Somehow, they made their climb look easy, though surely it wasn't.

According to Vedrines, the key was good acclimatization. At the same time, he admits he felt utterly exhausted on the final part of the climb.

“I was surprised at how tired I was. I thought my [fitness] was better!”

Months later, Vedrines was awarded a Special Mention at the Piolets d'Or for his previous climbs in the Alps and the fast ascent of K2. As he explained at the ceremony, all his activities explore different aspects of alpinism, from climbing to skiing to paragliding. They also test his own limits. He is already planning for 2026.

This year, a legendary high-altitude climber and his courageous life partner opened a new alpine-style route on Nanga Parbat, the so-called Killer Mountain of Pakistan's Himalaya.

Denis Urubko, 52, of Russia, one of the best high-altitude climbers in history, had supposedly retired from the higher peaks some years ago. But a new goal prompted his return: He wanted to help his wife, Maria Cardell, 50, become the first woman to climb a new 8,000m route in alpine style.

However, no matter how much experience and support Urubko could provide, the effort was totally Cardell's. And that is the most impressive aspect of this Nanga Parbat expedition -- how the Spaniard rose to meet the challenge.

Climbing Urubko-style

The humble, soft-spoken Maria Cardell not only climbed a new route in alpine style on 8,126m Nanga Parbat; she has climbed it in pure Denis Urubko style, without being Denis Urubko. Bear in mind that the Russian's imprint through his seven new Himalayan routes all involved relentless endurance and stubborn progress in poor weather and difficult conditions. Rescue is never an option with him. Trying to climb Urubko-style is more than meritable. It is scary.

Cardell is more of a sport rock climber and a ski patroller than a high-altitude mountaineer, but Urubko introduced her to elite alpinism through brutal training in the Caucasus, where they climbed several peaks in rough weather. In 2023, they attempted a new, alpine-style route on Gasherbrum I, but high winds stopped them. Luckily for Cardell, they had already climbed the peak's normal route for acclimatization; it gave Cardell her first 8,000m summit. It was Urubko’s 27th without bottled oxygen.

The following winter, in January 2024, Urubko attempted Gasherbrum I again, but suffered frostbite after falling into a crevasse on the Gasherbrum Glacier. It required a long recovery, but the Russian was determined to get Cardell into mountaineering history, and she was willing.

Pakistan 2025

The couple chose the Diamir side of Nanga Parbat, the site of most climbing routes on the mountain, including the normal Kinshofer route. They traveled to Skardu early in the season, in June, and followed an innovative acclimatization program. It consisted of climbing 4,000m and 5,000m peaks in a day, moving very fast, and returning for the night to a camp at a lower altitude. Here, they recovered better and faster than they would have at the higher Base Camp of an 8,000'er.

“If Masha [Maria Cardell] can’t keep up, I’ll try it solo,” Urubko wrote in an email to Mountain.ru.

She could.

The couple moved to Nanga Parbat's Base Camp, but kept a low profile. Meanwhile, commercial teams fixed the normal route and eventually summited at the beginning of July. One day later, Urubko broke his silence.

Dangerously old-fashioned

“The route is calling,” Urubko texted on July 4. "It's time to turn the dream into reality."

He told his home team they expected to be four or five days on the face. Climbers in the area reported very dry conditions and frequent, dangerous rockfall. Later, we learned that the pair carried no InReach, no satphone, no GPS,  not even a radio to communicate with the base of the mountain. Urubko had made clear they wanted no rescue in case of trouble, so no one else had to risk their lives.

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Cardell explained later that Urubko had made her promise that she wouldn't try to help if he fell. She also admitted that she said yes but had no intention of keeping her word if something went wrong. She was also convinced that her husband would have done the impossible to help her if she'd been the one who needed help.

The weather seemed stable, although it wouldn't last. And lacking communication devices, the climbers had no way to receive forecasts.

A low-key summit

On July 11, their expedition outfitter confirmed to ExplorersWeb that Urubko and Cardell had summited the day before. The news made waves across the climbing community. Everyone was eager for details, but none came. Urubko and Cardell decided to stay under the radar for several days. They only returned to Skardu and told about the climb 10 days later.

Even then, details were scarce. They said they climbed between July 6 and July 10 and said their route combined varied terrain, with ice, mixed rock, snow, and a crevassed glacier.

"The route is technically difficult and exposed to avalanches and rockfall in some sections," the Russian climber told Mountain.ru.

The details of the climb were released progressively through interviews the couple gave back home and, most of all, Maria Cardell's lectures across Spain. Denis Urubko has stepped back to let his partner take the limelight. Cardell also shared a complete report (in Spanish) with the Spanish Mountaineering Association. They spent six days on the ascent and one on the descent, down the fixed ropes of the normal route.

Brutal experience

It was then that we knew that the climbers progressed in bad weather and low visibility and that they had taken significant risks in some sections due to the constant rockfall. On the second day, they had to wait for seven hours at the edge of a corridor while rocks fell constantly, until the sun set. They then resumed the climb and continued nonstop all night long, doing 19 pitches.

Their strategy was to go as fast as possible, with minimal gear, no 8,000m clothing, rationed food and fuel. Every afternoon, they had to pause as violent storms wracked the mountain. Snow piled up, and the avalanche risk increased dramatically.

"There's been tension, avalanches, rockfall, bad weather. I have surprised myself with my physical and mental endurance," Cardell told Desnivel.

Cardell admitted she had to assume the "extremely hard" methods and rules Urubko applies during his climbs. Among these, they didn't drink during the entire day while climbing -- very Russian. In order to go lighter, they didn't even carry water.

She also explained how Urubko is always analyzing every possible danger at every moment, in order to anticipate and prevent it.

"That is how, after all the huge challenges he has assumed, he is still alive," she explained. That also involves constant tension. "If Denis does not allow himself the least mistake, he will obviously be even more demanding with a partner, in whom he trusts his life."

New route or variation?

While in Skardu, Urubko also sent a topo of their ascent route, which raised the attention of some followers of Himalayan history. They noted that their line on the Diamir Face was very similar to a previous route opened in 2009 by Gerfried Goeschl of Austria and Louis Rousseau of Canada.

Gerfried Goesch had perished on Gasherbrum I, but Urubko and Cardell were careful to speak to Louis Rousseau before their expedition, to make sure they climbed on different terrain.

After the expedition, both Urubko and Rousseau collaborated with Gorskie Mapy of Poland, whose exquisite cartographic work is a respected reference in mountaineering. Since there is no GPS track, Urubko gave his memories and photos of where they went. Gorskie Mapy shared with them the topo of the two routes and also the Kinshoffer route, for comparison:

We recently published a long article about new routes, partial new routes, and variations, which attempted to explain the differences. However, as we noted, there are no accepted criteria in the mountaineering community about which is which. Urubko-Cardell’s route and Goeschl-Rousseau’s have different starting points. The closer areas are mid-mountain. Other sources told ExplorersWeb that the summit area is worth a careful look, since that is where most routes converge.

Louis Rousseau declined to enter the debate about whether the Urubko/Cardell route, which they named Niezabudka (the Russian word for the forget-me-not flower), is new, partial, or a variation.

"I will leave it to specialists and historians to judge," Rousseau said.

Instead, he highlights the significance of the climb itself, done as a two-person team, alone on a huge mountain, in excellent style and difficult conditions.

"For me, it’s just another incredible badass ascent made by Denis and Maria that embodied the true essence of alpinism," he told ExplorersWeb.

It's time for our annual countdown of what ExplorersWeb considers the most interesting expeditions of the year. For the next 10 days, we'll summarize our favorites and make a case for why we liked them so much. We'll kick off with Christina Lustenberger and Guillaume Pierrel's ski descent of the south face of Mount Robson.

On their own, both Lustenberger of Canada and Pierrel of France are remarkable freeride skiers. As a team, they are even more daring. After skiing down New Zealand's Mount Aoraki-Mount Cook last year, the pair headed in 2025 to British Columbia in western Canada, to make the first ski descent of the south face of 3,954m Mt. Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

Double climb

Before skiing down Robson, the peak obviously has to be climbed, and that is a challenge in itself. Lustenberg and Pierrel did it -- twice.

Raised in British Columbia, Lustenberger had been eyeing the south face of Robson for years. After Mount Cook, she felt she had found the ideal ski partner for the challenge.

The pair spent two bitterly cold days, February 12-13, climbing the peak's Great Couloir (WI3), including a freezing bivy on a ledge. Their plan was to ski the couloir all the way down from the summit, but the weather worsened faster than expected.

"We got within 200m of the summit, and due to the storm pressing against us, we turned around…knowing we had a huge amount of terrain below us,” Lustenberger told ExplorersWeb at the time. “It was extremely hard to retreat when we were so close.”

In fading light, and eventually in the dark, the pair had to reverse technically difficult pitches, ski in poor snow conditions, and rappel seven pitches. They made it back to their base by 10 pm.

Back for more

At the time, both Pierrel and Lustenberger felt they were done, but 24 hours of rest and better conditions drove them back to the mountain.

On February 15, they went up and pitched their tent on the Dome (a subpeak). At first light on February 16, in the cold, they climbed the Kain Face (the southeast side) to the summit. It was not easy, as the climbers had to traverse up the upper 200m in unknown mixed terrain until they reached the highest point they'd managed two days before.  "That was exhausting, physically and mentally,” Lustenberger said.

They were rewarded for their boldness with a bluebird summit day.

However, they had little time to rest, with 3,000 vertical meters of descent ahead. Luckily, some fresh snow and the February sun on the face had improved the snow conditions for the descent down the Great Couloir.

3,000 meters down

The ski descent took them 3.5 hours, and again, the seven rappels on highly exposed terrain. As Lustenberger explained later, there was no break in the constant stress, as the entire ski line was highly exposed. While they were in the couloir, they were exposed to any rock or avalanche that fell from any altitude, as all would funnel down the tube-like corridor.

Mount Robson is the highest peak of the Canadian Rockies and the most prominent peak in North America. It has been skied three times before, but the previous descents were down the North, or Kain, Face.

In May 2017, 25-year-old Emma Freeman became the first woman to ski Robson. She did so via the Kain route, with partner Jesse Milner, with no rappels from the summit to Berg Lake. "This was actually the second time we skied it," Milner told ExplorersWeb. "The first time, we had to do a couple rappels." Lustenberger was thus the second woman to ski the peak.

Skiing background

Lustenberger noted that as a skier and an explorer, she has learned to look at mountains differently. That perspective has allowed her to complete some difficult lines around the world. In 2024, she skied down the Great Trango Tower in Pakistan, with Jim Morrison and Chantel Astorga, and New Zealand’s Mount Cook with Guillaume Pierrel.

Pierrel skied down Gasherbrum II in 2021. At home in the French Alps, he skied the North Face of the Dru near Chamonix and the Picco Luigi Amedeo on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif, with Vivian Bruchez.

On their second, successful climb to the summit, the skiers had a film crew with them, so they now have a film documenting the feat. After a premiere at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, the pair is presenting at several spots in Europe. Here's a teaser:

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Remote Western Nepal is giving small teams the chance for new routes and unclimbed peaks. Most recently, on November 3, American alpinists Benjamin Lieber and Alex Hansen made the first ascent of 6,233m Changla Khang West on the Tibetan border.

"The expedition...matched the goals we had: go to a place we have not seen before, look around at all the mountains, and then try to climb one," Lieber told ExplorersWeb.

The route

The lower part of the route consisted of scrambly buttresses and steep snow gulleys that led to an incredible snow/ice ridge. This unbroken ridge took us nearly all the way to the summit, which was guarded by a few rock bands.

It felt like we got off easy with the rock bands when we turned to look inside a chimney to find perfect water ice. After a horrifying top-out at the chimney’s end, we made it to the summit a short time later.

The Piolets d'Or for the best climbing expeditions of 2024 were presented at a gala yesterday in San Martino di Castrozza, Italy.

Along with the awarded climbers were important figures in worldwide alpinism, including Victor Saunders and Lindsay Griffith of the UK, Ines Papaert of Germany, Steve House of the U.S., and Young-hoon Oh of South Korea.

That day, the climbers gave a joint press conference, which evolved into a debate about alpine style and whether that rather purist term made sense anymore in the age of technology.

Vedrines breaking ground

Benjamin Vedrines of France demonstrated how modern alpinism is seeking new challenges and experiences driven by innovation. Vedrines received a unique Special Mention in the Piolets d'Or. For the first time, it recognized a combination of activities -- some that Vedrines did in the European Alps, plus his speed ascent of K2.

Although not an alpine-style climb, his no-oxygen, Fastest Known Time ascent (10 hours 59 minutes from Advanced Base Camp at 5,350m to the 8,611 summit) was followed by a paraglider flight from the summit back to Base Camp.

"I love climbing, but I also love paragliding, I love ski touring, I love the big link-ups with my friend Leo Billon in the Alps...All these activities are different ways to perform in the mountains and to explore my own limits," Vedrines told ExplorersWeb.

It's not only about firsts

During the press conference yesterday, Ales Cesen of Slovenia, who was awarded for a new route in pure alpine style on Pakistan's Gasherbrum III, raised a point that Vedrines had also mentioned to ExplorersWeb: that modern alpinism transcends first ascents and new routes. As Cesen explained, there are fewer and fewer unclimbed mountains, and those remaining might not be so interesting to climb. At the same time, there were exciting possibilities in repetitions done in a modern, superior style -- for example, free climbing routes that previously required aid, speed ascents, ski descents, and so on.

"Paragliding descents have opened a new field of adventure," Vedrines noted. "The wings weigh just one kilo, and they can be brought up by a single climber going light, with no need for porters or rotations like 30 years ago."

That, he explained, has become the norm among the climbing community in the Chamonix Valley.

Technology helps creativity

Technologies like Google Earth, although not perfect, are increasingly helping climbers discover remote peaks to climb. Drones can locate otherwise invisible climbing lines.

"We will never run out of options," said Dean Steadman of the U.S. Yashkuk Sar team. Spencer Gray of the U.S., who received a Piolet for his part in the first ascent of Kakur Kangri in Western Nepal, added: "Technology helps creativity."

Asked by ExplorersWeb about the limits of what constitutes alpine style, Cesen replied: "No limits. Climbers should be free to climb as they please, as long as they are transparent and provide all the details on their climbs." He also declined to stick to hyper-purist criteria.

"I believe one can fix one or two pitches from a bivy site, and the climb will still be alpine style if long enough," he said. "[But] climbers must clearly state if and where they fixed ropes."

Vedrines is a sterling example of that transparency. In his Jannu report to ExplorersWeb, he admitted that he and Nicolas Jean had fixed a highly exposed pitch on the upper side of the north face.

Social media sources

Yet, Steadman noted the increasing importance of social media and how easily dishonest climbers can share partial or false facts about their achievements. Cesen commented about how the media sometimes used secondary sources of information, which turned out to be inaccurate.

Then this writer was asked to share her thoughts. We advocated for thorough work based on reliable information, direct sources whenever possible, and proper citations indicating the origin of the information. We also highlighted the challenges that sometimes arise in obtaining unbiased, detailed, and honest information from social media.

In transition

The general feeling was that the meaning of alpine-style and alpinism was changing.

"The Piolets d'Or are currently in a transition process," said Christian Trommsdoft, the driving force behind the awards and president of Chamonix's High Mountain Group. "The Special Mention to Vedrines is one step, and...embracing the new techniques and technology is also a sign."

The previous night, Trommsdorf took the floor to announce the Piolets d'Or group was considering including a new award for alpine rock climbing.

"For the moment, it is just the first step of an idea which will take at least two years to develop," he told ExplorersWeb.

The Piolet d'Or awards have begun in the Italian Dolomites, and almost all the recipients and jury members, as well as several well-known climbers, have gathered in San Martino di Castrozza for three days of celebrations.

Tom Livingstone, who was awarded for his route up the West Ridge of Gasherbrum III, was unable to attend, but his partner, Ales Cesen of Slovenia, hurried back from guiding in Antarctica to make it.

The host town plays a significant role in the event's success. San Martino di Castrozza lies in the heart of the Italian Dolomites, within easy reach of the international airports at Venice and  Milan. The local tourism board is showing the best of what Italy, and the Italian Dolomites in particular, have to offer. San Martino was one of the first popular resorts in the 20th century, hosting such illustrious visitors as Sigmund Freud.

Organizer Christian Tromsdoff, president of Chamonix's Groupe de Haute Montagne, does his best to make this more of a celebration of alpinism than an Oscar-style competition. Tromsdoff emphasizes that the awards are given to activities, not to climbers. While being a "Piolet d'Or winner" remains a notable entry on anyone's resumé, the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. The committee announces the awarded climbs long before the ceremony takes place, so just the successful climbers and their families, plus several former recipients, are here, further removing any tension.

Cima Rosetta

Today, climbers, organizers, and a few of us journalists took a gondola to the high plateau leading to the Refugio Rosetta. On the summit of nearby Cima Rosetta (a short walk from the cable car), we met the always charming Benjamin Vedrines, who found time to be at the venue while promoting his film about his speed climb and paraglider descent of K2. By dinnertime, Victor Saunders and Masha Gordon of the UK, Olga Lukashenko of Russia, and Steve House of the U.S. had arrived. Others will show up in time for the awards ceremony tomorrow evening.

Meet and greet

Today was an opportunity to speak to familiar names about their climbs. August Franzen of the U.S., one of the Yashkuk Sar team, told us about his new opportunity in Valdez, Alaska. He recently inherited a hostel from legendary local climber Brian Teale, who died in 2022. Teale felt that the young August was the ideal person to take over the hostel he ran, plus Teale's huge archive of slides, route topos, and information about the climbs in that part of Alaska.

Climber and anthropologist Young-hoon Oh, one of the Piolet d'Or jury, spoke about the quickly changing social dynamics in Nepal, thanks to the booming climbing industry. And Spencer Gray of the Kaqur Kangri team gave a taste of his upcoming presentation. Yes, their expedition was about climbing a virgin face, but it was also a pursuit of adventure and remoteness in western Nepal.

In October, Lise Billon and Maud Vanpoulle led a team of young women climbers to Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalaya. Conditions thwarted them on their main goal, but they forged a new route on a 5,200m granite spire.

Sophie Jacob, Mathilde Badoual, and Isis Millerioux took part in this mentoring program organized by the French Mountaineering Association. The program recruits young, promising climbers and trains them for three years through several stages and mountain ranges, from the Alps to the Himalaya.

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This was Billon's second year as mentor but her first time leading the group to the Himalaya. Billon has climbed around the world, but this was quite a different experience than arranging an expedition with friends.

"[It was hard] trying to handle the expectations of everyone and feeling responsible for the outcome a little more than usual," she wrote, "but I felt really great in this role."

Harsh weather

The team had to endure harsh weather during their approach to Base Camp, and then dealt with loads of fresh snow while acclimatizing.

"Then something extraordinary happened, something I never had in Himalaya," Billon said. "The weather forecast predicted infinite good weather. No clouds in the horizon, forever!"

Excited, they headed for their goal, the north pillar of 6,000m+ Brahmasar, lying between the Satling and Dudhganga Glaciers, south of the well-known 6,904m Thalay Sagar, one of the most challenging peaks in the Garhwal Himalaya.

No-go on Brahmasar

However, the attempt failed due to unstable snow on the face, which alternated with sections of loose rock. The climbers retreated after one day. According to the French Mountaineering Association (FFME), conditions were also worse than expected due to global warming. Some years ago, ice permanently covered these north faces, but now the ice has disappeared, exposing bare, frost-shattered rock.

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The good news is, the southern and western faces offered good-quality granite and a suitable alternative.

Unknown terrain

"We spotted a western ridge leading to a summit right above our Advanced Base Camp and decided to make it our next objective," Billon explained.

They took two days to complete the new route. As they moved across unknown terrain, the team had to discuss the next moves and the best way to deal with some vertical cracks, sections of brittle rock, and patches of snow on the upper section. A good exercise in teamwork.

"As a trainer for the last three years...I admit that I don’t have much more to teach the girls now," Billon said.

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The team did not reach the highest point.

"Night was falling, and a thick snow patch blocked our way to the last spire, five meters above us," Billon explained.

They rappelled down in the dark, following a different line from their ascent route. "[This ] added a little bit of spice," said Billon, "especially when my climbing shoes decided to slide off my foot in the middle of the descent, forcing me to walk barefoot through a snow patch at 5,000m."

Recently, Helias Millerioux of France was invited to the Banff Mountain Film Festival to share his views about the future of alpinism. We spoke to him in an exclusive interview, largely about that topic, and came away impressed by his thoughtfulness.

Millerioux won a Piolet d'Or in 2018 for an impressive 2,200m new route on the Nuptse massif. It was rated ED+, the hardest in the alpine classic graduation. He still climbs in the Himalaya and Karakoram every year, always pursuing high-difficulty climbs in alpine style.

With this pure approach, of course, failure is much more common than success in mountaineering. He walked away without a summit, for example, on Trivor (Batura range, Karakoram) with Jannick Grazianni in 2024, and on the West Face of Manaslu with Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer in 2022.

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Fake revolution

Millerioux defends a slow, gradual evolution in alpinism, in contrast with the high-publicity achievements seen on social media and large media outlets.

"Changing things in alpinism takes time, and each generation of climbers puts a little stone on the top of their mountains," he says. "But there are no revolutionary changes [through expeditions] that are based only on logistics."

By "logistics," he means helicopters, huge support teams, abundant oxygen, fixed ropes. Logistics-based achievements, he says, steal the chance of doing a "world first" by fair means and showing the wider public -- which pays most attention to firsts -- how it should be done. Skiing down the Hornbein Couloir or climbing winter K2 without supplementary oxygen would have had a much greater impact on future generations of mountaineers, he feels, without the huge support.

"In this modern world, everything is possible," Millerioux said. "All feats can be achieved with the new technologies, gear, and logistics. We alpinists are not explorers anymore. However, we have a responsibility to the next generation for what we do in the mountains."

He is concerned that wider audiences may think that an Everest ski descent must be done with supplementary oxygen, when it can be done without.

Always a mountain guide

As he pointed out, the problem with strictly following the values of alpine style and aiming for excellence is that the chances of success are much lower. Big sponsors want triumphs to publicize on Netflix documentaries.

"That is why I still earn my living as a mountain guide, guiding 100 days a year," he noted.

He says that he has some gear sponsorship, and the grants from some mountaineering associations may help pay for an expedition, but they don't provide a living.

When we asked him what he would do if money were no issue, Millerioux didn't hesitate: He would keep climbing without either sponsors or social media, but he wouldn't quit guiding.

"I love guiding, it's been my dream since I was a child, and right now, I have the freedom to choose who I have as a client and what we do."

The next generation

We asked Millerioux, who is now 38, about the new generation of French climbers, including Benjamin Vedrines and Nicolas Jean, and also the young members of the High Mountain Military Group. Then there are the three 20-somethings who recently free-climbed la Directe de la Amitie on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses.

Is this a particularly strong generation?

"I think the new generation of climbers is super strong because they do more rock climbing and they are better trained," he replied. "But it's happening everywhere, not only in France."

Commitment vs. danger

We also asked him about risk management and the line between brave and reckless.

"Risk tolerance is a personal value that changes from climber to climber, and I am not here to judge anyone about it," he replied. "But we have to differentiate between commitment and danger."

Commitment in climbing is similar to that in deep diving or polar expeditions: You go as far as you decide...Commitment is in the DNA of climbers and is part of the adventure. But danger is like deciding to pitch your tent under a looming serac and stay there for a week and see what happens.

The mess on the 8,000'ers

Then there's what he saw on the 8,000'ers, especially with Nepalese guides and their clients.

Millerioux and his team acclimatized on the normal route of Manaslu before launching an attempt to the West Face in the fall of 2022. He was shocked when he saw hundreds of people heading for the summit in clearly dangerous conditions.

"There was that avalanche above Camp 4 that swept away nearly a dozen people," he recalled. "Hilaree Nelson died due to another slide, and there were 300 people on the mountain. None of them considered calling it quits. One day later, the local guides put a smile on their faces and led their clients up the mountain, perhaps to their deaths."

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During acclimatization, the shockwave from an avalanche hit them, and they decided to descend to Base Camp. Yet everyone else continued up to Camp 3 the next day. Several other avalanches injured local guides later that week, Millerioux reports.

A 'cheerful' experience

At the time, Millerioux posted an ironic remark about the situation on social media: "There's something good about this mountain: When you die, you don't die alone. Death is a collective act here. It can almost be a joyful and cheerful experience."

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Millerioux remembers how once, they tried to step out of the packed trail.

"The moment we stepped out, we sank up to our waists in fresh, deep snow. If we had been a small team climbing alpine style, we would have been unable to reach the summit. People that season climbed Manaslu because they followed a road of packed snow."

The 8,000'ers business has also increased the prices to the point of excluding teams with plans to try new routes or different sides of the mountain.

"I'd love to attempt a new route on an 8,000m peak again, but the permits, the logistics, everything around these peaks is too expensive. It's easier for me to go on an expedition to Alaska."

The problems include a lack of flexibility with climbing permits. There is no way to change the permit to a different peak if the first one isn't in a proper condition. You can't even switch routes on the same mountain. "Alpine style is about adaptability, and that is hardly possible without flexibility in the permits."

More restrictions

Finally, Millerioux points to a new threat to alpinism in the future: geopolitics.

I remember my mentors in mountaineering telling stories about their climbs in Tibet. Now these peaks are closed to foreigners. Even in the areas of Pakistan bordering with China, where the ethnic communities are the same on both sides of the border, and commerce was the norm between them for centuries, there are now prohibitions and even walls built in the middle of the mountains. Mountaineering is freedom, but freedom is more and more restricted in today's world.

Setting the rules

Following that train of thought, Millerioux thinks it is necessary to clear up the definition of alpinism and to identify some general rules. To achieve that, he considers engaging the community in an open discussion about values and style.

Here, sitting on the fence is not acceptable: "One must have an opinion and take sides," he says. "We cannot focus on our climbs only and pretend to be blind to the dynamics occurring on peaks such as Everest and Manaslu."

The remaining question is, who sets the rules?

If single unclimbed peaks are hard to find in this era of online beta, imagine an entire range where no climbers have set foot ever before. A young team from Britain and Ireland has done just that. Their first ascents took place in the Nura Valley, in the Alay region of southern Kyrgyzstan.

Rather than extremely technical routes or big faces, the interest of this expedition lies in their exploration of unknown mountains. The young team included Joe Collinson, Maria Koo, and Lawrence Luscombe of the UK, and Orla O’Muiri of Ireland. Supported by the Mount Everest Foundation (MEF), the team did remarkable research to compile all the details, maps, images, useful addresses, notes on gear, and tips for future climbing expeditions. Their detailed report is available here. However, here's a summary.

How to get there

The team's first goal was to find a way to access the valley across rivers, moraines, and glaciers. Then, if successful, they needed to climb one of the area's intriguing 5,000'ers, none of them previously summited.

They approached the area initially by truck, then switched to horses, and finally trekked into the Nura valley. After crossing a river, the team established its base camp on a flowery alpine meadow.

One more crossing of the Nura River, which was only possible early in the morning before the current grew too strong, led them to moraine and their advanced base camp.

The climbs

As in other ranges last summer, including the Karakoram, the weather had been extremely hot for several weeks before they arrived. The snowline was a lot higher than they had expected, and there was not that much snow to ski down the peaks, as they'd intended.

"North-facing slopes had snow to around 4,000m, and south-facing, non-glaciated peaks were completely bare as high as we could see (4,560m)," they reported.

However, they noted the area could offer excellent skiing for those coming earlier in the year.

Skiing was forgotten, and instead, the team headed for the north faces of peaks on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their first climb was the enchainment of four neighboring 4,500m peaks. They climbed the first peak from its west side, with the first 500m of altitude done on dry terrain and then mixed ramps up to 50 degrees. They then followed the ridge, at times quite sharp and exposed, to the east that took them to three more summits.

By then, the climbers had chosen the expedition's main objective: an unnamed peak marked as 5,670m high. As bad weather approached, they retreated to base camp and waited for a suitable weather window.

Gear stolen

When forecasts announced a four-day period of good weather, they returned to their advanced base camp to find their equipment gone.

"All that remained were three snow stakes and one ice axe," they said.

Locals later told them that the spot was a common smuggling pass between China and Kyrgyzstan.

"It is our working theory that two smugglers must have taken our bags into China," they wrote. "Each bag weighed 25-30kg, so it is somewhat impressive they took the bags in their entirety, in addition to whatever they were smuggling."

They decided to pool all their remaining gear and attempt the climb anyway. They left at midnight for the base of the mountain, where they had planned to climb "an obvious and aesthetic 1,500m line cut into the lower face before joining the prominent north ridge via a narrow crux gully, before the final ridge, which led directly to the peak's double summit."

Too risky

The team climbed on glacial ice and passed the most difficult section, a 60º couloir that led to a plateau at 5,000m. This left only the final, lower-angle snow slopes and the 600m or so to the summit.

By then, unfortunately, the sun was hitting the slopes, making the snowpack too unstable to risk the last section. Making seven rappels, they retreated to the bottom of the peak.

Afterward, the climbers made a last-day attempt on a 4,780m peak. They reached a col after climbing through the night, but the weather had deteriorated, and visibility was nearly zero as the sun rose, and they retreated.

"Despite only succeeding on their first route, the expedition was able to gather valuable information on the valley, including details of the approach and several potential routes," the Mount Everest Foundation noted. 

The Russian Mountaineering Association has published its shortlist of candidates in their version of the Piolets d'Or. The list features two alpine-style ascents of 8,000m peaks: the new route on the Southwest Face of Manaslu by Andrey Vassiliev's team and the Nanga Parbat line by Denis Urubko and Maria Cardell.

A jury will decide the single winner of the Russian Golden Ice Axe from the four contenders below at a gala in Moscow on November 29.

8,000'ers

The new route on Manaslu's Southwest Face by Andrey Vasilyev, Sergei Kondrashkin, Kirill Eizeman, Natalia Beliankina, and Vitaly Shipilov. They completed the route in a single, alpine-style push, having previously acclimatized on the normal route of 8,163m Manaslu. Furthermore, they descended by a different line, in difficult conditions and unknown terrain.

Second on the list, which is in no particular order, is the alpine-style Nezabudka route by Denis Urubko of Russia and Maria Cardell of Spain on Nanga Parbat (8,125m), from the Diamir (northern) side of the mountain. They completed the climb, which includes sections exposed to avalanches and rockfall, in rough weather conditions.

Kyrgyzstan Big Wall

Also a finalist is the new route on Kyrgyzstan's Svarog (5,100m) by Evgeny Matveenko, Evgeny Korulin, Artem Pivovarchik, and Tikhon von Stackelberg.

Pik Svarog lies in the Ashat Gorge of the Pamir-Alay range. While not the highest peak in the area (Mt. Sabakh is 300m higher), Svarog has the steepest north face. It rises more than 1,000m above the bergschrund, according to the American Alpine Journal.

This year's climb, rated 6B, goes up the center of the northwest face. There are only two previous ascents of that face, both by Russian teams, in 2014 and 2021. Both followed different lines.

A new women's route in India

An all-female team of O. Paducheva, O. Kochubei, N. Pilshchikova, N. Muzhikova completed Karma, a new route on Iris Peak (5,200m), in the Indian Himalaya. The 1,100m route has two sections of varied difficulty, according to the climbers: a 650m first part up a vertical wall rated as 6c, ED and a second, easier 550m upper section, rated as PD/AD.

The team had originally planned for a new route on White Sapphire Peak in Kishtwar, but the conflict between India and Pakistan last spring, plus several difficulties traversing flooded areas, forced them to look for an alternative goal in the Zanskar region.

Just when we thought that we had already covered the most outstanding expeditions of a remarkable year, we got a heads-up from an American alpinist about a "recent ascent done by a small team in Pakistan that I think is probably the best climb of the year so far!"

After reading the reports and speaking with the climbers, we can only agree.

The ascent of a difficult new route on 6,000m+ Aikache Chhok in Pakistan by James Price of the UK and George Ponsonby of Ireland is a true adventure on a 3,000m route of high commitment, involving an epic nine-day climb between October 13 and October 21.

We first heard of James Price in 2022 after his bold solo attempt to traverse the entire Batura Wall in the Karakoram. He did most of it before finally turning around with frostbitten toes. Despite the injuries, he returned on his own -- five kilometers of ridge, a glacier, and 70km back to town. (Watch a documentary about the adventure here.) Meanwhile, George Ponsonby, who was on his first climb in Asia, provided great insight about the climb in an interview with ExplorersWeb.

Brainstorming

Ponsonby and Price met as members of the UK's Young Alpinists Group (YAG), a mentorship program founded by Tom Livingstone for experienced yet young alpinists of the UK and Ireland. Members spend three years participating in a series of progressive climbing events.

"We were in Scotland on a YAG trip last January, and everyone was asked to come up with an expedition idea for the summer or autumn," Ponsonby told ExplorersWeb. "James and I spent about 15 minutes coming up with ideas and making a presentation. Mine was somewhere in Tajikistan, and James chose a valley he hadn’t yet been to in Pakistan...Neither of us thought that our ideas would be popular, as they were so unprepared and sparse on details, but somehow James’ got voted as the first choice and mine as the second. So we ended up going to Pakistan."

Training while salmon fishing

"We prepared for the expedition as well as we could, which wasn’t well at all," admitted Ponsonby.

He explained that Price injured his ankle tendon shortly before the trip, which caused him acute pain. "He brought a ski boot and had planned to climb in that to keep his ankle immobilized," Ponsonby noted.

Meanwhile, Ponsonby spent the summer commercial salmon fishing in Alaska from 6 am to 11.30 pm every day.

"That meant no climbing and no uphill training since the end of June," he said. "The job is really physical, and while I got a lot stronger working it, it’s not climbing muscle."

Still, YAG coach Tom Horrocks of Adventure Fitness Consultants suggested some exercises to do, in addition to his exhausting job.

"Because of that, we weren’t planning on doing anything that crazy, but James’ ankle stopped giving him issues while we were in base camp (so no ski boot required), and I found myself fitter than I thought, so our ambitions just started to grow," Ponsonby said.

No specific goal

The YAG group in Pakistan consisted of three climbing teams. The pair of Price and Ponsonby had no specific goal in mind.

"We couldn’t really find any photos, so we didn’t make any plans for any line ahead of time, just deciding to turn up and see what looked good."

They wandered along two valleys, from Sani Pakush to the Batura Wall, looking for suitable objectives. In the end, they chose a peak right in front of their base camp tent.

The climbers spotted a long ridge/buttress straight up the northwest face of a peak called Aikache Chhok in the Haachindar Massif. The peak had previously been climbed from its south ridge by a 1983 Italian team consisting of ​​Enrico De Luca, Giorgio Malucci, and Gianpiero Di Federico.

"They climbed from the Shilinbar Glacier to the south," Ponsonby told us. "[There have been] no recorded ascents since. The summit is also referred to as Sia Chhish from the Shilinbar side, Yain Hisq Sar from the Muchuar side, and Akbar Chhok from the Baltar side. Altitude reports vary from 6,300m to 7,040m."

The two decided to try it via a new route from the north. As soon as a weather window opened, they took food for five days and fuel for seven, and left on October 13.

The climb

"The first day of climbing, we started strong, making good progress up a main gully. Then [we continued] left into a side gully, before reaching about six pitches of mixed climbing up to M5/M6 to connect small snowfields further and further up a face to try and reach the ridgeline," Ponsonby wrote in the expedition report. "The day ended three pitches below the ridgeline. Both of us were happy about the progress and naively thinking our five-day timeline seemed pretty reasonable."

"Day two then kicked us right up the hole," Ponsonby recalled. "It took all day to climb just three pitches."

The mixed terrain required some aid climbing (around M7/A2+). The day included a slightly overhanging crack on rock that became looser and looser. Price overcame it with some aid climbing. Then Ponsonby led the last part on varied terrain to the ridge.

The climbers noted that part of their north-side route was cold and shady. "The ambiance had become a little too ‘Grandes Jorasses-ey’ for our liking," he said.

On the third day, they gained altitude on mixed terrain up the side of the ridge, as the ridge itself was only suitable for rock shoes, not with the alpine boots the climbers had with them. Finally, they reached a glacier with some snow ledges, and then back to the ridge in mixed terrain. That night, they bivvied under what they called the "second rock step."

The hardest day

To avoid the rock step, the climbers rappelled down and traversed toward some ice ramps, but this turned out to be a dead end. By the time they realized they were going nowhere, the light was fading, and they had to stop.

"That night, to make ourselves feel better, we made what we thought was custard, but ended up being some inedible, mango-tasting, plastic-like substance that had to be thrown away."

"That day was the day the route really started to feel hard for us and was the closest we came to turning around," Ponsonby told ExplorersWeb. "However, we both felt it was worth one more try, though with an optimized strategy: On the following morning, I got a light leader bag and climbed as fast as I could through the ice."

That fifth day was an endless climb on ice, eight pitches up to AI5, most of them 60m rope stretchers on rock-hard glacial ice, and a vertical snow pitch to exit back to the ridge in the dark. Here's Ponsonby's account of the day.

My nerves got pretty shot by the end. We broke two ice screws and I chipped one of my picks from the rock-solid ice. When I finally topped out onto the ridge above the second rock band, I let out a scream of relief, took a couple of steps and fell into the bergschrund of the serac below us. I was so tired I just sat down and belayed from there, using my body weight as an anchor. After all that effort, we didn’t think about retreating again. While possible (both of us had a retreat route in the back of our minds), it would have been two days minimum to get off.

The 'Karakorum flop'

That night, they prayed for an easier sixth day. Instead, when they looked up after passing a small hump, they saw nearly 1,000m of black ice up the ridge, with some chossy rock steps thrown in. With battered feet from the previous day, the pair perfected a technique they dubbed the "Karakorum flop."

To execute a good flop, you climb as far as you can up slabby black ice from your last ice screw, ideally while simul-climbing. When you can’t take the pain in your toes and calves any more, you drive in the ice axe and clip straight into it. Then, relax every muscle in your body.

If the bag starts to tip you backward, just let it, don’t fight anything. After a minute of complete relaxation, only then do you start to even think about putting in a screw. Clip the screw, then rinse and repeat the entire procedure until you’re out of screws.

Added Ponsonby: "It was James’ turn to lead all day the next day as I was a bit mentally done for, and he did an amazing job."

After dark, they found a bivy spot in a crevasse at 6,150m.

Elusive summit

"Day seven continued up the glacial face with more simul-climbing on snow, an overhanging ice step, and one and a half pitches of steep black ice to the ridge between the mini-summit and the main summit," Ponsonby wrote.

While on the summit ridge in deep snow, the sun finally appeared for a few minutes before fresh storm clouds enveloped the climbers in a whiteout.

What followed was mental torture. The climbers slowly plunged through deep snow to the place marked as the summit on the map. It was not: Two hours later, they were still going up. Eventually, the mist cleared up and they saw a corniced summit still two pitches beyond them.

"Completely unwilling to do any more climbing and with terrible visibility, we threw up the bivy tent right below it and jumped inside it to wait out the bad weather overnight, recalled Ponsonby. "We shivered the night away, barely able to eat and just focused on keeping all our extremities as warm as we could."

Still, with his last grams of energy before pitching the bivy tent, Price fixed a pitch up the cornice to ease the way on the following morning.

On day eight, the climbers shared their last remaining energy bar for breakfast. In clear weather, they climbed the cornice, summited, and immediately focused on how to get off the mountain. They were in such a hurry that they didn't check the final altitude. "We recorded 6,663m on a Garmin one pitch below the summit," said Ponsonby.

Two days down

The climbers had not been able to see the descent route while they were in base camp or scouting the mountain due to persistent clouds, so they had to risk a descent with no information, on unknown terrain, and with poor visibility.

"However, tough descents are where James really starts to shine," Ponsonby wrote.

They started to rappel, first off on rock and then off endless V-threads (abalakovs), with complex glacial crossings, rapping over seracs and rock sections, until they found a bivy spot at around 5,000m at sunset. There, they enjoyed the "massively comforting" sight of headlamps shining up at them from base camp.

The descent continued on the ninth day down a large rock rib. They passed quickly under some threatening seracs and finally reached the base of the mountain.

Half-brother George

The climbers returned to base camp with no frostbite and in good health, yet much slimmer.

"I entered Pakistan weighing around 180lbs, and when we got back to Aliabad, the scales showed around 160lbs," Ponsonby told ExplorersWeb. "I went from being called ‘younger brother George’ (guess James gives off an older vibe) to ‘half-brother George’ because I apparently looked a fair bit smaller."

The shepherds

There were shepherds and hunters in the area near their base camp. "[One of them,] Akbar, lent us a hut to use, which was very generous, and all the shepherds there showed us amazing hospitality," Ponsonby said.

It was his first climb in Asia, and he couldn't talk enough about the experience of meeting the locals who invited the young foreigners into their huts for chai and food, who would sell them milk and butter each morning, and who were "as curious about our lives as we were about theirs!"

He added: "When we were climbing, apparently there were people looking at us through binoculars every day, checking our progress, and at night there would often be a chorus of head torches flashing up at us when we flashed them. It made the mountain feel less committing, especially as we got higher."

They named their route Secrets, Shepherds, Sex and Serendipity. Asked about the meaning, Ponsonby said: "It's just the name of some silly Bollywood-style screenplay we spent far too long creating while waiting around base camp during bad weather days. It just kind of stuck."

One of 2025's best?

When we mentioned to Ponsonby that some people thought their climb was among the best of the year, Ponsonby reacted humbly.

"It’s all relative," he said. "Someone better than we are might come along and realize it’s quite easy. Plus, I’d always be cautious to make statements like that, as there’s almost always some unknown person who’s done something more impressive and hasn’t told anyone.

"Also, conditions always play a part. We'd have had a totally different experience in a different year with more or less snow, different ice, and neve conditions, different passages opening up through the tricky bits, different gear making the aid sections easier, etc."

Yet both are extremely proud of their achievement.

"I can’t speak for James, but nothing I’ve done has come close to overall difficulty/effort," Ponsonby said.

At least now he knows he's capable of spending nine days on an alpine-style route. With Ponsonby only 29 and Price 28, there's plenty of time for them to do more.

Editor's note: At first we (and the climbers) reported it as a first ascent of a new peak in the massif, but Ponsonby later told us that they now realize that it was a new route on the same Aikache Chhok the Italians had first climbed back in 1983. We have since changed the story to reflect this new information.

This year, the Piolets d'Or has given its Lifetime Achievement Award to Russian high-altitude climber Alexander Odintsov. The committee also awarded a special mention to the tireless French ace Benjamin Vedrines.

From Soviet to Russian

Born in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1957, Alexander Odintsov came from the Soviet school of alpinism. For decades, he excelled in the typical Soviet playgrounds: the Pamirs, the Tien Shan, the Caucasus, and the USSR championships.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Odintsov expanded his goals to the world's big mountain faces, which, until then, he could only dream of.

At the same time, he stayed loyal to the Russian style of climbing. In 1994, he launched The Russian Way -- Big Walls of the World. As the Piolets d'Or described it, the project aimed to "climb new routes on the most iconic big walls on Earth, with limited resources, in alpine or capsule style...while reinterpreting the legacy of the Soviet climbing school." Capsule style means that a big-wall team fixes at least some pitches ahead from a camp, returning to the camp at night, if required.

During the first years of ExplorersWeb in the early 2000s, we covered Odintsov's expeditions. They were always daring and ambitious, always on a shoestring budget, and often epic. His teams combined the best climbers of the former USSR and a younger generation who soon made history in the post-Cold War world. Among these were Dmitry Golovchenko and Sergey Nilov, double Piolets d'Or recipients, who perished in consecutive expeditions on Gasherbrum IV.

The dream walls

Odintsov's dream was to climb 10 big walls around the world, in modern yet "Russian" style. He and his teams climbed nine of them. Here is the impressive list:

• Peak 4,810m, Pamir-Alai, new route on the east face, alpine style, 1995.
• Ak-Su, Turkestan Range, new route on the north face, alpine style, 1996.
• Troll Wall, Norway, first ascent of Baltika, capsule style, 1997.
• Bhagirathi III, Indian Himalaya, new route on the west face, capsule style, 1998.
• Great Trango Tower, Pakistan Karakoram, first ascent of the west face, Russian Route, capsule style, 1999.
• Great Sail Peak, Baffin Island, new route on the northwest face, Rubicon, capsule style, 2002.
• Jannu, Nepal Himalaya, first ascent of the north face, 2003–2004 (awarded the 2005 Piolet d'Or).
• Kyzyl-Asker, Kokshaal-Too, new route on the southeast face, alpine style, 2007.
• Latok III, Pakistan Karakoram, first ascent of the west face, capsule style.

Leaving the 10th wall to others

"With the single exception of Jannu, a long and complex line climbed siege style, every route of The Russian Way was completed in alpine or capsule style," Piolets d'Or organizers wrote. "These climbs showed how the discipline, teamwork, and endurance fostered by the Soviet school could evolve into a modern, lightweight, and internationally connected form of alpinism."

Odintsov never launched the expedition to his tenth dream wall, nor did he reveal which face he had in mind. However, Mountain.ru noted in a story about Odintsov that he has left the project in the hands of the younger climbers he has mentored.

"The ascent by the young team of the last unclimbed wall will symbolize the transfer of knowledge and spirit to the next generation," the Russian media noted.

We hope to ask Odintsov about it during the Piolets d'Or ceremony in Italy's San Martino di Castrozza in December.

Benjamin Vedrines

At 33, Benjamin Vedrines of France will receive a special mention this year. The alpinist and skier from Grenoble has already built a spectacular climbing resumé, linking outstanding climbs and ski descents all year long, both at home and in the Himalaya, without any apparent fatigue. He seems too young to obtain a career award, yet has done too many good climbs in the past couple of years to receive a Golden Ice Axe for just one of them. Explained the organizers:

Although outside the normal format of acknowledging a specific first ascent, the Piolets d'Or recognizes the array of innovative, multi-discipline achievements over the last few years by French alpinist Benjamin Vedrines. In the context of what he has accomplished in the Alps alone, these are ground-breaking, very high performance, and strong pointers toward the future of modern alpinism.

The climbs

Vedrines' Piolets d'Or-acknowledged climbs took place between 2022 and 2024. They were:

2022:

The first trilogy of the three great North Faces of the Alps via direct routes: Harlin Route on the Eiger, Directe de l'Amitié on the Grandes Jorasses, and the Gogna Route on the Matterhorn, with Leo Billon and Seb Ratel.

The speed record for an ascent of 8,051m Broad Peak in the Karakoram, climbing the normal route from base to summit in 7h 28min. He then made the first descent by paraglider from the top.

2023

The first ascent of De l’Or en Barre on the south face of the Barre des Écrins (1,000m, 6a+ A1 M7 WI5+) with Nicolas Jean and Julien Cruvellier De Luze.

The Serge-Gousseault Route on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses in 15 hours from Chamonix to summit, with Leo Billon.

A new record of 14h 54min for the classic ski traverse of the Chamonix-Zermatt Haute Route, shaving around 1h 40min off the previous fastest time, with Samuel Equy.

The solo ascent of the Peuterey Integral in 6h 51min: from the car park in Les Etages, he reached the summit of the Aiguille Dibona via the Madier Route in 1h 24 minutes.

The first ascent of Pulsations (650m, 7c+ 7a obl) on the south face of the Meije, with Nicolas Jean and Julien Cruvellier De Luze.

2024

Three big North Faces in the Mont Blanc Range over three consecutive days: the North Face of the of the Dru via the Guides Route (at M8+) in around 10 hours, the Sermon-Slavik/RhemVimal route on the North Face of the Droites (at M7+) in 7h 14min, and No Siesta on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses (M8 WI6) in 12h. Leo Billon completed the link-up with him.

"This is likely the first time the Guides Route and No Siesta have each been climbed in a day," the jury noted.

The second ski descents of Herve Degonon lines on the North Faces of Ailefroide
and Pic Sans Nom, with Nicolas Jean.

Two remarkable first ski descents in the Écrins -- the Voie des Plaques on the northwest face of the Ailefroide, and the north-northwest face of Ailefroide Orientale, with Nicolas Jean.

Ski descents of the Voie du Z, Couloir Gravelotte, and Les Corridors, all on La Meije, and the north face of Meije Orientale, in a total of just 16 hours, again with Nicolas Jean.

A new speed record on K2, climbing without supplemental oxygen from Advanced Base Camp (5,350m) to the summit in 10h 59min, followed by the first paragliding descent from the top.

In addition to Vedrines' exceptional accomplishments, his activities often include two names with outstanding careers themselves: Leo Billon and Nicolas Jean.

Vedrines may not be the youngest ever climber to get a Piolet d'Or, but he is the first to receive the award for a three-year trajectory of exceptional feats in mountaineering.

Thomas Huber of Germany, teaming with Americans Jon Griffin and Tad McCrea, climbed a new route in Pakistan's remote Choktoi Valley at the end of summer. Huber recently described the experience as being "on the edge of this world."

The Choktoi Valley includes the Latok Peaks; Huber has climbed there several times before. This time, the trio summited a previously unclimbed point, the northern rocky tower of Suma Brakk, a 6,150m spire that the team has named Eye Ri. They estimate the difficulty at 5.11/A3, with an average steepness of 70º.

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Last unclimbed spire

Suma Brakk has three spiky points, and only the northern spire remained unclimbed. The central and southern peaks had been climbed before, among others, by Huber's brother Alexander and Fabian Buhl.

Apart from that, the information is sketchy. We have no details on the route, and it's unclear when the climb took place, because the team has not shared news for months.

"The last five days have been incredible -- intense, wild, crazy. The mountain, the climbing, the whole experience," Thomas Huber wrote on social media just yesterday. However, the climb did not take place recently.

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Latok III

The expedition, supported by a Cutting Edge Grant, traveled to the Choktoi Valley in July. Their main goal then was Latok III. However, their climb was interrupted when they were asked to help Laura Dalhmeier, a friend of Huber's. A falling rock struck her while she was climbing Laila Peak.

In the end, the blow was fatal. Dalhmeier was found dead in a place that was extremely difficult to access. Following her own wishes, it was decided that her body would remain on the mountain. Then, the climbers returned to the Choktoi Valley.

"I'll be offline and will be in touch sometime in September at the latest," Huber wrote at the beginning of August. The next post was published three weeks ago, and the team has been home since the end of September.

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Apparently, Huber is sharing bits of information and pictures on separate Instagram posts. This is a trend among some climbers, who trickle out information slowly with the idea of maintaining a steady flow of visitors to their social media feed.

Chantel Astorga is possibly the least suitable example of self-learning. Now a multifaceted alpinist with a strong leaning for solo climbing, Astorga learned the ABCs of climbing mainly from books. She studied knots, rope-soloing, and ice climbing. Soon, she was heading for Yosemite, Alaska, and the Himalaya.

Determined to stay away from the social media fanfare, Astorga is perhaps less well-known than others at her level, except in the U.S. community of elite alpinists and the organizing committees of Cutting Edge and Grit & Rock awards, where she is a regular recipient.

We had a chance to speak to her at the Banff Centre's Mountain Film and Book Festival, where she took part in a panel on the future of alpinism.

A life-changing article

Chantel Astorga had no mountaineering background or interest in the mountains -- except for snowboarding like many other teenagers -- until she stumbled upon a magazine with an article called The Art of Suffering, the alpine manifesto of Voytek Kurtyka. One of the legendary Polish climbers who shaped winter 8,000m climbing during the 1980s, Kurtyka's intense character stuck in the young woman's mind.

"I really knew nothing about that stuff, but for some reason, it really drew me in, so I stole the magazine from the library, and...it set the course for my future."

When Bernadette McDonald published The Art of Freedom, about Kurtyka's climbs and thoughts, Astorga, then at university, devoured it. She had just one question: How do I become a climber?

Self-taught

"I decided to get a job as a ski patroller, so I switched from snowboarding to skiing," she said. "I also realized that skiing was just a more efficient tool than split boards for moving in the mountains."

She read more books about how to climb, then went out by herself and started. It sounds like the sort of experiment requiring a disclaimer like, "Kids, don't try this at home." But it worked out well for her.

There was this very moderate ice climb in Little Cottonwood Canyon, [Utah]. I would go down there every day after work and practice swinging the tools and kicking the crampons in. Then I bought a book about how to rope solo, and then I basically taught myself how to rope solo so I could ice climb this thing. That took a bit of time because the first time, I got scared and bailed. But eventually, I just was climbing this moderate ice with a rope by myself.

"I just felt natural, like I belonged there, I was so drawn to it," she recalls.

She also did a lot of backcountry skiing, mostly on her own.

"My foundation was just like moving through the mountains on skis, and a lot of this I was just doing by myself and figuring it out," she said.

Teenager on Denali

At the time, she met Willie and Damian Benegas. The brothers and Everest guides took Astorga under their wing. They gave her some of their hand-me-down gear, since she couldn't afford to buy much equipment. They also took her on her first real rock-climbing experience: the Super Crack in Indian Creek.

The Benegas also lent her a pair of ski boots three sizes too big for her and smaller skis with Dynafit bindings. She then skied down Denali with them.

"I stuffed the toe box so that my foot would fit in there," she casually explained.

Soon afterward, she was guiding groups up the normal route of the mountain.

By the time she considered herself an (intermediate) rock climber, she made a big move -- to Yosemite Valley, no less.

Yosemite rookie

"I had a friend who was working on the search-and-rescue team in the Valley, so I spent the summer there, getting better and more familiar with granite and bigger walls," she said. "I didn't climb El Cap or anything that year, but then, yeah, somehow the next year, I ended up on the search-and-rescue team."

"It was super intimidating for me, because I just didn't really feel good enough, or like I belonged there, and free climbing obviously takes time to progress. I just kind of focused on what was my strength at that time, which was big wall climbing. [Then] I just got into the speed-climbing scene, and so I started doing a lot of that, and then soloing walls and stuff..."

The "stuff" is female speed records on The Nose, Lurking Fear, and Zodiac between 2010 and 2014, a solo climb of El Cap's The Nose in 2014, and the first linkup of The Nose of El Capitan with the NW Regular Route of Half Dome on a female team. Not bad for someone who, not many years earlier, had been a beginner.

Avalanche forecaster to pro

Next came some impressive climbs in Alaska, like the first free ascent of Mount Huntington's Polarchrome route in a day (Grade V, WI6, M7), and her first expeditions to the Himalaya. Yet, like most alpinists, she needed to keep a day job to keep going. In her case, she became an avalanche forecaster, a not-so-well-paid job but something she enjoyed. It gave her flexibility and enough of an off-season to plan for an expedition every two years (all she could afford). When the budget didn't fit, there was always Alaska.

In 2021, Astorga stunned the climbing community by soloing Denali's Cassin Ridge.

Around the time of COVID, she was invited to join The North Face team. Asked if she feels pressured by her new responsibilities to a major sponsor, she said no. She feels she is able to climb what she wants, with whom she wants, and that the real pressure comes from herself.

"I feel that, because I'm a sponsored athlete, I should be performing at the highest level at all disciplines," she admitted.

What she fears most about her new role as a professional climber is social media.

"I never had social media before I signed the agreement, and I was happy like that. Now I have to work on it, which I understand I must, but I can't say I like it."

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The Sivling lesson

As with every climber, elite or no, her climbs are not always successful, and Astorga has also learned to deal with that frustration and to redirect any feelings of disappointment toward the positive. That's what happened last year on Shivling (6,543m) in India's Garhwal Himalaya. Astorga and Fanny Schmutz of France were granted one of the American Alpine Club's Cutting Edge grants for a second attempt of the peak's Direct East Face.

"Fanny and I got awfully close to finishing it, but we just couldn't find anywhere to sleep, no bivy spots, so we got super depleted, beyond exhausted, so after six days, we ended up deciding to bail," she explained. "It was the right thing to do, but it was really hard. When we both got down, we were so tired and so cold that I couldn't regulate my body temperature for three months."

It taught her how the mind can push a driven climber to continue, but the body has a limit to what it can endure.

Only so much juice

"Each person has only so much stoke juice in them, and when you get to the bottom, you've got to recover, yeah, to build up the reservoir again, to get back a really strong foundation," she said.

In 2024, Chantel Astorga participated in two Himalayan expeditions, including skiing the Great Trango Tower with Jim Morrison and Christina Lustenberger, and Shivling. This year, she just "stayed home" on U.S. rock routes and in Alaska.

I did go to the Alaska Range, but we made it a very fun trip where we tried to climb a new route on a smaller peak and then paraglide off. We then paddled packrafts back to civilization, and that was just pure joy rather than the suffering that often comes with alpine climbing. Now, I feel the excitement again and am dreaming big.

Astorga and Schmutz will return to Shivling in 2026, a mountain that, for Astorga, epitomizes the perfect challenge in its hardship and beauty. This time, they'll use inflatable portaledges to solve the problem of being able to rest on its vertical walls, similar to those the American team used on the North Face of Jannu in 2023.

Climbing with women

Astorga has led many expeditions with other women climbers. Is that just a coincidence, or does she prefer women as climbing partners? Here is what she said about it:

There's just not that many women whose goals are opening new technical lines in the bigger mountains or climbing the harder routes. Ten years ago, there were even a lot less, so it was just natural to keep connecting with those who have the same motivations that I align with and who happen to be female. So it might not be luck, but it's been pretty cool that it's played out that way without actually forcing it.

The future: fly down

Since Astorga came to the Banff Festival to participate in a panel about the future of alpinism, we asked about that.

For Astorga, recent gear innovations have expanded the possibilities for expeditions. She mentioned better skis and boots, the inflatable portaledge she will use on Shivling, and one of her favorites: ultra-light paragliders, which weigh barely a kilo and allow a different type of descent.

"Climbing with skis and ski boots is the number one way to make the descent more fun," she says. "But now you have the ability to carry these small paragliders that you hardly notice while climbing, and which allow you to avoid the descent altogether."

"I have fluctuated in my opinion about which is more dangerous: paragliding or just descending on foot. This year, I've come to think strongly that paragliding can be a much safer descent tool if you're well-versed in it and you have a lot of flights under your belt."

The paragliding option is especially appealing for a solo climber like Astorga.

"It's like, I've dreamed of doing things, but I'm afraid of descending a particular mountain or ridge by myself because of crevasse exposure...[But if] I go in the right weather window where I can paraglide off the top, I can skip the descent! It's so beautiful to combine these things!"

Czechs Marek Holecek and Radoslav Groh are preparing to leave for a single alpine-style push up the southeast face of Cho Oyu.

"The time for hesitation is over," Holecek texted. "Early tomorrow morning, when you will still be drooling on your pillows in peace, we will start cutting the first meters from the overgrown Goddess [Cho Oyu can be roughly translated as The Turquoise Goddess]."

This is one of the boldest climbs of the season. The south face of 8,188m Cho Oyu has only one route, opened in 2009 by Denis Urubko and Boris Dedeshko. Urubko and Dedeshko were awarded the Piolet d'Or for their line, which has not been repeated.

Cyclone thwarted plans

Holecek, 50, and Groh, 36, intend to climb the formidable face in a single, on-sight push. According to their preliminary plans, they would have started the push days ago, but they retreated down the valley when Cyclone Montha hit Nepal's mountains last week.

When they returned to their small Advanced Base Camp at the base of the mountain -- after breaking trail for six kilometers through deep, fresh snow up the Ngozumpa Glacier -- they found their camp buried.

Holecek explained that this could have meant the end of their expedition. However, the climbers managed to retrieve their soaked gear and broken tents from the snow and spent all day yesterday drying everything and fixing the tents. They now have two patched tents in place, assembled from pieces of the four original tents. After their repair work, the two climbers retreated for a day of rest before the final push.

High winds ahead

According to Holecek, conditions on the face look very good. However, the weather tells a different story. Several meteo charts forecast sunny days all week, but with fierce west winds reaching 100kmph at the summit.

A second forecast, at 6,500m and still on the lower part of the face, shows similarly tough conditions:

The climbers might be somewhat sheltered from the wind while they are on the face, which looks to the southeast, but would be hit full force when they reach exposed areas closer to the summit.

Dane Steadman and Cody Winckler, who will receive a Piolet d'Or for the first ascent of Yashkuk Sar with August Franzen, now have two new Pakistan routes under their belts.

The pair went with Blake Berghoff to the remote northern ranges of Pakistan, aiming for unclimbed Dansam Peak, also known as K13.

Photos and reality

Authorities had kept Dansam closed to climbing for years, but the American team got a permit for this fall season. Steadman has dreamed of a line up the Dansam's north buttress since he saw it in a picture in 2021. Sadly, it remains a dream because the climbers never managed to set foot on the route.

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From Islamabad, the trio traveled to the remote village of Khorkondo, then trekked to base camp. They only caught glimpses of a magnificent peak in less than magnificent conditions.

"The central buttress, the only line clearly safe from the walls’ many seracs, looked terrible," Steadman wrote. "What had looked like perfect granite in photos was actually decomposing munge, with abundant fresh scarring and lacking natural features, aside from fragile-looking flakes."

That route was extremely difficult and maybe even impossible to descend. And traversing into India without a visa would not have been a good idea.

Looking around, they considered an alternative route on icier slopes, but the threat of falling seracs put them off. After much thought, Steadman decided that the ascent, "no matter how significant it would be, was not worth dying for."

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Plan B

But as Ali Saltoro of Adventure Guides Pakistan told ExplorersWeb, there are plenty of routes on granite spires to open in that area.

"Up a side valley from the main Ming Ling Glacier, a striking fang of granite rose out of a ridge, the biggest tooth in the jawbone, and demanded attention. We’d never heard of it before, and according to our topo maps, it didn’t even exist, but after a recon hike, we knew we had an objective," Steadman said.

The climbers cached big wall gear at the base of the tower and set off on September 21.

Steadman described 500 vertical meters of granite climber's paradise.

"We found ice-filled chimneys, ice tool/rock shoe combo climbing, funky aid climbing, steep sunny crack climbing, and strange swirly face climbing," he recalls.

The team reached the top of the tooth, with their GPS marking 6,082m, at sunset on September 23. The team estimates the route was 5.10 A2+ AI4 M6.

Still hungry

The rock climb was good, but they were hungry for more. They had come to the remote areas of Pakistan to climb "an aesthetic, objectively safe, technically demanding, and exploratory climb on a big, cold mountain," as Steadman put it.

With K13 out of the question, the climbers considered an unclimbed, unnamed 6,300m peak at the head of the valley with a stunning north buttress.

The problem was the base was guarded by a shattered, almost impassable-looking icefall. Upon inspection of our satellite maps, the way became apparent: Hiking up a different, smoother branch of the Ming Ling Glacier would lead us to an icy col, across which lay a gap between icefalls that looked to lead directly to our buttress.

With six days of good weather left, the climbers set off on September 29. Blake Berghoff had numb toes since the Alaska season and decided to stay behind, while Cody Winckler and Dane Steadman crossed the icy col and a mellow stretch of the glacier to the base of the buttress.

Mixed terrain

The climb started with a rock band that required dry-tooling to reach their first bivouac.

"The second rock band was guarded by one of the more tenuous slab pitches I’ve climbed in crampons, and from there, surprisingly pleasant neve streaks brought us to the second ice band," Steadman recalled.

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"A painfully long traverse across ribs of glacial ice covered by sugary snow led to the great ice chimney that split the final rock band, just right of the steep face of the small serac that perched atop the buttress crest," he added.

The second day ended with steep ice pitches in already dim light. Winckler and Steadman were lucky to find a good bivy spot at the right moment.

Our third day began with more steep ice after traversing back into the chimney, then eased off after we climbed up the low-angled side of the serac; from there, a long ice arete led to the summit glacier, where we pitched our tent before climbing up the final glaciated slopes to the knife-edged summit.

The climbers stood on the summit and returned to their tent at sunset. On the following morning, they rappelled down the buttress and walked back to the col and the end of the glacier, where Bergloff was waiting for them. It was the end of the climb and the good weather, as snow arrived the following day and didn't stop for a week.

"The final route we climbed was around 1,450m tall and was likely the first ascent of the second major peak northeast of Dansam, which we measured at 6,310m. We encountered difficulties of M7 and AI4+, with a single move of C1."

Back at home after opening a difficult route on 6,781m Kimshung in Nepal, Francois Cazzanelli spoke to ExplorersWeb about his decade-long history with the peak.

Also known as Tsangbu Ri, Kimshung lies in Langtang National Park on the Tibetan border. It remained unclimbed until this year, despite several attempts over the last 10 years, four of which involved Cazzanelli.

At 35, Cazzanelli is a versatile alpinist, professional guide, and rescuer from Italy's Aosta Valley at the foot of the Matterhorn. His relationship with Kimshung features friendship, rescues, death, and pushing himself to the limit.

The story behind 'Destiny'

Francois Cazzanelli and Giuseppe Vidoni of Italy and Benjamin Zoerer and Lukas Waldner of Austria opened their new route on Kimshung in pure alpine style in a single day, October 20. They started from 5,450m at the base of the Kimshung Glacier, summited at 12:30 pm, and were back down in the valley by 7 pm.

They graded the 1,300m route 60°, AI4, M5. Cazzanelli named it Destiny.

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"It's a simple yet nice story, " Cazzanelli told ExplorersWeb. "It started in a pub in Kathmandu in 2014, after an attempt on Kangchenjunga."

The 2015 earthquake

Cazzanelli had just met Gianpaolo Corona, who was himself just back from an attempt on the northwest pillar of 7,349m Talung, also in the Kangchenjunga region. Over a glass of beer, the two Italians started making plans for the following year.

"Gianpaolo and I wanted to find a peak which provided a good climb and a good adventure," he recalled. They started researching and eventually chose Kimshung, in part thanks to fellow Italian Oskar Piazza, who knew the Langtang area well.

Adventure they had, but not the one they expected.

The year 2015 was a dark time in the history of Nepal. That spring, a massive earthquake shattered the country, causing thousands of deaths, both in towns and in the mountains. Langtang, near the epicenter, was the hardest hit. Landslides almost completely buried Langtang village, and other settlements suffered terrible losses.

"What was supposed to be a climbing expedition turned into a rescue mission," Cazzanelli explained.

One of the bodies they retrieved from the debris was that of Oskar Piazza, who was also in the area exploring remote valleys.

Kimshung

The Italians returned home after the traumatic experience. However, they returned to Langtang and Kimshung the following year.

"On the second expedition, we learned more about the peak, which has two particularities," Cazzanelli said. The first is its verticality. There is no easy side to attempt a climb and no break along the way, so anyone willing to attempt it has to be in very good shape."

"The second is its proximity to the Tibetan plateau, which produces strong winds that hit the mountain directly, often for many days."

Cazzanelli explained that the wind also changes the conditions on the mountain. In a week, relentless winds may sweep the snow from the face, leaving it dry, difficult, and too dangerous to climb. That is exactly what happened in 2016.

To make things worse, during a final attempt, a falling rock hit Cazzanelli, and he had a long, painful retreat with an injured arm, helped by Corona.

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Years passed, and Cazzanelli became engaged in other expeditions around the world, from Alaska to Patagonia. In the Himalaya, he focused on climbing the 8,000'ers fast and light, without supplementary oxygen (except on Everest, which he climbed with a client in 2018). He also targeted highly difficult 7,000m peaks such as Pakistan's Ogre (Baintha Brakk).

Following the trend of the new generation of alpinists, he also specialized in fast traverses and link-ups of routes in the Alps, as well as ice climbing lines and new lines on well-known peaks near home, such as the Matterhorn (which he summited for the first time at 13).

 The comeback

Yet Kimshung had never left Cazzanelli's mind. In 2024, he put together a strong team of fellow guides and traveled again to Langtang. The team comprised Roger Bovard, Emrik Favre, Jerome Perruquet, Stefano Stradelli, Francesco Ratti, and Giuseppe Vidoni. They reached 6,500m but had to retreat due to high winds and tough conditions.

On November 1, as the team prepared for a second attempt on Kimshung, they received an SOS about a crevasse incident from nearby Langtang Lirung. They dropped everything and went down to help. It turned out that Marek Holecek of Czechia and Ondrej Huserka of Slovakia were coming down from the summit when Huserka fell into a crevasse. While some details are still confusing, the fact is that the Italians were later told their help was no longer needed, as Huserka had died.

This year, at the beginning of October, Cazzanelli quietly returned to Langtang again, this time with only Giuseppe Vidoni.

"We already knew the mountain very well, so this time we focused on training specifically for this challenge. We were in great shape, stronger than last year, and we made sure we had the right equipment for that precise climb."

Still, it was a mighty challenge for just the two of them. Then destiny acted again.

New friends

First, Cazzanelli notes, they had perfect conditions and a perfect weather window. Second, they were not alone on the mountain.

"On reaching the valley, at Kyangin Gompa village, we met two climbers from Austria who also wanted to climb Kimshung," said Cazzanelli. "We spoke and decided to join forces, which, in the end, was the key factor to success at last.

Their collaboration was no small thing. In times when climbing teams have raised concerns about other climbers snatching their planned routes or staying secretive, Cazzanelli, Vidoni, Benjamin Zoerer, and Lukas Waldner quickly agreed to join forces to achieve a common goal.

The Austrian pair was also strong and skilled. During the climb, in two roped teams, they switched the lead and climbed at the same pace on a clear, windless day. After so many difficulties through the years, it felt like a well-deserved bonus.

"The route is quite impressive, very steep from base to summit," Cazzanelli said. "There is no specific crux or a particular section with more difficulty or exposure. Rather, it is a line of sustained difficulty, constantly demanding."

However, he highlighted the last part of the climb as the most committing.

"It was all snow with no way to place protection," he said. "The roughly 90 minutes we spent climbing this part required all of our attention because a wrong move would have meant a fatal fall."

The descent followed the same line. They carefully downclimbed the snowy upper section, and then they did 12 rappels to the base.

For a speedster like Cazzanelli, the pace the team kept was one of the essential factors. They made the round trip to the summit and back in the day. "We returned home safe, successful, and with two new friends!"

The Piolets d'Or jury had a particularly difficult task this year, they noted, to pick only three among the many worthwhile climbs. Two of the three awards went to American teams.

Two climbs took place in the Karakoram and another in western Nepal. All three were traverses.

The surprise: Kaqur Kangri (6,859m)

Two of the climbs were also among ExplorersWeb's Top Expeditions of 2024. The third one flew under our radar. This was the first ascent of the southwest arete of 6,859m Kaqur Kangri, in western Nepal on the Tibetan border. Spencer Gray, Ryan Griffiths, and Matt Zia of the U.S. had only seen a photo of the upper part of the ridge, so they had to manage the lower half without knowing anything about it.

The trio climbed the 1,670m ridge to the summit along a route they assessed as 5.10 A0 M7 WI5. After a bivouac on the upper part, the team summited, then traversed the peak and descended down the previously unclimbed northwest ridge. The jury members said theirs was one of the hardest routes ever climbed in remote western Nepal.

The nearly 8,000m Gasherbrum III (7,952m)

Tom Livingstone of the UK and Ales Cesen of Slovenia bagged the first ascent of the west ridge of the highly difficult -- and high -- Gasherbrum III in the heart of the Karakoram. Then they traversed down the east face and linked it with the normal route of neighboring Gasherbrum II.

Gasherbrum III had a long history of attempts but only two previous ascents, by Alberto Inurrategi and Jon Beloki of Spain's Basque Country in 2004, and the first ascent in 1975 by members of a Polish expedition -- Wanda Rutkiewicz, Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz, Janusz Onyszkiewicz and Krzysztof Zdzitowiecki. Cesen and Livingstone had also tried once before, in 2022.

Ales Cesen and Tom Livingstone received another Piolet d'Or in 2019 for the south face of Latok. And Cesen has a third Piolet, in 2015 for the north face of Hagshu, with Marko Prezlj and Luka Lindic.

For this 2024 effort, the pair made three acclimatization climbs, including a night at 7,000m. Then they started the summit push, according to the Piolets d'Or press team:

They left base camp on July 31, and two days later regained the 7,000m camp below the start of the west ridge. The next morning, they set off up the ridge, stopping for the first night a little below 7,500m, and on the second at around 7,800m.

Unable to erect a tent at the upper site, they were forced into an open sitting bivouac. They then bypassed the headwall via difficult climbing, possibly up to M6 on one pitch, summited, then descended the original route on the far side of the mountain. After a night at Camp 4 (7,400m) on the standard route to Gasherbrum II, they reached base camp on August 6.

The jury highlighted the significant height of the mountain and "the light alpine style of the two-person team, as well as "the logical descent made on the opposite side of the mountain."

They called their route Edge of Entropy. ExplorersWeb ranked their effort as one of the Best Expeditions of 2024.

Yashkuk Sar (6,667m)

The third awarded climb was the first ascent of Yashkuk Sar in the Karakoram's Batura Muztagh. Americans Dane Steadman, August Franzen, and Cody Winckler climbed the north pillar and descended via the upper west face and lower north face. Their 2,000m line, called Tiger Lily Buttress, featured difficulties up to AI5+ M6 A0.

Their acclimatization also included a new route up the southeast side of 6,240m Sax Sar.

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Steadman described the climb to ExplorersWeb at the time. It included two days of snow-and-ice climbing up the steep north pillar and two nights on vertiginous bivouacs.

From that point, finding a route up was risky, as falling snow swept the headwall.

"We did rappel down off the ridge to the other side, the only aid of the route,” Steadman recalled. “Then [we went] up an ice arete for a couple of hundred meters to the base of the headwall and finished the day with two tricky pitches up snowy gneiss that was either smooth and compact or heavily fractured."

The final day was even harder, on mixed terrain up to M6, then two traversing pitches through a forest of snow mushrooms and along a marble band to the crux ice pitch, an overhanging AI5+, that led to the top of the headwall,” Steadman recalled.

The team reached the summit ridge that day, but deep snow forced them to stop for another bivy before topping out the following morning. Then they rappelled 600m down a couloir on the west face, before traversing back over the west ridge to down climb and rappel the lower 1,000m of the north face.

The jury appreciated the commitment to the climb, and the "spirit of alpinism of the young team" who found the peak on Google Earth.

The Japanese university students on the 2025 Himalaya Camp team have successfully climbed a new route on 6,111m Bijora Hiunchuli in western Nepal.

The Himalaya Camp team summited Bijora Hiunchuli on October 24 but only reported their safe arrival back in Base Camp today. They originally planned to climb via the northwest ridge. Once on the mountain, however, they changed to the north ridge, a more direct and straightforward passage to the summit. It was also in better condition, mostly covered in ice and snow.

The team established Camp 1 at around 5,000m, fixed some ropes, and then launched their summit push, which included setting up Camp 2 at 5,240m.

The summit day began at 2 am from Camp 2. They reached the top at around 4 pm and made it back down to Camp 2 at 10 pm, exhausted. After a night's sleep, they continued down.

The route from Camp 2 started with a snow/ice wall. Afterward, the slope was less steep, but the climbers faced knee-deep snow until the knife-edged summit ridge.

"The summit was very narrow, but it offered a 360˚ view of the Himalaya of western Nepal," the team reported. "We could even see Sanctuary Peak, which last year's team climbed."

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Swiss retreat

Silvan Schupbach, Stefan Siegrist, and Philippo Sala of Switzerland aimed for a new route on  Khatang, a 6,582m peak between the Khumbu and Rolwaling. They hoped to open the first line up the unclimbed south face, but the elements conspired against them.

First, the storm that hit Nepal three weeks ago delayed them. They had to rebuild their base camp, but in the interim, a falling serac had buried their cached gear. Then, a member of the team came down with Acute Mountain Sickness. By the time he recovered, a new storm had moved in. The climbers have not said whether they plan any further attempts.

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No solo on Kangri Sar

Lucien Bocansaud of France had to abort his bold solo attempt on Khangi Sar in the Khumbu. "I turned back at 6,400m on the ridge," he told ExplorersWeb. "I was sick and freezing due to a digestive crisis.

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Bocansaud told us that the Himalayan season is over for him.

"The snowy spell is expected to last until November 5, and I will have no time for another attempt afterward," he said. "Too bad, but I am still happy with the expedition as a whole."

Two weeks ago, Bocansaud made a speed climb up Ama Dablam in 8 hours 10 minutes from Base Camp to summit, and a total BC to BC time of 13 hours 17 minutes. He completed the trip from Chukhung to Ama Dablam and back in three days, including his summit push, which he considers a first.

The Russian team has safely returned to the base of the Southwest Face of Manaslu, after a five-day descent in unfamiliar terrain -- plus another five days on the way up -- in rough weather.

The five-person team, comprising Andrey Vasiliev, Sergey Kondrashkin, Natalia Belyankina, Kirill Eizeman, and Vitaly Shipilov, has opened a partially new route in alpine style on the left side of the daunting Southwest Face of the mountain. They reached the summit on October 22, in worsening weather after a long, exhausting climb, completely alone on the mountain.

The descent has been equally epic, as the team had to face whiteout conditions and objective hazards that eventually forced them to descend a different line from the one they had climbed.

At approximately 7,100m, the descending climbers abandoned their line of ascent and continued their way down the Messner route for some 700m. Luckily, they managed to complete that unfamiliar section safely.

Yesterday, Vasiliev texted Mountain.ru that they had finally left the risky sections behind. Today, the climbers traversed the icefall at the base of the mountain, the last obstacle separating them from the Thulagi Glacier, where their Base Camp is located.

Waiting for details

At this point, there are few details about the climb. Their only means of communication was the short SMS sent by expedition leader Andrey Vasiliev, which was shared by Mountain.ru.

Vasiliev's team previously acclimatized on Manaslu's normal route, where they summited at the end of September. Then, they trekked to the southwest side of the mountain and launched a single summit push up a new route on the left side of the face. According to tracking data, the Russian line is similar but not identical to the 1972 Tyrolean route, opened by Reinhold Messner.

Benjamin Vedrines has just returned home to France after his recent climb of the monster North Face of Jannu. He's still very tired, beyond happy, and slightly overwhelmed at seeing his name in worldwide media. The climb he did with Nicolas Jean was a big deal, and not just for the climbing press. Nevertheless, Vedrines found time to speak with ExplorersWeb about their first ascent of Jannu East, and more.

This was the second time Vedrines and Jean tackled Jannu, after a first attempt last year with Leo Billon. Teams of three are common on these super-sized faces. However, Vedrines and Jean quickly adapted as a team of two, although it meant carrying heavier backpacks and climbing less efficiently, since there are only two climbers to lead all the pitches.

Two against the wall

"Luckily, Nicolas [Jean] and I have climbed extensively as a pair in the Alps, so we are used to working together," Vedrines said. "Besides, I've always liked to climb in a team of two, so this was quite natural.

"Of course, we missed having Leo on the expedition, as he is a really strong asset, and a team of three is stronger. But we trained specifically as a team of two, and used all that we learned from the previous attempt."

He said that on the wall, he and Jean split the work down the middle. "Each day, he would start and lead half of the day, and I would lead for the second half until we stopped for the night."

Mental work

Months before the attempt, the pair enhanced their physical endurance and skills, and Vedrines also worked with mental coach Fabien Dupuis. This went beyond risk management and overcoming fear in a highly dangerous place. It was also about developing patience to endure long weeks in base camp and rough conditions, managing frustration and stress, and sticking to the goal.

"You need to be very sure why you want to come back to a face like that," Vedrines said. "The fact that Mike Gardner died there last year was something hard to accept. Mike's spirit was still powerful in our minds, and our memories from last year lingered."

Patience

The French team reached Base Camp at the end of August. He, Jean, and their two cameramen, Thibaut Marot and Quentin Degrenne, had to become comfortable with sharing a small base camp for two months, because one of the expedition's juggling acts was not to hurry but at the same time, stay in shape.

"But for me, I had the experience on K2, where I spent 45 days in Base Camp, before climbing the 8,611m peak, and I did well."

In fact, Vedrines did more than well. He set the Fastest Known Time (FKT) on K2, a mind-blowing 11-hour climb without bottled oxygen. He then paraglided back to Base Camp.

He and Jean spent two months carefully acclimatizing, and their last rotation was actually a first ascent. The pair summited the previously unclimbed Adinesh Chuli (6,808m). Then they waited for a weather window to attempt Jannu East.

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In 2023, Americans Alan Rousseau, Jackson Marvell, and Matt Cornell achieved the first ascent of the North Face of Jannu to the massif's main point (7,710m). The effort pushed the climbers beyond their physical limits. Rousseau was frostbitten, and the team suffered hallucinations from extreme exhaustion during the last part of the climb.

While extremely tired at the end, Vedrines and Jean never reached that point. According to Vedrines, the key was good acclimatization. At the same time, he admits he felt utterly exhausted on the final part of the climb. "I was surprised at how tired I was, I thought my [fitness] was better!"

The climb

The climbers had intended to start on October 11 but had to postpone at the last minute because the gale-force winds that were supposed to drop kept hitting the peak with gusts of over 100kph. The following day, the two climbers moved from Base Camp to ABC, trusting in their meteorologist, who remained confident of a weather window.

On October 13, they started off from ABC (5,100m) at 5 am, simul-climbing part of the time -- "soloing in a team of two," is how they put it. They set their first bivouac at 6,200m.

Unknown terrain

The following day, they passed the point where Leo Billon had retreated in 2024, and the altitude from which Mike Gardner fell to his death. Beyond that, they were entering unknown terrain.

For the sake of transparency, Vedrines notes that they fixed 100m of rope through a particularly difficult section, right before their second bivouac at 6,900m.

At 3:30 am on October 16, the climbers left their bivy in –20°C, toward the razor-thin summit ridge, which they reached at dawn. But difficulties were far from over.

Elusive summit

“The ridge was completely wind-loaded; it was impossible to go straight up, so I had to traverse slightly into the face on the right side, on steep snow, with no solid protection," Vedrines wrote in a press release. "[At 7,400m,] I found a thin ice band, just enough to climb 10 meters and get back on the ridge. It was [exposed, but it was] the only option.”

At 1 pm, the climbers thought they had reached the summit, but drone pilot Thibaut Marot warned them over the radio that the highest point was actually a second peak at the end of a corniced ridge section. Vedrines and Jean had to overcome exhaustion and continue going for one more hour until they stood on the true summit of Jannu East (7,468m) at 1:40 pm.

Vedrines said about the crux of the climb:

"Most of the time, we were where we wanted to be because we had very good ice conditions. But above the second bivy, we progressed on unknown terrain. After 7,000m, we reached the most exposed part. It was all soft snow, and we didn't have anywhere to put an anchor or a belay. We had no idea how we would manage to get down."

"However, we were so motivated to go to the top that we went on, and left the questions about the return for after the summit. In that sense, the real crux of the climb was the descent."

Wild descent

The descent started at 6 am on October 16. Vedrines describes it as "wild." All 50 rappels were delicate, but the upper 400m were the worst.

"We couldn't place protection, and we had only three snow pickets," Vedrines said. "It was clearly not enough, so we had to make a difficult decision to go down a different line, on a completely unknown face. It was very stressful, and the conditions were very, very bad."

They only allowed themselves to relax back in base camp, which they reached at 5:30 pm, "mentally and physically done."

Neither suffered from frostbite, although it was a risk, given the extremely low temperatures.

"The freezing line was very low, at some 4,500m (it was at 6,000m in 2024). I was testing a pair of boots I had never worn before, and Nicolas [Jean] also had rather light boots, so we were concerned we might end up frostbitten," Vedrines said. "Luckily, when the sun hit us on the ridge, it was like paradise."

Vedrines still has numb fingertips but is otherwise okay.

Media attention

Some days later, media outlets around the world shared the amazing drone footage of the two climbers on the pristine snow ridge near the summit. This was unusual for an alpine-style climb on a mountain that, despite its difficulty, rarely garners the hoopla of an 8,000m peak.

The attention owed especially to the impressive drone footage. The first climbers on Jannu and similar peaks had no such visual accessory as they risked their lives.

"Yeah, it can be awkward, although I admit I'm very used to drones and they don't disturb me when I climb," he said. "Drones have been extremely useful for us, even before the climb, to scout the route."

As noted above, the drone even guided them to the true summit. Similarly, a drone led Andrzej Bargiel through the Khumbu Icefall as he skied down Everest some weeks ago.

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Drones are in the mountains to stay, said Vedrines, adding that they're just another tool to gather information, in addition to photos, helicopter recces, satellite maps, and reports from other teams. Most exploratory teams use drones, he pointed out, including Russians Yuri Koshelenko and Aleksey Lonchinski, who attempted the East Face of Jannu East last spring.

Modern alpinism

At ages 33 and 27, Vedrines and Jean are still part of the new generation of climbers because of their approach to what Vedrines describes as modern alpinism.

"It's not only a question of terrain exploration, because there are virgin peaks everywhere and some of them are actually very easy, so a first ascent is not necessarily a great challenge," he says. "Our climb of Anidesh Chuli, for instance, was not such a big challenge."

Vedrines still considers the Alps a proving ground for contemporary alpinism, like the speed climbs or the link-ups he has done recently. In fact, the feats of Vedrines and Kilian jornet have prompted a new category in the Piolets d'Or -- Performance in the Alps for long-range endurance activities done without motorized help.

Jornet's Alpine Connections project and Vedrines' link-up -- with Leo Billon -- of three difficult routes on the three most famous North Faces of the French Alps, the Drus, the Droites and the Grandes Jorasses, are both under consideration for a 2025 Piolet.

Vedrines also mentions the lure of freeing routes that have previously been climbed only in a heavy style, or climbing something in a day that has traditionally take several days.

"This is, for instance, what Leo [Billon] and I did on the Gousseault-Desmaison route on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses." They completed the route in a blazing 9 hours 10 minutes.

"It's way easier to find a remote peak somewhere in the Karakoram or in the Himalaya, buy a plane ticket, pay an agency to take you to the base of the mountain, and climb something which is remote and wild but not super hard," Vedrines said.

Under such criteria, he says it is quite easy to get included in the list of considered climbs for a Piolet d'Or.

"The high performance-climbs in the Alps, on the contrary, take years and years of preparation and are more impressive," he says.

Even the commercialized 8,000m peaks have plenty of remaining potential, in Vedrines' eyes. "It may be a question of speed, link-ups, or new skiing lines. [We just need] to keep our minds open."

Several teams had attempted Khurdopin Sar in the Karakoram, including this summer, but a French pair who arrived without fixed plans finally made the first ascent.

On October 14, Gaetan Navarrete and Julien Priour summited the 6,458m peak in the Shimshal Valley.

Philip de-Beger and Aleksi Mujirishvili attempted Khurdopin Sar in 2023. De-Beger also attempted the peak in 2015, with Peter Thompson and Aiden Laffey, but high avalanche risk pushed them back. Thomson also planned to try the peak this summer, but health issues forced him to cancel.

The successful climbers went to Shimshal with no fixed plan, as they wanted to assess the conditions on the region's peaks before deciding.

"The mountains were rather dry and the north faces showed too much hard black ice, so we went for a suitable south face," Navarrete told ExplorersWeb.

Alone in the Karakoram

From the village of Shimshal, the climbers trekked to Halga, at the 3,400m junction of the Virjerab and Khurdopin Glaciers. During the next two days, two hired porters shlepped supplies to a settlement known as Shereenin, at 3,800m. From there, the two were completely alone in the Karakoram.

This was the second time that Priour visited the Karakoram, and the first for Navarrete. Both have wide in the Alps, and Navarrete has climbed for three years in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. But he admits that the Karakoram is a different league.

"Everything is bigger: the valleys, the rivers, everything is more remote and exposed. Even the roads are dangerous, and the moraines are huge."

Single summit push

On the third day, they pitched their tent on the glacier at 4,900m. They set up their high camp the following day at 5,300m, on the only suitable place between unstable seracs and the icy couloir leading to the summit ridge.

After resting for 24 hours, they climbed nonstop to the summit in a long day. They left camp at 6 am, summited at 4:40 pm, and were back in the tent at 1 am. The entire expedition lasted 10 days: 4 days on the approach from Shimshal, 1 rest day, 1 summit day, and 4 days trekking back to Shimshal.

The route

"We climbed in alpine style via the south couloir to the west ridge, then followed the ridge to the summit," Navarrete said. "The route included snow, ice, and mixed terrain up to 70 degrees."

From their tent at 5,300m, the climbers headed to the bergschrund at the base of the face and started up the couloir.

"We followed the couloir...as far as we could, but at a certain point, it got steeper and the ice got harder, so we eventually abandoned it and looked for a passage on rocky/mixed terrain, which was easier," said Navarrete.

Gaining the col that led to the ridge involved some 500 vertical meters of climbing.

The ridge

"When we got to the summit ridge, we had to progress on its south side, which was steep, hard ice," Navarrete said. "The north side of the ridge was flatter, but we found it loaded with slabby snow and decided to avoid it."

The climbers followed the ridge across several sections of 70º ice until they reached a gap that required a short rappel.

"Then we traversed a section of the ridge on mixed terrain, and finally mounted the final snow mushroom on sugary snow. Once on top of that, the summit was 10 minutes away.

Priour assessed D or D+, but Navarrete pointed out that the difficulty would decrease if the ridge were in better condition.

Fall season: Hard but safer

The climbers had to deal with wintry conditions: hard ice, –30 °C, and strong winds, especially during the descent.

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On the other hand, they noted that the weather was pretty stable and the icy armor provided harder but safer conditions.

"The rocky sections were glued by ice; this peak was surely riskier this past summer, when there was a high risk of rockfall," they said.

Indeed, mild temperatures and constant risk of rockfall were a constant in the summer Karakoram. Three people lost their lives to falling rocks, two on K2 and one on Leila Peak.

Priour and Navarrete are still in Pakistan with a new climbing project in mind. They will share details after they give it a try.

Francois Cazzanelli has finally made the first ascent of 6,781m Kimshung, which had thwarted the Italian guide on three previous attempts.

Cazzanelli attempted the Langtang, Nepal peak in the spring of 2015, the fall of 2016, and also in 2024, as a member of a seven-member Italian team. Last year, the summit eluded them on both their attempts.

This time, Cazzanelli returned with  Giuseppe Vidoni, who had also joined him in 2024, plus Austrian climbers Benjamin Zoerer and Lukas Waldner. Damiano Levati was also there as photographer. They all kept their goal quiet until the end of the expedition.

Kimshung, also known as Tsangbu Ri, lies in Langtang National Park near the Tibetan border. At least six expeditions in the last decade have attempted it, according to Cazzanelli's team.

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1,300m in a day

Cazzanelli, Vidoni, Zoerer, and Waldner ascended via the northeast face in a single day from 5,450m at the base of the Kimshung Glacier. They summited at 12:30 pm on October 20 and were back down in the valley by 7 pm, according to their press release.

The route is 1,300m long and 60º steep. The team graded the route AI4, M5.

The climb is far from over for the exhausted Russian team that summited Manaslu yesterday by a new route up the Southwest Face. They are still high on the mountain and intend to descend through unknown terrain in worsening weather.

In an InReach message, leader Andrey Vasiliev told Mountain.ru that all members are healthy, although very tired. Low visibility has slowed down their progress and they were only able to make it down to 7,460m. This is a serious setback, as Vasiliev's plan was to descend to 7,100m, and from that point, follow the Messner/Tyrolean route, instead of the new line they had climbed on their way to the summit.

That means the team will have to descend 700 vertical meters over unknown terrain that included some exposed sections. Such a strategy may be not an option in whiteout conditions. "We need to see the descent route," Vasiliev wrote. "All we're thinking about is how to descend safely."

Cold and windy

The team will also need to deal with rough weather. Multimodel forecasts agree on extremely cold temperatures and rising winds, although wind speeds vary with the source. Meteoexploration.com notes gales of over 100kph beginning today, but Mountainforecast.com, below, notes 30-40kph today, increasing by Saturday. Unfortunately for the climbers, the winds are blowing from the southwest, hitting them directly.

Here's another epic climb in what's turning out to be an epic season in Nepal. The Russian team led by Andrey Vasiliev has reached the summit of Manaslu today at 1 pm local time after an exhausting alpine-style climb up the Southwest Face.

The climb took five days of struggle up a new route in cold temperatures and at times fierce winds.

Single summit push

Vasiliev, together with Sergey Kondrashkin, Natalia Belyankina, Kirill Eizeman, and Vitaly Shipilov, reached the southwest side of Manaslu last week. They were already acclimatized, having summited via the normal route days earlier. So, they started up right away, over much wilder and more difficult terrain, with no support, ropes, or broken trails. They were completely alone on the mountain.

Major feat

There is only one route on the Southwest Face of Manaslu, opened by Reinhold Messner in 1972, in a dramatic no-oxygen ascent that took the life of his climbing partner, Franz Jaeger. It follows a line on the left side of the face and then joins the peak's long summit ridge to the highest point. Several expeditions have repeated Messner's route (also known as the Tyrolean route) over the years, but no one has ever attempted a direct route up the center of the face.

That was Vasiliev's original plan, but dangerous conditions forced the climbers to find an alternative on the left side, where Messner's route is located. However, according to the brief descriptions sent over InReach by the expedition leader, they have opened a new route to the summit ridge, where their route joins the Messner/Tyrolean line.

Every inch a struggle

On October 17, the team reached 6,900m and checked their chosen route, which looked in good condition. On October 20, they made it to 7,500m and spent the night in a snow cave. The following morning, as usual, they checked themselves for frostbite and, when all was well, they carried on. That day, October 21, they climbed just 200 vertical meters. However, the summit was by then too close to give up, as Vasiliev texted to Mountain.ru:

"We reached the ridge at 7,700m and traversed some difficult terrain.
From there, we hiked the classic route.
Tomorrow, we'll summit."

Tough descent ahead

Mountain.ru has shared Vasiliev's latest InReach message: "We went to the top and just returned to the tent. Tough. Wind is crazy up there."

We'll hear more details once they return safely to Base Camp. They will need to hurry, as the winds are increasing throughout this week:

Herve Barmasse of Italy, Adam Bielecki of Poland, and Felix Berg of Germany have done an alpine-style climb up the south face of 6,958m Numbur, in Nepal's Rolwaling Valley.

The European team says they climbed Numbur "by fair means" on October 18-19. They graded the route ED-, WI 5, M4, and called it Nepali Ice Spa as an ironic reference to the harsh conditions. These included "a bivouac at 6,900m, without a tent or sleeping bag, in temperatures of -25°C and winds of up to 60 kph," said Barmasse.

All together or not at all

"It was a daring climb, to say the least," Barmasse wrote. The team faced a crisis even before starting. Bielecki fell sick and only decided to continue because his partners insisted on everyone going together or aborting the climb.

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Their chosen route first followed a previous attempt by a Spanish team up a series of icefalls in what seemed like good ice conditions. Soon, however, the climbers faced falling ice and rock along the route. A chunk hit Barmasse on the shoulder.

"The pain was intense, but turning back [with those rocks coming down] would have been even more risky," he said.

They continued, deviating to vertical terrain, more difficult but safer than the chutes.

"From there, meter after meter, the route becomes increasingly interesting, aesthetic, and unpredictable," said Barmasse.

Tough bivouac

The hardest part was the last 200 vertical meters, which featured loose, unstable snow with no way to protect their progress. At 6,900m, although they were close to the summit, they had to bivouac for the night under a snow cornice. They could just sit in the tent and endure high winds and -25º temperatures through a very long night.

"The final 250m were sort of a point of no return," Felix Berg told ExplorersWeb. "For the first 700-700 vertical meters, the ice was quite thin, and the rock beneath was very compact, so we could have rappelled down in case of forced retreat, but in the last 250m, the snow did not allow for protection so, [if we needed to] retreat, we would have needed to downclimb the section or look for a different descent route," he said.

"It was a thrilling ascent, technically splendid, profound," Barmasse said. "Technically, you can be ready to climb anything, but for an adventure like this, you can never be ready enough." He added that the real feat was surviving the elements.

Numbur was first climbed in 1963 by Hiroshi Matsuo and Mingma Tsering Sherpa, also via the south face. In 1981, a French team did the first ascent of the southwest ridge. Herve Barmasse notes that their own climb is the first alpine-style ascent of the south face.

For the first time, the 2025 list of Piolet d'Or candidates includes Nepalese and Chinese climbers, determined to do exploratory alpinism in their homeland.

In the next few weeks, we will take a close look at some of them, starting with an impressive new route on Sichuan's Mt. Siguniang, by Zhou Song and Zhang Qingwei. This article was made possible thanks to journalist Xia Zhongming, who shared information with ExplorersWeb about the most interesting 2024 climbs in China.

Zhou and Zhang represent an emerging group of climbers who have learned their trade in the mountains of Sichuan. Gradually, they began to tackle other ranges in China, particularly in the remote mountains of Tibet.

Mt Siguniang (6,250m) is a spectacular peak, and a familiar name among veteran European climbers in the history of Piolets d'Or. Mick Fowler and Paul Ramsden opened a new route on the northwest face, earning them the first Piolet d'Or for a climb located in China.

The Chinese pair had set their sights on the north side of the mountain, which had been partially climbed or used as a descent route by Russian and French expeditions during the 2000s. However, no one had ever climbed it from bottom to top, as its avalanche risk forestalled previous expeditions.

"Mt. Siguniang became the entry ticket for Chinese climbers into the elite alpinist club," Xia Zhongming explained.

Hidden expedition

Zhang Qingwei attempted the south face of Siguniang in 2017 but retreated at 5,700m. Later on, Zhang teamed up with Zhou Song to climb Crown Peak and Yutu Peak. While exploring potential new goals, Zhang again raised the idea of climbing Siguniang, this time up the north face.

"On November 15, the duo entered the Siguniang Park together with two friends, who helped them by carrying supplies to Base Camp and then left," Xia wrote. "They set Base Camp at 4,400m, 200m lower than planned."

Their friends left, leaving the climbers alone, or so they thought. After some rest, they set off before dawn toward the summit.

The climb

On November 16 at noon, the pair reached 4,700m and confronted their first dilemma. They had to choose between two potential routes to the glaciated slope, one on rock and steep scree, and the other continuing on glacial terrain, once they rappelled down to reach it. They took the rocky option. The climbers told Xia how it went from there:

Zhang climbed the first 5.6-5.7 pitch to the start of easy terrain on scree. At the end of it, they downclimbed six meters to the moraine. On the way, they saw old ropes left by a previous expedition. They walked along the central section of the glacier upward and reached the base of a rock section at 5,100m. Above, they found a crevasse suitable for a tent. Although it was lower than they had planned, they pitched their first bivy there, at 5,200m.

Mixed terrain

A problem with the boot of one of the climbers, which was soaked with melted snow, delayed their departure on the following day. They climbed in the afternoon, simul-climbing on 30-40° firm snow up a couloir to their left. They then continued on moderately steep snow and rock terrain. At 6 pm, they stopped for the night on a snow patch beneath a big rock.

They spent the third day navigating between rock and ice sections. Eventually, Zhou Song led an M4+ gully that brought them to an ice field and the north ridge. Two pitches later, it was dark, and there was no place to bivouac. Looking for options, they continued up an unknown gully with their headlamps.

After traversing a couple of meters, they headed up the vertical gully, which immediately increased in difficulty. Zhou led this pitch, climbed the thin ice on the right side, and placed racks into the cracks at the left side. Then they faced a smooth block with a crack, which Zhou dry-tooled. The front teeth of his crampons scraped on the rock, and the sparks flew in the darkness.

Near the top of this block, his feet slipped, but fortunately, his ice tools held him. Finding no logical line to climb, Zhou Song downclimbed one meter, then slanted rightward and climbed over the col onto the ridge at 5,820m. They rated this 30m pitch M5+.

There, the climbers found a flat cornice and planted their tent on top of it.

On the ridge

The north ridge proved much narrower and steeper than the photos from a 2011 French expedition to the north summit had led them to believe.

The following day, the climbers gained only 115 vertical meters. The climb was mostly a traverse along the exposed ridge, first on 70° snow, then along the rocky crest until it proved unclimbable.

"At 6 pm, they found a rock hole slightly lower than the crest as shelter for a sitting bivouac," Xia said.

The fourth day of climbing should have been the summit day. It was not. The climbing transitioned to rock again, featuring an overhanging section that was particularly exhausting at that altitude. Gaining 10 meters took one hour. Then followed a section of rock covered in soft snow, difficult to protect.

It was a stressful day, with little progress and a lot of exposure. It ended again after dark with no apparent place for a bivouac. They had to cross the crest until they found a ledge looking down the east side of the peak. The climbers had only one fuel canister left to cook and melt snow, and the weather window would last just two or three more days.

Last ounces of strength

On November 21, they left their tent and continued traversing on exposed terrain. At a rocky section, Zhou Song said, “I am scared. You lead or we retreat.”

Zhang led, overcame the traverse, and climbed 20 meters upward. Zhou Song made the next 50m on an M4-M5 pitch. Taking turns, the day passed. At night, they cut a small snow cave and a ledge for an open bivouac.

To make things more exciting, it snowed that night. The following day, they would have to start descending, with or without a summit. They had no fuel left, meaning no water. Zhang Qingwei was also not feeling well.

“Up or down? I can accept both decisions," Song asked. “Let’s go,” Zhang answered.

Summit

And off they went on mixed terrain, tackling a rocky block, a traverse, and a rappel to avoid a rock step. Both climbers were exhausted, and yet they continued. At the end of the technical section, waist-deep snow awaited them.

Zhou Song cleared snow until ice or rock were exposed, and finally, he saw the icefield above the northwest face. After two more pitches on the icefield, Zhou stood on the summit ridge connecting the three summits of Mt.Siguniang. Zhang Qingwei followed soon, and they walked together to the nearest north summit. At 5 pm, they stood on top.

Descent

They started down half an hour later. By 10 pm, they had reached their sixth bivouac site.

They barely slept; they needed to get down.

"The route looked unfamiliar, and they couldn’t remember how they climbed. Zhang had some frostbite in his fingers, so Zhou descended first to set the anchors. On the ridge close to their Camp 5, Zhou slipped and pendulumed at the end of his rope. There was no way to climb back up to the ridge, so they had to discard all the material that they had deposited in Camp 5 and descend directly down to the glacier and their Camp 1, where they had left a fuel canister.

After finally melting some snow and drinking, they continued back to their start point, where, to their surprise, one of their friends was waiting for them. It was 9:30 pm. After eating and drinking, they collected all their belongings at Base Camp and returned to Mu-Luo-Zi (a stopover for hikers), where they took a horse at 3 am. Half asleep and barely conscious, they rode back to town. Then took a taxi back to Chengdu.

Route data: D/1400m/VII//AI4/M6+/snow 75°

The area

Mount Siguniang is the highest mountain of the Qionglai Mountains in Sichuan, Western China. Its name, which means the Mountain of the Four Maidens, comes after its four points: Yaomei Feng, Sanguniang Feng, Erguniang Feng, and Daguniang Feng.

Mount Siguniang National Park was identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries in 2006. The park comprises Mount Siguniang and the surrounding three valleys, covering an area of 2,000 sq km, according to Wikipedia.

Their climb has been shortlisted for a 2025 Piolet d'Or.

Led by Andrey Vasiliev, the Russian team has endured even tougher conditions than expected, including a sitting bivouac in a snow cave yesterday at 7,500m. Nevertheless, they continue to advance up Manaslu's Southwest Face and might even summit today.

Normal route to acclimatize

They used a smart strategy by acclimatizing on Manaslu's normal route. Eventually, conditions were so temptingly good that they summited the peak without bottled oxygen during the massive summit push. (Check Sergey Kondrashkin's summit video below).

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Once acclimatized, Vasiliev, Kondrashkin, Natalia Beliankina, Kirill Eizeman, and Vitaly Shipilov trekked to the southwest side of the mountain and set up Base Camp on October 12.

New route or Messner's line

They hoped to attempt a new route up the center of the face. However, Vasiliev admitted to ExplorersWeb that if conditions were too dangerous due to avalanche risk, they had a Plan B. They would do the 1972 Tyrolean route, opened by Reinhold Messner and rarely repeated.

Last week, the team set off from Base Camp and crossed an icefall at the base of the mountain. On October 16-17, they traversed the glacier on top of the icefall, then considered their options. On Saturday, October 18, they started up the left side of the Southwest Face toward the summit ridge, from which they would continue to the top. That is similar to the Tyrolean route, but it is not yet clear whether Vasiliev's team is following Messner's route exactly or opening a variation.

Ten more pitches

On Saturday night, the team set their highest camp at 7,050m, and fixed some pitches ahead. "Tomorrow we will need 10 more pitches to reach the ridge," Vasiliev wrote over InReach.

The plan was, apparently, to top out yesterday, but conditions did not favor them. The climbers just had time to reach the summit ridge at last light. They improvised a bivouac and endured an uncomfortable night. "We cut out a hole in the snow and found shelter from the wind," Vasiliev reported.

'We keep going'

Today, the team leader sent an SMS over his tracking device that read, simply and defiantly, "We didn't freeze through the night, so we keep going."

They are now on the summit ridge, close to the summit. If the weather holds, they should make it soon. It is not clear which line they will choose for their descent.

Benjamin Vedrines and Nicolas Jean of France have made the first ascent of Jannu East (7,468m) after an alpine-style, single push climb via the 2,300m north face. They are now safely back down.

Vedrines, one of the most outstanding climbers of his generation, describes the feat as a life-changing experience and "the greatest achievement of [his] mountaineering career."

The climbers' home team has just released the news, accompanied by some stunning photos, although we do not know exactly when the summit took place.

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Second attempt

Jannu lies in eastern Nepal, near Kangchenjunga. This was the second time the young French climbers attempted its formidable north face, after an unsuccessful first try last year with Leo Billon as the third member.

In preparation, Vedrines and Jean acclimatized carefully and earned a bonus -- a first ascent of 6,808m Anidesh Chuli, also known as The White Wave, at the end of September. They then waited for the right conditions before attempting the north face of Jannu, which led to the peak's previously unclimbed East summit.

The climb involved gaining the vertical north face of Jannu until the snowy summit ridge. They then followed the corniced knife-edge until the East summit.

They assessed the route's difficulty as ED- (Extremely Difficult -).

Four days on the wall

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The team posted two days ago that they had started the climb, but it had actually taken place earlier, since Nicolas Jean revealed that they spent four days on the wall.

We will have to wait for a complete report. For the time being, we have some impressive drone images, a topo of the new route (called Le sommet des Pieux), and some of their initial thoughts.

A career peak

Vedrines remarked on the difficulty of the climb and the hugely rewarding feeling.

I feel like I drew on all my knowledge and abilities to ascend this 2,300m Himalayan wall. Once we reached the summit, after so many trials and tribulations, tears flowed. A dream had come true.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Jean summarized the experience in four words:

Concentration, commitment, self-improvement and emotion...all the ingredients of high-altitude Himalayanism.

Added Vedrines:

Nicolas and I formed a close-knit team, pushed to the limits of ourselves, each pulling the other upward, making this ascent one of the most beautiful chapters of our lives.

Marek Holecek of Czechia is back in Nepal with a typically ambitious new goal: a new route on the Southeast Face of Cho Oyu.

As in 2021 and 2022, Holecek will team up with Radoslaw Groh. Holecek's partner in 2024, Ondrej Huserka of Slovakia, died on the way down from their highly exposed first ascent of the East Face of Langtang Lirung.

Somewhere up the SE face

From Gokyo, Holecek and Groh have set up Base Camp in the Khumbu Valley a day away. They are at the head of the Ngozumpa Glacier -- according to Wikipedia, the longest glacier in the Himalaya.

They have not yet decided on a specific line up the SE Face. As Holecek wrote, they are considering several options. For the time being, they are putting their Base Camp in order.

Cho Oyu's hardest side

Just a few expeditions have dared the South (Nepal) Side of Cho Oyu. It is steeper, longer, remote, and much more difficult than the normal route from Tibet. The last alpine-style climb here was Denis Urubko and Boris Dedeshko's back in 2009. They opened a route up the Southeast Face, similar to what Holecek has in mind.

A Russian team led by Andrey Vassiliev tried in 2023 and 2024. They first attempted the South-Southwest Ridge. Failing that, they tried to repeat the 1991 Russian route via the East Ridge.

A Nepalese team, proceeding in heavy expedition style, summited Cho Oyu via the South Side in 2024. They too climbed the South-Southwest Ridge route, but with a different approach from the Russians in 2023.

Radoslaw Groh

 

The Piolets d'Or crew has just released its "Big List" of the outstanding alpine-style expeditions of 2024. The ceremony will again take place in San Martino di Castrozza in the Italian Dolomites from December 9-12.

14 regions around the world

The committee has also released the names of the judges who'll whittle the Big List down to the handful of winners. They are Ethan Berman (U.S.), Aymeric Clouet (France), Young Hoon Oh (South Korea), Ines Papert (Germany), Enrico Rosso (Italy), Jack Tackle (U.S.), and Mikel Zabalza (Spain).

The 74 shortlisted climbs took place in 14 regions around the world, from the Himalaya to Greenland, South America, and even China, after an absence of several years. All the selected climbs were innovative and done in a lightweight style.

Not surprisingly, Nepal was the site of the most nominations, with 16. The surprising second-most prominent venue was not Pakistan or the Andes, but the European Alps.

The Alps, the birthplace of the Piloets d'Or, features nine outstanding new routes on classic peaks such as The Petit Dru, The Civetta, and the Barre des Ecrins. Plus, there is a category tagged as Performance in the Alps for two long-range endurance activities done without motorized help: The connection of all the 4,000'ers of the Alps in 19 days by Kilian Jornet of Spain, and the Drus-Droites-Grandes Jorasses traverse by Leo Billon and Benjamin Vedrines.

This new category reflects how the Golden Ice Axes have evolved to welcome this new athletic trend in alpine performance.

Triple nominees

In addition to physical machines like Jornet and Vedrines, Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll has been nominated for three expeditions: the first free climb of Riders on the Storm on the Torre Central del Paine, a new route on Mirror Wall in Greenland, and his solo traverse of the four peaks of Torres del Paine.

Baptiste Obino, a member of France's Military High Mountain Group, is also a triple nominee for his highly difficult routes on the Barre des Ecrins and two on the Petit Dru.

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Not all are candidates

The Piolets d'Or notes that, while all the climbs on the Big list are noteworthy adventures, not every one is eligible for a Piolet d'Or.

This includes 2024's high-risk new route on Langtang Lirung by Marek Holecek of Czechia and Ondrej Huserka of Slovakia. They summited successfully, and the difficulty and boldness of the climb merit a spot on the Big List. However, Huserka fell into a crevasse during the descent and perished. Last year, Piolets d'Or director Christian Trommsdorff told ExplorersWeb that a death during an expedition eliminates it from consideration.

You can check the entire Big List on the Piolets d'Or website.

Women's prize unveiled

Recently, the Piolets d'Or committee established a Special Mention category to promote female alpinism. Some women's teams are included on the Big List, but the jury has already revealed its choice of the top female expedition of last year. It goes to Anja Petek and Patricija Verdev of Slovenia for their first ascent of 6,243m Lalung I, located in a remote valley between Zanskar and Kirstwar, in the Indian Himalaya.

Here is how the judges summarized their route, Here Comes the Sun (2,000m, M6+ AI5+):

Petek and Verdev, part of a four-member female expedition, climbed the sharp and difficult east ridge of Lalung I over a period of five days, one and a half of these pinned inside their tent due to bad weather. On their final evening, a little below the summit, they lost tent poles to the wind and spent the night in bivouac sacks.

The following morning's mist made it hard to navigate the remaining terrain, but they reached the summit at 9 am...The pair then made a long descent on the crest of the west ridge before making five rappels on the north face to reach the Lalung Glacier at 6:30 pm. Here, they opted to continue down to advanced base, which took a further eight hours.

Winners to be announced soon

In recent editions, the winners of the Piolet d'Or, as well as the climber honored with the Walter Bonatti lifetime award, are revealed before the ceremony takes place. Organizers prefer to make the event itself a celebration of alpinism and its values rather than a suspense-filled competition.

Now that last weekend's storm has passed, some small teams aiming for new routes in Nepal are about to begin. These include Benjamin Vedrines and Nicolas Jean of France on the 2,300m north face of 7,468m Jannu East and Lucien Bocansaud on an alpine-style solo of Khangri Shar.

Other alpine-style teams are heading to their chosen mountains this week.

Jannu East

Vedrines said on social media this week:

"Jannu East via its north face can be climbed in many ways. Ours is alpine style: without oxygen, without fixed ropes, without assistance outside our rope team, a pure style, requiring skills accumulated over the years, true mountaineering. It will be just us, our 60m ropes, and our loaded backpacks."

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The French climbers have not said exactly when they will launch their push but it seems imminent. They are acclimatized after achieving the first ascent of the White Wave last week. The weather outlook for them remains unclear. Forecasts predict sunny and bitterly cold days ahead, and also strong winds at altitude. Also, it is unknown whether the face is in an acceptable condition after the recent heavy snowfall.

According to Vedrines, they will do it in "three days to the top, if everything goes right. Five days would mean failure."

Khangri Shar and Num Ri

Lucien Bocansaud will not only attempt an alpine-style solo of Khangri Shar, but he has also obtained a permit for 6,635m Num Ri. The latter mountain only opened to climbers in 2002, and a German team made its first ascent that year. As for Khangri Shar, Nepal Himal Peak Profile gives its altitude as 6,811m, while the Himalayan Database lists it slightly lower, at 6,792m.

Boucasaud is currently in Chukhung village in the Khumbu. He told ExplorersWeb that before confirming the route and the style on Num Ri, he needs to check the conditions. The mountain is currently loaded with fresh snow after the intense blizzard last weekend.

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Numbur Peak

Adam Bielecki of Poland, Herve Barmasse of Italy, and Felix Berg of Germany are in the Rolwaling area, eyeing a new route on Numbur Peak, an almost-7,000'er also known as Numburchuli. Before starting their climb, they need to get to the base of the peak -- no easy matter due to the heavy rains that have blocked several roads.

"We were lucky to reach the start of the trek in Taksindu (3,100m) before roads closed," Felix Berg wrote. "The weather is still unstable, and it will take time for climbing conditions to improve. We are setting up our base camp while returning for the night to Beni village (4,100m)."

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Bijora Hiunchuli

The Japanese team on the 2025 edition of Himalaya Camp was also lucky to reach Jumla in western Nepal despite the rains. However, the 450km by bus took them over 16 hours. The rains were less intense in the western part of the country, so the second part of the approach, by car, was swift.

The team of university students and promising alpinists, led by Yasuhiro Hanatani, will attempt unclimbed Bijora Hiunchuli (6,111m).

Secretive alpinists

Other well-known climbers in Nepal have chosen to keep quiet about their goals, at least until they reach Base Camp. They include Andres Marin and Anna Pfaff of the U.S., Marek Holecek of Czechia, Francois Cazzanelli of Italy, Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders of the UK, and Silvan Schupbach, Stefan Siegrist, and Philippo Sala of Switzerland.

French climbers Benjamin Vedrines and Nicolas Jean are preparing for the north face of Jannu in grand style. The pair has achieved the first ascent of Anidesh Chuli (6,808m), also known as the White Wave.

Vedrines and Jean climbed the peak via the north ridge, completing a difficult 1,150m-long route in a single day and alpine style.

Wave of snow

As its nickname suggests, Anidesh Chuli is a spiky, aesthetic white wave of pristine snow, close to 7,000m high, that has previously attracted climbers' attention. The most recent attempt was in 2023, by a Japanese team led by Piolet d'Or winner Kazuaki Amano.

Vedrines and Jean had spotted the peak during their first attempt on Jannu last year, and this time they saw the perfect opportunity to climb it. "Setting foot on this summit for the first time was a privilege," Vedrines said.

"The vertical pitches of sugar-sweet snow, typical of the Himalaya, gave us a hard time," Vedrines wrote of the climb. "Nicolas [Jean] knew how to use his cunning to carve a path where the elements could have stopped us in our tracks."

They have also posted a video of the feat on Instagram, with impressive footage thanks to the drones piloted by Thibaut Marot and Quentin Degrenelle:

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Jannu next

Vedrines and Jean need to acclimatize well for perhaps the most committed climb of the year: an alpine-style push on the north face of Jannu, aiming to reach the mountain's east summit for the first time. During their 2024 effort on Jannu, a third team member, Leo Billon, abandoned the attempt because of altitude-related problems, and Vedrines and Jean retreated with him.

The summit of Anidesh Chiuli has been the latest stage of the preparation process, and now they feel ready for the main event. Whatever happens on Jannu, they have already bagged a first ascent worthy of any expedition.

Beyond the 8,000m crowds, many silent valleys in Nepal are drawing alpinists aiming for new routes or first ascents. Here are some of the confirmed teams and what (little) we know about their goals, which they often keep secret.

Bielecki, Berg, Barmasse

Adam Bielecki of Poland is teaming up again with Felix Berg of Germany, his climbing partner on Annapurna's South West Face and Gasherbrum II's West Face. This time, they have added Herve Barmasse of Italy to the team for a new expedition to Nepal's Rolwaling Valley.

The three will try to open a new route on Numbur Peak, also known as Numburchuli. This spiky mountain's altitude varies between 6,957m and 6,959m, depending on the source. A Japanese-Nepalese team first climbed it in 1963 via the south face.

"In 1981, there was also a French expedition that reached the summit via the southwest ridge," Bielecki noted.

He didn't say if his team has a specific line in mind. The climbers are looking forward to "exploration and ambitious climbing in less accessible and less popular places," Bielecki said.

Fowler and Saunders

Mick Fowler, 69, and Victor Saunders, 74, of the UK are somewhere in Nepal, tackling a new route on one of the country's 6,000'ers and demonstrating once again their enduring thirst for adventure.

Fowler and Saunders first climbed together back in the 1980s, when they achieved the first ascent of the Golden Pillar of Spantik in Pakistan. After an extended break, they reunited in 2016 for a first ascent of the north face of Sersank in the Himalaya. They had more expeditions planned until Fowler’s cancer diagnosis delayed them.

Following successful treatment, Fowler returned to fitness and expeditions and continues to climb in the greater ranges while using a colostomy bag and adapted outdoor gear. Last year, the pair achieved the first ascent of Yawash Sar in the Karakoram.

"Over the last few years, we have discovered that we enjoy each other’s company and we make a pretty good climbing team, too," Fowler told sponsor Berghaus.

Schupbach, Siegrist, Sala

Silvan Schupbach, Stefan Siegrist, and Philippo Sala of Switzerland shared their departure for Nepal on social media, but not their goal. Sala, 22, is the youngest of the team but not a mountain rookie. Two weeks ago, he and Schupbach climbed what they think could be a new mixed route in the Bernese Oberland.

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Himalaya Camp

The young members of the Himalaya Camp 2025 expedition and their leader, Yasuhiro Hanatani, are already in Nepal. Yesterday, they obtained a permit for unclimbed 6,111m Bijora Hiunchuli in Western Nepal.

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Simon Messner and Martin Sieberer of Tyrol have returned home from Pakistan after retreating from an unclimbed peak. Their planned goal, which they'd kept quiet about, was 6,745m Chumik Kangri. Ironically, another team summited the peak just days later.

A long-closed region

Sieberer, 37, described Chumik Kangri as "a massive, complex mountain," located in the Saltoro area of the Karakoram. It had been closed to foreigners for decades because it lay near areas disputed with India.

Climbing permits for the region were issued again this year, luring some high-level alpinists toward several unclimbed peaks that rise from the top of the Siachen Glacier. Previously, the Siachen was known as "the highest battlefield in the world" after the frequent exchange of fire between the Indian and Pakistani armies.

Among those drawn to the area were Martin Sieberer and his usual partner, the accomplished Simon Messner, the son of the legendary Reinhold. When they reached base camp, Chumik Kangri was still unclimbed. But the Tyroleans were not the only ones with that goal in mind.

Sieberer and Messner needed several days to acclimatize. When they were finally ready for an alpine-style attempt, the weather turned bad and the route they had in mind proved to risky.

"After three weeks, we bailed," Sieberer wrote on social media.

Shortly after, on September 15, another team -- Michal Czech and Wadim Yablonski of Poland and Adam Kaniak of Slovakia -- achieved the first ascent of the peak. If Sieberer was frustrated because another team snatched the first ascent, he didn't show it. Gracefully, he expressed only support and appreciation for the Polish-Slovak team.

They were more focused

"We...spent some time in Base Camp together, bouldering around the camp," Sieberer confirmed. "We left in very bad weather, but some days later, conditions improved and there was a week-long awesome window.

"I kept in contact with them after we left the mountain, so I was informed of their summit. I am really happy for them."

"They were highly motivated and actually more focused than we were, since we had a film crew with us," Sieberer said.

At the time of speaking with ExplorersWeb, Sieberer was also waiting for details about the new route. "It definitely has to be a tough one, since they went for the south face," he said.

Since Sieberer's comments, the Polish-Slovak team has shared some photos and details of the climb.

"[The] 1,100m line [involved] two bivouacs in the thin air, and a descent as committing as the climb," the climbers wrote on Instagram.

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They climbed the route, named The Great Gig in the Sky, in pure alpine style along the rock-and-ice pillars of the south face. The degree of difficulty was M6, A1, ED1, according to member Adam Kaniak.

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Here is his description of the route itself:

The entire expedition was further complicated by the difficult access to the wall and the difficult descent, where we had to make about 20 rappels. The route itself offered many beautiful pitches on high-quality rock, but also countless meters in serious mountain terrain. Until the end, it was not certain whether we would manage to get from the pillar to easier terrain that would allow us to climb to the very top.

In a promising fall climbing season in Pakistan, three climbers have made the first ascent of 6,754m Chumik Kangri Peak in the Saltoro region of Pakistan's Karakoram.

Michal Czech and Wadim Jablonski of Poland, together with Adam Kaniak of Slovakia, report that they summited on September 15 at 8 am, after climbing the 1,000m south face in a three-day push.

"After a difficult descent, the climbers returned to ABC [Advanced Base Camp] at 10 pm local time," the Polish Mountaineering Association wrote in a press release.

The area opened to foreign expeditions this year after being closed for decades because of its proximity to disputed areas of Kashmir. Thus, the expedition was genuinely exploratory. The climbers accessed the mountain via the virtually unknown Gyong Glacier.

The details of the climb are yet to come. Moreover, they may not be done with the Saltoro valley. Expedition outfitter Adventure Alpine Guides Pakistan told ExplorersWeb that the team was also eyeing Gharkun Tower, also unclimbed.

The Polish Mountaineering Association mentioned no specific peaks but noted that the expedition's goal is "to document and summit unclimbed 6,000'ers in the best possible style."

Piolet d'Or winners Giorgi Tepnadze and Bakar Gelashvili of Georgia have just opened a new route on 7,100m Koh-e Langar in the Hindu Kush.

The expedition was a tribute to former teammate Archil Badriashvili, who died last year when struck by lightning while climbing in the Caucasus.

Badriashvili's dream

When the three friends won the Golden Ice Axe in 2021 after their first ascent of Saraghrar Northwest (7,300m), they decided they would return to the area for further climbs. Badriashvili's death put an end to his dreams, but his partners traveled to Afghanistan at the beginning of August to climb as a tribute to him.

Significantly, Koh-e Langa, the peak chosen for 2025, rises between Saraghrar and the lesser Languta-e-Barfi, another peak the Georgians ascended for the first time during their previous expedition.

Three new routes

Even before setting foot on Koh-e Langar, the expedition was a resounding success. The team's two acclimatization climbs were both done on uncharted terrain. Tepnadze and Gelashvili achieved the first ascent of 6,125m Mudrichili Peak on August 13, and a new route on 6,833m Languta-e-Barfi -- "The Bride of Hindu Kush" -- a few days later.

In 2021, the Georgian team, with Badriashvili as a member, had completed the first ascent of Languta-e-Barfi from the Pakistani side of the peak. This time, they climbed in Afghan territory, although they approached the mountains via Pakistan.

On Mudrichili Peak, the climbers needed five days from Base Camp at 3,559m to the summit and back. The route gains 1,827 vertical meters over technical terrain.

They climbed the new, 2,033 vertical meter route up Languta-e-Barfi in a three-day push, with one bivouac on the way up, and a second one on the ridge at 5,900m after reaching the summit. Both routes were 5th Caucasian grade (approximately, TD -- very difficult -- in classic alpine climbing grades).

The main goal

After the two lesser peaks, the team climbed Koh-e Langar, summiting on September 2. The peak's altitude is usually given as 7,134m high, but the team's InReach on the summit indicated 7,125m.

There are not many details of the climb yet, but they graded their 2,334-meter-long route as 6th Caucasus category -- equivalent to an ED in the Alps. They completed it in a single, four-day push in alpine style.

Pakistan is generating a surprising amount of news from off-season climbing teams. Most recently, a Polish team has opened a new route on the beautiful Laila Peak, and a world-class American team is on its way to unclimbed K13.

New route on Laila

Jedrek Myslinski, Przemek Pawlikowski, and Jacek Pawel Czech have climbed Laila Peak via a new route. We have no details so far; the climbers are still on descent from the summit.

Similar to the Russian team on Baintha Brakk, the forecast weather window was not as good as expected, and the weather deteriorated overnight between Saturday and Sunday. The Polish climbers topped out yesterday but had to stop and bivouac slightly below the summit soon after. Today, they should reach the col. It will not be a pleasant descent: the forecast indicates 8cm of fresh snowfall.

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We won't know for sure until the Polish team is safely down, but conditions on the peak may have been better than the usual climbing season. In July this year, extraordinarily high temperatures caused difficult conditions and constant rockfall, which eventually took the life of young German climber Laura Dahlmeier.

Saltoro first ascents

Another team is also looking for first ascents in the Saltoro region.

The team comprises Michal Czech and Wadim Jablonski from Poland, with Adam Kaniak from Slovakia. They have two unclimbed peaks in mind, Chumik Kangri and Gharkun Tower.

The team has been in the mountains since August 26. They have now pitched Camp 2 on Chumik Kangri and hope to reach the summit this week.

Endless possibilities

Saltoro's valleys are surrounded by granite spires with endless possibilities for alpine-style teams. Yet climbers have rarely visited the area since 1980, when the Pakistan government closed the area to climbing expeditions because of its proximity to the Siachen glacier and disputed territory in Kashmir. Recently, some valleys were reopened.

"There are three valleys in the Saltoro, each with many unnamed and unclimbed peaks below 7,000m," Ali Saltoro of Alpine Adventure Guides Pakistan told ExplorersWeb. "Most of the peaks are right on the roadside, which allows for an easy approach by jeep. I believe this area is going to become the next Patagonia for alpine-style climbers."

Alaskans for K13

After their impressive first ascent of Yashkuk Sar, Americans Dane Steadman and Cody Winckler are back in Pakistan, this time with Blake Brandon. Their goal is the first complete ascent of Dansan Peak, also known as K13. K13 is a 6,666m peak in the Kondus Valley, not far from the Saltoro region.

There are a couple of previous ascents to the west point of Damsam, by a Japanese team in 1981 and a Spanish-French team in 2021. However, the main summit remains unclimbed.

Juho Knuuttila of Finland, Eivind Hugaas of Norway, and Nelson Neirinck of Belgium attempted the north face in 2021, but bad conditions pushed them back at 5,500m, Alpymon reports.

Saltoro told ExplorersWeb that the Americans reached Base Camp today.

We are also waiting for news from yet another Polish team currently in the Karakoram: Tomek Kujawski, Wojtek Mazik, and Piotr Rozek set off to open a new alpine-style route on the southwest summit of K7 (also known as Badal Peak) over three weeks ago.

The 2025 edition of Japan's Himalaya Camp will target unclimbed Bijora Hiunchuli (6,111m) in Western Nepal. A team of young Japanese climbers led by Yasuhiro Hanatani will attempt the beautiful northwest ridge.

Started by the Japan Alpine Club (JAC) in 2015, the Himalaya Camp is a yearly project that aims to pass on the club's strong mountaineering culture to future generations. The JAC selects people in their 20s and 30s with little or no experience with overseas mountaineering and trains them over a few months. The final activity is the "camp" itself: a Himalayan expedition to an unclimbed 6,000'er.  

Off the beaten track

As usual, the 2025 expedition has clear exploratory values, with information about their target area scarce. The Himalaya Camp's 2024 team suggested Bijora Hiunchuli after climbing in the area last year.

The team will start the approach trek from Pele village in Western Nepal, making their way toward a glacier junction known as Bhot Khola. The team noted that there are records of other climbing teams passing through the Bhot Khola Junction. Further to the northeast is Sanctuary Peak, which was first climbed by the 2024 team.

Team leader Yasuhiro Hanatani (48) is a seasoned climber with some first ascents under his belt, such as Ratna Chuli (7,035m, Nepal) in 1996, and the first ascent of the South Pillar of Kyashal (6,770m, Nepal) in 2013, which earned him a Piolet d'Or. He will lead Masatake Higa (24), Masayuki Takenaka (35), Sota Kodama (35), Mei Okajima (27), and Akiyoshi Tanaka (36).

Alpine style

According to the American Alpine Journal, Bijora Hiunchuli was attempted in 2013 by Paulo Grobel of France. As he described in a report, Bijora Hiunchuli is a subsidiary summit on the northwest ridge of Kasi Dalpha (6,386m). "The small snowy top is clearly visible from Jumla airport, and access is relatively simple," Grobel wrote.

Grobel led a team to the north-northwest ridge -- which "offered an elegant route to the summit" -- in alpine style, but with no success. That also seems to be the Japanese team's goal, and they will likewise climb without fixed ropes or porters.

Benjamin Vedrines landed in Nepal yesterday and will head toward one of the most formidable unclimbed north faces in the Himalaya. Together with climbing partner Nicolas Jean, Vedrines hopes to complete the first ascent of the north face of Jannu East (7,468m) in alpine style.

The north face of Jannu is a monster vertical face located near Kangchenjunga. It has defeated some of the best climbers in history. It is difficult from base to summit, and nightmarishly exposed.

The climbers' goal is to open a new route, not to the main summit of Jannu (7,710m), but to the 7,468m eastern point of the massif, which remains unclimbed.

The young French climbers -- Jean is 27 and Vedrines is 32 -- attempted the face for the first time last year. That time, they climbed with Leo Billon, but retreated when Billon fell sick.

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Grand alpine training

Jean and Vedrines have been training hard at home in the Alps. Vedrines made a record speed traverse that he called the "Great Alpine Trilogy": a nonstop, human-powered traverse of the ridges of the Grandes Jorasses, the Matterhorn, and the Eiger. Climbing, paragliding, and cycling from one peak to the next, Verdrines finished in a stunning 39 hours. You can check out some footage from his challenge below:

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The goal was not only to make a speedy triple-traverse but to put his climbing skills, endurance, and mental strength to the test. The climbs included long, exposed passages at around 4,000m, and should help him on the mighty north face of Jannu.

"Courage is one of the first virtues needed to commit to this kind of project," Jean wrote of Jannu. "The cold, avalanches, technical pitches; everything pulls us far from our comfort zone."

While most teams head to Nepal in the fall for its stable post-monsoon weather, some climbers are heading to Pakistan. It's usually a summer destination, but at least three parties hope that the shorter days and colder nights of September will give them the good snow and ice conditions that the sweltering summer lacked.

This summer's hot weather in Pakistan left many Karakoram mountains bare until about 6,000m. Rockfall was a constant threat, and three people died when struck by rocks: two on K2 and former Olympic gold medalist Laura Dahlmeier on Laila Peak. The cooler weather will be a blessing for alpinists seeking technical climbs, especially on mixed routes.

A totally new range

Simon Messner, 35, and Martin Sieberer, 37, of the Tyrol are returning to Pakistan to try a mountain in a totally new range.  "Nobody ever tried to climb [it before] because it was in a restricted area," Sieberer said.

The climbers admit that they only have a single photo of their objective to go by. Everything else is tantalizingly uncertain.

The excitement returns

Sieberer admitted he had never thought he would climb in Pakistan again after bagging the first ascent of 7,200m Yermanandu Kangri in the Masherbrum massif two years ago.

"After that trip, I felt more exhausted than ever before...but now I feel the excitement again."

As usual, the pair will not post updates, only reporting after they return in about a month.

Russians to the Ogre

Alexander Parfyonov, Alexey Sukharev, Ratmir Mukhametzyanov, and Alexander Ryndyk have arrived in Skardu and are moving toward the mountain, mountain.ru reported. They should reach Base Camp by the end of the week.

 

The Russians' plan to attempt the Ogre last year was postponed to 2025 when one of them suffered a climbing accident in the Caucasus. At that time, they intended to try the still-unclimbed north face of the mountain. It is not confirmed if they have the same goal this year, but any route on the Ogre, even a repetition, is an amazing feat. This peak has only had three previous ascents.

 

In 2023, an Italian team led by Matteo Della Bordella attempted it, but bad conditions pushed them back twice. Instead, they finally opened a route on the lesser Baintha Kabata, known as The Ogre's Son.

Laila Peak

Everest guide Kenton Cool, 51, of the UK has recently announced he will climb 6,086m Laila peak this fall. Cool is best known as the non-Nepalese climber with most Everest summits -- 19. However, he has a wide climbing resumé with several alpine-style ascents and a new route on Annapurna III. It is not confirmed whether he is guiding or climbing on his own.

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Laila Peak, in the Hushe Valley, is one of the most distinctive peaks of the Karakoram. Its sharp upper slopes pierce the Gilgit-Baltistan sky like a spear.

Italy's Matteo De Zaiacomo, Chiara Gusmeroli, and Davide Nesa are on their way to the Rangtik Valley in the Zanskar region of India's Ladakh.

This remote side valley is attracting a growing number of expeditions, mainly technical climbers searching for new routes and first ascents. There is much left to climb on the area's high-quality rock faces.

"I can't wait," De Zaiacomo wrote.

Among the latest successful teams were Yuri Koshelenko, Bayarsaikhan Luvsand, and Mikhail Pups of Russia, who bagged a first ascent on a 6,000'er.

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Zanskar lies east of Kashmir, where a terrorist group attacked and killed 27 civilians at a popular outdoor area. It escalated tensions between India and Pakistan this past spring, and several climbing expeditions had to cancel, postpone, or change their goals.

Tensions have eased since then. However, the place remains remote and isolated --  in part, because satellite phones and InReach devices are forbidden in India.

The wall spiders

De Zaiacomo and Gusmeroli opened a new route on a rock spire in the Karakoram's Namgma Valley last year. This time, Davide Nesa, a promising young climber, is joining them.

De Zaiacomo is the president of the legendary Ragni di Lecco (Lecco's Spiders), a mountaineering club that has launched international expeditions since 1946. It is known for an ethos that combines climbing innovation with respect for the traditional values of mountaineering. In Zanskar, the team will search for "technically challenging walls to tackle...without a drill and in alpine style," said De Zaiacomo.

Another Ragni di Lecco team is currently on a climbing and packrafting expedition in Canada's Cirque of the Unclimbables. Dario Eynard, David Bacci, Giacomo Meliffi, and Enrico Bittelli have just opened a 6c/A3 route on Middle Huey Spire.

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Another well-known member of the club, Matteo Della Bordella, is tackling Patagonia's Fitz Roy in winter conditions.

Women's expeditions

As the monsoon recedes, more climbers will arrive in India's Himalaya. Among them are two female teams that have received a Grit and Rock Award: Fay Manners (UK) and Michelle Dvorak (U.S.) will attempt the first ascent of Chaukhamba II (7,068m) in Uttarakhand; and Oksana Kochubei, Nadezhda Muzhikina, Nadezhda Pilschikova, and Olga Paduchieva of Russia will try a new route on 6,040m White Sapphire Peak in Kishtwar.

The 8,000m peaks in the Karakoram are now deserted, as outfitters and climbers turn their attention to Manaslu and Dhaulagiri in Nepal. But smaller teams on lesser but interesting peaks are still in Pakistan. We know details about at least one.

A Polish team is on its way to the Charkusa Valley in the western Karakoram. Charkusa is home to legendary mountains such as Masherbrum (recently attempted by Jackson Marvell and Alan Rousseau of the U.S), Laila Peak, where Olympic champion Laura Dahlmeier perished in a rockfall accident, and K7, where Colin Haley recently retreated due to bad conditions.

Tomek Kujawski, Wojtek Mazik, and Piotr Rozek hope to open a new alpine-style route on the southwest summit of K7, also known as Badal Peak, Polski Himalaizm Sportowy reported.

K7 massif

Badal Peak (approximately 6,100m) has had some past ascents up its south-southwest face by remarkable climbers, such as Steve House of the U.S. (solo, 2004), the Favresse brothers and Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll of Belgium with Adam Pustelnik of Poland in 2007, Slovenians in 2008, Italians in 2009, Spaniards in 2010 (repeating the Slovenian route), and Japanese in 2014.

Some of these expeditions had a more ambitious goal in mind: traversing the southwest ridge of the massif from the summit of Badal Peak to the top of K7 west. Katsutaka Yokoyama and Takaaki Nagato of Japan finally achieved that elusive goal in 2017.

Keeping expectations low

This summer's Polish team -- whose members are on their third expedition together -- has shared no plans beyond summiting Badal. Moreover, they are very aware of the bad conditions in Pakistan's mountains this year, so they are keeping their expectations low.

"The previous two winters in the Karakoram were dry, and this year's summer has been exceptionally warm," Rozek told Polski Himalaizm Sportowy. "Where there is usually snow, the terrain this year is mostly loose rock, and rockfalls are quite frequent." Indeed, rockfall has been behind the three fatal accidents in Pakistan's mountains this season.

For that reason, the Polish team has a plan B and even a plan C, in case Badal proves too dangerous in its present condition. They are also considering the southwest face of 6,475m Farol Peak East and the north face of 6,180m Namika.

In a season plagued by bad conditions, flexibility has been the key: Ales Cesen of Slovenia and Lukas Woerle of Austria had no chance to climb their chosen peak in Pakistan's Shimshal Valley, so they quickly found an alternative: 6,224m Cherireen Sar. It ended successfully, with a first ascent.

The pair spoke about the climb to ExplorersWeb from Karimabad, where they have stopped for some days of paragliding.

Plenty of Plans A and B

There is still a lot to climb in the remote Shimshal Valley, located in the northeast corner of Pakistan, bordered by the Wakhan Corridor to the west, China's Xinjiang to the east, and India's Ladakh to the southeast. It was exactly what Cesen and Woerle were looking for.

Accompanied by Woerle's brother, Vincent, as cameraman, they came in mid-July to climb Khurdopin Sar, whose estimated altitude ranges from 6,076m to 6,320m. Several expeditions have attempted the mountain, but none have summited. Philip de Beger and Aleksi Mujirishvili were the last to try, in 2023. Unfortunately, a quick look dashed their hopes.

"The approach to the face was in dangerous conditions, and we also saw huge cornices on the summit ridge," Lukas Woerle told ExplorersWeb.

Nevertheless, the team spent a week acclimatizing near Base Camp. On July 28, they set off for Cherireen Sar, a peak with a milder summit ridge that might provide better summit chances. It didn't start well.

Pouring rain

Rain started to pour as the climbers prepared their bivy spot at the beginning of the route, and a strong wind also blew.

"At 2:30 am, we set off anyway, hoping at least to check a bit of the route," Woerle said.

They progressed carefully on unstable rock, which required their whole attention. Conditions improved with altitude. As dawn broke, "We were at 5,500m, [and] the weather cleared. It was then that we decided to go for the summit."

The going was significantly easier when they finally stepped on snow and ice instead of rock. Soon, they progressed up the snowy summit ridge, summiting around 11 am on July 29.

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The descent was more complex. "It was on the way down where we tackled the most difficult sections due to loose rock," they wrote.

Objective danger

"Even though there are technically harder climbs in the area, this one was, in our opinion, quite demanding and serious," the climbers told ExplorersWeb from Karimabad.

The problem was not so much the technical difficulty as the risks assumed.

We were in a very remote area, and the conditions were hazardous, especially on the lower half of the climb. From Base Camp until 5,500m, we progress on very unstable, no-fall terrain, and were exposed to serious rockfall risks. In addition, there was no source of water in our bivouac place.

The descent was an endurance test for the climbers, since a simple slip could have fatal consequences. They had no break, physical or mental, and remained focused until they were safely in Base Camp after a 17-hour, nonstop climb.

Son of a legend

Ales Cesen, 43, is one of the elite Slovenian climbers of the 21st century, but also a follower of a family tradition. He is the son of the legendary Tomo Cesen (one of the routes of K2 has his name).

Ales has won two Piolet d'Ors: In 2015 for the first ascent of the north face of Hagshu, in the Indian Himalaya, with Marko Prezelj and Luca Lindic; and in 2019, for the north ridge of the Karakoram's Latok I with Tom Livingstone and Luka Strazar. Last year, he made one of the best climbs of the year: The West Ridge of Gasherbrum III with Tom Livingstone.

While acclimating on Gasherbrum II, Cesen and Livingstone met Lukas Woerle. "We joined forces there for a climb together up to 7,000m," Woerle explained. Since then, Cesen and Woerle have climbed together in Europe.

The expedition was at risk earlier this year after Cesen injured his ankle, but he recovered in time for Pakistan.

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Climber, paraglider, and skier Lukas Woerle, 32, became a local celebrity in Pakistan after he sacrificed his summit on Broad Peak two years ago to help a local climber stranded on the snow. In a year when another porter, Muhammad Hassan, died at K2's Bottleneck, surrounded by over a hundred climbers on their way to the summit, Woerle's selfless behavior stood out. Local authorities nominated him for a civil award and granted him a free climbing permit for the following year.

Colin Haley of the U.S. quietly traveled to Pakistan last month with Americ Clouet and Damien Tomasi to attempt 6,934m K7 in the Charakusa Valley. Unsurprisingly, they encountered the bad conditions plaguing all the peaks of western Pakistan this summer. They are back empty-handed, having experienced -- as so many others have this season -- the hardships of being an alpinist in the age of global warming.

"The past two to three winters have been particularly dry in the Karakoram, and this summer has been particularly hot. The result was getting mosquito bites above 5,000m, and incredibly melted conditions," Haley wrote.

Increased danger

As he explained, the problem is not so much the high temperatures, but their effect on mountain conditions: "Terrain that was historically covered in ice 99% of the time becomes extremely hazardous when all that ice is gone. Slopes and couloirs that are white in any photo you can find were instead just teetering piles of loose rock, with outrageous rockfall hazard."

During the last days of their expedition, the climbers heard rocks falling every 15 minutes or so, day and night.

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As with Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer's failed attempt on Gasherbrum IV, Haley admits they didn't get very far, and that they experienced setback after setback. Dubouloz, Americ Clouet, and two other partners attempted K7 unsuccessfully in 2023. Weather again. In 2024, a Spanish team couldn't summit K7 either. This year, Clouet tried K7 again while Dubouloz went for Gasherbrum IV.

A bad time for alpinists

"I really love climbing challenging mountains, and I have no regrets about the path I have followed in my life, but I must admit that a lot of experiences during the past decade have made me feel that the 21st century is a depressing era in which to be an alpinist," wrote Haley.

The good news is that the three climbers have returned safe and sound, and are still good friends despite the disappointing results.

The constant rockfall in the Pakistan mountains this year is a serious hazard that last week took the life of young Laura Dahlmeier while she was climbing Laila Peak.

Colin Haley is a professional mountain guide and a full-time climber who advocates an alpine-style approach. He has opened routes around the world but is probably best known for his ascents in Patagonia.

The terrible conditions in the Karakoram have ended the climbs of both commercial climbers and alpinists. Even two of the most exciting projects of the season, the climbs on 7,925m Gasherbrum IV, fizzled out.

An Italian team that wanted to climb the north side called their expedition off weeks ago. Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer of France waited much longer and actually launched a summit push, but conditions proved too risky.

Waiting for a chance

Two weeks ago, the pair carried gear and supplies to the base of the south face of Gasherbrum IV, where they had spotted a new route. They then retreated to their base camp on a moraine to wait for a weather window that refused to open.

"The waiting, the indecision, the inactivity were all the more difficult to manage because, these days, we're used to having everything under control," they wrote.

Finally, they launched a tentative push. "And once again, nothing went quite as planned," Dubouloz wrote.

Welfringer described the first day, when the climbers approached their cached gear, as exhausting. "We struggled for 12 hours through [soft, mild] snow," he said, noting they were lucky to have snowshoes. "[Without them,] we wouldn't have climbed 10 meters."

No ice

From the start, Dubouloz and Welfringer found no ice to secure themselves to with screws, ice axes, and crampons; only soft, deep snow.  After hours of plowing through porridge, they even tried to leave their backpacks behind and break trail first.

"We got to around 6,900m, still very low on the face, only at the beginning of this beautiful line we had dreamed of for over a month," Dubouloz wrote. "At a crevasse, we hoped to finally find harder terrain where we could secure ourselves, so we scratched and dug through the deep snow, hoping to find the life-saving ice...in vain!"

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"Disappointment is the first feeling...after so much physical, mental, and temporal investment," Welfringer said.

The climbers were glad they were audacious enough to tackle one of the most formidable peaks in the Karakoram for a month and a half. But it was, they admitted, a learning experience.

Dani Arnold, Alexander Huber, and Simon Gietl have opened a difficult, 1,300m route on the east face of Jirishanca, in Peru's Huayhuash range, that may be one of the most significant climbs of 2025. The trio completed the 31-pitch climb in a single, alpine-style push between July 13-15.

Hummingbird's heartbeat

Gietl of Italy, Huber of Germany, and Arnold of Switzerland made two bivouacs on the wall and reached the east summit (6,028m, according to their GPS) at 9:15 am on July 15, the third day of the climb. They explained that climbers no longer attempt Jirishanca's main summit because of very poor snow conditions and high objective risk.

They named their route Kolibri, a translation of Jirishanca into German. Jirishanca means "hummingbird" in the Quechua language. According to author Jeremy Frimer, the name of the peak might refer to the spiky summit, likening it to the beak of a hummingbird. Climbers' heart rates might also mirror a hummingbird's when looking at the vertiginous southeast side of the mountain.

Great conditions

The Huayuash range is special. It is the only limestone range in the world with peaks surpassing 5,000m.

"The quality of the limestone is unique: solid, rough, and grippy," the team said. "We found a beautiful and logical line on the best rock. The conditions on the wall were ideal, and the teamwork was perfect."

Route report

We asked the climbers for details of a climb they described as "steep, technically demanding, and combining alpine seriousness with classic line selection."

Here is a complete report by Simon Gietl, and some notes added by Alex Huber.

The route begins on the lower part of the wall with slabby, sometimes overhanging passages that are often difficult to belay. This is dominated by technically demanding pitches with runouts in places that must be free-climbed up to grade 8 and occasional technical passages up to A2.

The middle section of the new route first follows the striking ice ramp of the Italian route, and then follows a direct line of cracks and intersections in the upper part of the wall, until it reaches the steep east ridge -- and the route of the first ascenders (Egger/Jungmair, 1957).

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Serious endeavor

The climbers have estimated the route's difficulty at 8 (UIAA grade), A2. They assess the climb as a serious endeavor that demands high technical standards and alpine experience.

"The route is characterized by clear, elegant lines, excellent rock, and a varied wall structure. There is highly demanding wall climbing in the lower part, followed by classic crack climbing on the upper part of the wall up to the east ridge on snow and ice. Wedges, Friends, and micro-cams are essential."

The team was delighted with the climb. "For us, this line is one of our greatest first ascents, a gift from Mother Nature," Gietl told ExplorersWeb.

Between historical routes

In 1957, Jirishanca was the last 6,000'er to be summited in the Huayhuash range. Since then, it has attracted some of the best climbers in the world.

"Kolibri runs between the French and Italian routes," the team noted. "In the central section, we decided to follow the Italian route for three pitches (the Italian Ramp) before returning to the direct pillar between the French and the Italian route."

After the second bivouac, on their way to the summit on July 15, Arnold, Gietl, and Huber followed Tony Egger and Siegfried Jungmair's route, which was used during the peak's first ascent.

The 1957 team deemed the southeast face impossible and instead followed the peak's east spur, in heavy expedition style. Their route is now called the Austrian route. Egger died 18 months after climbing Jirishanca, on Patagonia's Cerro Torre.

The French Route (actually called Tambo, Churros y Amigos) was the second line opened on Jirishanca from the east. Clouet and Jourdain climbed the peak in 2003 -- not in alpine style but without using bolts, which was quite a feat at the time on such a difficult face --  progressing up the main pillar on the southeast face.

Also in 2003, Italians Stefano DeLuca, Paolo Stoppini, and Alessandro Piccini climbed the Italian Route. They placed nearly 40 bolts on the wall and stopped where their route joined the Egger/Jungmair route, calling the incomplete route Suerte (luck). The complete route was finally free-climbed in 2022 by two Americans: Josh Wharton and Vince Anderson. They made the summit in three days without bolts. You can read their report here.

You can read Frimer's article in the American Alpine Journal about the climbing history of Jirishanca here.

Denis Urubko of Russia and Maria Cardell of Spain have finally shared details of their new route on Nanga Parbat.

The couple took it easy after climbing from the Diamir side; in a very Urubko-style move, they remained an extra week in Base Camp, enjoying the solitude of the mountain. It was only yesterday, as they returned to Skardu, that they checked their emails and shared details of their line.

Difficult, exposed, lonely

They opened their route between July 6 and July 10. It combined varied terrain, with ice, mixed rock, snow, and a crevassed glacier, Urubko told Mountain.ru. He explained that the route is technically difficult and exposed to avalanches and rockfall in some sections.

In addition, the climbers went up in far from ideal weather conditions, with storms every afternoon and winds as high as 90kmph.

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"We didn't use other people's ropes or tracks," Urubko told Mouintain.ru. "There were no breakdowns, injuries, or illnesses."

Indeed, they were the only people on that side of the mountain and, when the climb took place, they were the only people anywhere on the mountain. This season, summits on the normal route (the Kinshoffer) occurred on July 3 and July 4. David Goettler of Germany and French climbers Tiphaine Duperier and Boris Langenstein summited from the Rupal side on June 24.

You can read Urubko and Cardell's full report on Mountain.ru in Russian.

Crossing previous lines

Shortly after Urubko published a topo of the route, some members of the climbing community shared comments on social media pointing to the similarity of the line to previously opened routes. In particular, some pointed out that the route seems to coincide with a line opened in 2009 by Gerfried Goeschl of Austria and Louis Rousseau of Canada.

Urubko did note in his report that their route intersects the Austrian-Canadian route at around 6,600-6,800m. "But [our route] continues along the ridge, while the other team went along the glacier," he explained.

Asked by ExplorersWeb, Cardell confirmed the information from Pakistan: "Our route does not step on the Goeschl/Rousseau route at any section; both lines cross, but then the Austrian-Canadian route continues along the glacier and our line follows the ridge," Cardell said.

Cardell noted that she spoke to Rousseau before the expedition, and the Canadian climber shared information about his 2009 expedition alongside Goeschl (who later perished while attempting winter Gasherbrum I). Therefore, Urubko and Cardell were well aware of the location of the 2009 route.

"For a person not familiar with the terrain, it may look like it is the same line, but the distance between both routes is wide; everything else is speculation," Cardell said.

Many teams have climbed Nanga Parbat from its Diamir side. Crossing and/or following small sections with previous lines doesn't make Urubko and Cardell's feat any less impressive.

Female first

The achievement is especially significant for Maria "Pipi" Cardell. She is a ski patroller by profession and a member of Spain's elite female alpinism team. According to Urubko, Cardell is the first female climber to summit an 8,000'er via a new route opened in alpine style.

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Urubko and Cardell took turns to lead during the climb, and in some sections they simul-climbed (progressed roped up at the same time, without belaying one another).

"It is an elegant and logical line, technical to a point that took me to my physical and mental limits," Cardell wrote. "I am not euphoric after the achievement. On the contrary, I feel calm...all the past efforts fit like pieces of a puzzle. Our dream is complete."

A solid pair

Cardell was enthusiastic in her praise for Urubko. "It is surreal to see how confidently he climbs in extremely complex terrain at high altitude," she said. "His intuition is based on wide experience, and his ability to obsessively focus becomes our guarantee of survival. [Added to his] supernatural strength at 8,000m, this makes him unique."

"Denis [Urubko] and I have been climbing together for ten years," Cardell wrote on Instagram. "We have been working and training all this time to get ready and, someday, achieve this dream."

Together, they have opened new routes, alpine style, on Chapayev (in the Tien Shan) and Ushba (in the Caucasus). They attempted a new route on Gasherbrum II in 2019, but Cardell had to drop out after injuring her back. Urubko soloed the route, naming it "Honeymoon" in tribute to Cardell. They also attempted a new route on Gasherbrum I, but eventually climbed via the normal route because of bad conditions.

Through the years, Urubko has been a methodical and very tough coach for iron-willed Cardell. "It has been training and more training...drytooling, climbing, running to exhaustion, learning new techniques and adopting new habits, don't drink, cry often, feeling utterly happy at every little step ahead, hesitating until finally managing to believe in myself and, never, never surrendering," Cardell said.

Forget-me-not

The pair has named the new route Незабудка (Nezabudka), meaning "the unforgettable girl." It is the Russian name of a flower known in English as the forget-me-not or scorpion grass. Under the Latin scientific name Myosotis and with some 60 variants, it is a small mountain plant that grows delicate flowers, generally blue, soon after the snow melts in alpine ecosystems. It is the official flower of Alaska. The relatively low altitude of Nanga Parbat's lower slopes allows grass and flowers to grow in Base Camp, especially during this relatively warm season.

Thomas Huber, Jon Griffin, and Tad McCrea are back in Pakistan for another summer climb in the impressive Latok massif. This time, they have set their sights on Latok III.

The team started the approach trek to the Choktoi Glacier yesterday, outfitter Shipton Treks & Tours said.

Favorite playground

For Thomas Huber of Germany, the Karakoram's Choktoi Glacier and the ragged spires surrounding it are special. Here, he has achieved some of his most spectacular ascents: Latok IV (6,459m) with his brother Alex in 1999, and Latok II (7,108m) in 1997 with Conrad Anker and Toni Gutsch. Huber also climbed the neighboring Ogre and Ogre III in 2001.

Choktoi is also home to a major unfinished project: linking the north face and north ridge to the summit of Latok I, a line that has never been completely climbed. Huber has attempted it several times, including last year with McCrea and Griffin.

This time, Huber is back with the same partners, but a different goal: the unsummitted southeast pillar of Latok III (6,949m).

The team was awarded a cutting-edge grant to attempt the climb.

German climber David Goettler had unfinished business with the Rupal side of Nanga Parbat: "I needed to prove I'm able to claim an 8,000’er in the style I like and off the normal route."

Back in Europe after climbing the Schell route and paragliding from the summit, Goettler is over the moon. He's not only ecstatic about the achievement, but also because he finally succeeded on a personal bet that has molded his high-altitude climbing career.

"After all these attempts and years I put into this project, it paid off and I am very happy," Goettler said. "I have fulfilled this dream, and flying down, it's kind of the cherry on the top, even if it was not right from the summit."

Prize for persistence

In some cases, when a climber achieves a project attempted and planned for years, they feel a kind of emptiness. Goettler, on the contrary, has found that it has motivated him for future climbs.

"The recent success has increased my motivation to chase similar projects because I have climbed Nanga Parbat in exactly the style I wanted. I have learned that it sometimes takes a lot of attempts, but in the end, with persistence and patience, it pays off."

This is an important issue for Goettler, who follows strict safety standards on his climbs. His goal is to complete a climb and descend safely, without "having to get epic," as he terms it.

"Through the years and the attempts, I turned around so many times because some small things didn't fit right or it was not perfect. Of course, I questioned myself. Perhaps I was not pushing hard enough? But in the end, I have proven that I can achieve my goals in what I consider the right way," Goettler explained.

Safe, not boring

Goettler concedes that his focus on safety "might look boring for audiences and the media, because I avoid drama. I am aware others push these limits far beyond [what I choose to do] and play with fire. But each climber has to decide this for themselves."

"Of course, bad luck is always possible, and you can always end up in a difficult situation without forcing it. However, if you push the limits again and again and again, you may need to start questioning your approach to mountaineering," Goettler told us.

On every attempt, Goetller studied his mistakes and tried to fix them for the next round. So, what changed on this attempt? What was the final finetuning that led to success instead of retreat? Was it just luck?

More than luck

"I believe it's not only luck, although we were indeed lucky with the weather window and with the conditions. The mountain was very dry this year, which made the going up to 6,000m quite complex, especially for Boris and Tiphaine [climbing partners Boris Langenstein and Tiphaine Duperier of France] who wanted to ski down from the top," Goettler said. "However, from 6,000m up, conditions were way better."

Goettler explained that, although the climbers had to break trail all the time, the snow was not as deep as in wetter years. As seen in videos from the mountain, the climbers wore small snowshoes, which made progress easier on the snowy patches.

The team enjoyed an extraordinary weather window. "For three days we had little wind and no precipitation," Goettler recalls. "However, from my experience climbing in Pakistan since 2004, I had learned that temperatures are rising in recent years, so we knew we would need to make the attempt early in the season. We still almost got there too late!"

Fine-tuned tactics

Reflecting on the increasing temperatures, Goettler believes expeditions in the Karakoram may consider an earlier start, even if that means overlapping with the Spring season in Nepal.

Goettler also made a key tactical adjustment for this final attempt.

"The summit day from the last bivy at 7,400m is extremely long, and the last time I underestimated it. On the maps, the terrain looks so vertical that you think it cannot be too long, but it is! It’s a long way to the top, especially because of the traverse of the Diamir side," Goettler said.

"Therefore, this time we took a tent, a stove, and a sleeping pad with us for the summit day. That way, we could always stop, pitch the tent, get shelter from the wind, and have a rest, no matter the altitude. Either on descent or during the ascent, if the weather turned for the worse, the safety items gave us confidence to tackle a longer summit day."

They reached the summit shortly after 3 pm local time, which is late on an 8,000'er. But they had perfect weather, so an evening descent was not concerning.

"However, it was just a little bit too much wind to feel comfortable taking off and paragliding directly from the summit," Goettler noted.

The descent

With too much wind to take off from the summit, Goettler started down with Langenstein and Duperier. The two French climbers put on their skis at the top and started down the summit ridge to the south summit of Nanga Parbat; Goettler followed on foot. The skiing was slow at that altitude, so he didn’t get left behind.

"At around 6:30 pm, we reached 7,700m. Here, the ridge opens up and the terrain falls away in a huge, steep snow field," Goettler said. "It was still a bit gusty, but I felt confident to take off."

The following 30 minutes will always remain in Goettler’s memory as one of the most amazing, surreal moments of his life.

"I took off, first flying toward the flank of the mountain, along the traverse of the Diamir side and right over the Mazeno Col back to the Rupal face, where I dropped down and landed right beside our Base Camp. It was one of my best and craziest moments in the mountains so far."

Thirty minutes vs. three days

Goettler's arrival shocked the Base Camp cook, who didn’t expect anyone for dinner so soon after hearing the summit news. He ran out of the tent when he heard Goettler calling.

Going down took much longer for Langenstein and Duperier. "The traverse is no more than 50 vertical meters, but it’s all ups and downs, which can take an extremely long time when you’re on skis," Goettler said. "They used the tent, improvising a bivy for the night. The following day, they continued to the place of our last proper camp, at 7,400m, right at the access point to the Rupal side, and they spent another night there."

The descent down the Rupal Face was so rough that the French climbers still needed another stop. They halted on the ridge at 6,000m because the lower part of the mountain was so prone to rockfall that it could only be downclimbed when frozen, between midnight and 6 am.

Their long descent provided Goetller with a new experience: waiting in base camp for partners on the mountain. "It was quite intense," he said. "We could only communicate over the radio when they were on the Rupal Face. While they were on the other side, only SMS over InReach worked, and there was so little we could say. It was unnerving not knowing where they were and how they felt."

The art of flying

Indeed, flying down proved an amazing way to descend from a high-altitude summit. It is safer, faster, and spectacular. Benjamin Vedrines and other French climbers experienced it on K2 last year, where it also worked wonderfully.

"I'm sure we will see it more and more, but it will not become the norm," Goettler said. “Most days, flying from a summit or a high point is not possible. Even with modern, more accurate forecasts, you need to be really lucky with conditions, and then high-altitude paragliding requires extra skills. Often, I carry my wing up and I can't fly."

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Goettler recalls that he took his wing to Nanga Parbat last year when he attempted the climb with Vedrines, but he was unable to fly from any higher than 5,500m because of high winds. Equally, he brought the wing up Baruntse in spring, but he had to return on foot in foggy weather.

"Gliding makes life so easy when it works. You fly with zero worries about rockfall, avalanches, exhaustion, or anything. In 30 minutes, you're back down to safety."

Team workflow

Goettler has attempted Nanga Parbat on five occasions with different climbing partners. He has climbed with Herve Barmasse, Mike Arnold, and Benjamin Vedrines. Last year, he met Langenstein and Duperier on Nanga Parbat. They shared the same goal, so they quickly made plans to join forces in 2025.

"It was one of the best teams I have ever been on, even though our characters are rather different. I worked really well, it's so good to have a group where you spend no energy managing the team dynamics," Goettler said.

The climb

The climb was described by Goettler in a series of clips that he posted on social media. Here's a summary and the footage:

Day 1: Latabo Base Camp to Camp 1 (6,000m)

Goettler notes that the team had made a previous climb to this point to check conditions. They left a small gear deposit.

"For the ultra purists, our ascent wouldn't be 'alpine style,' but I’m still happy to call our climb alpine style because there wasn’t a single meter of fixed rope, no set camps, and no external help."

The team climbed with a 50m rope, some pitons and cams, one tent, and food and gas for five days.

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Day 2: The ridge section and snow fields between 6,000m and 6,800m

"The route goes along a sharp ridge, then you have to cross big, wide open snowfields," Goettler described.

This is the section where the climbers enjoyed better conditions than the previous year, with not so much snow. Still, they used small snowshoes for some parts.

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Day 3: To the third bivouac at 7,400m

For Goettler, this section is key to predicting whether the climb will be successful. Luckily, the forecasts were accurate, and the winds dropped.

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Day 4, part 1: The traverse, 7,400m to 7,800m

Goettler turned around on this section on two previous occasions. They made much faster progress this time.

"The conditions on the summit ridge were exceptional, as was the weather, but the traverse itself has endless ups and downs, which makes for an exhausting return," he noted.  "We swapped leads whenever someone needed a break, and with this teamwork, we maintained a slow but consistent pace to the Merkel Notch, just below the final unknown section of the route."

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Day 4, part 2: From 7,800m to the summit

Once in unknown terrain, after the Merkel notch (a small col), they climbed a technical rocky section and crossed a snow field that took them to the south summit and then the main summit of Nanga Parbat.

"[The rock section] wasn’t super hard, but difficult enough to get the 50m rope and camalots out, which, at close to 8,000m, is spicy enough," Goettler recalled. "When we finally stood on the summit of Nanga Parbat, 14 hours after leaving our last camp, each of us knew that without the others we wouldn’t have made it. A feeling and a moment so powerful I won’t ever forget."

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Chris Wright, Michael Hutchins, and Stefano Ragazzo are leaving tomorrow for one of the most exciting expeditions of the year: an attempt on an unclimbed monster wall 3,000m high in an isolated region of the Karakoram. They will climb in alpine style and have very little information about what they will find.

Only last week, the team still thought they were going to India as planned.

"I was talking with Chris [Wright] yesterday and we realized that we will finally relax when we find ourselves flying to Pakistan," Stefano Ragazzo told ExplorersWeb from Chamonix, where he (and Wright) work as guides. "The hardest part of the expedition will be done, and everything else will be doing what we like."

Tomorrow, Wright (UK/U.S.) and Ragazzo (Italy) board a plane to Istanbul, where they will meet Michael Hutchins of the U.S. and fly together to Islamabad.

The three men received a $6,000 Cutting Edge Grant from the American Alpine Club for an expedition to the southwest face of Rimo III. They also received support from the Italian Alpine Club and the Mount Everest Foundation.

They applied for climbing permits in January, well ahead of time, but the border conflict between India and Pakistan sank their original plan.

"We had been waiting in vain for a green light from the Indian authorities for months," Ragazzo explained. "As the weeks went by, we started looking for a plan B, while keeping the original goal as our first option, until we simply couldn't wait anymore. We changed our goals and plane tickets on Monday."

The goal

They are now heading to the north face of Yukshin Gardan Sar (7,530m). This unclimbed face is twice as large as the one on Rimo III.

"The peak has three previous ascents, up the easiest ridge, but there are no attempts on any other side of the peak," explained Ragazzo. "Our plan is to climb a new line up the north face and the north ridge. We estimate we will need five or six days on the wall to reach the summit, and two more for the descent, climbing in alpine style."

He admitted that they have very little information about the face and the area, except for some pictures shot by a science expedition in 2015. Called the Karakoram Anomaly Project, it studied why glacial lakes sometimes burst catastrophically and how to prevent this.

The climbers also consulted mountain geography expert Rodolphe Popier. He replied with a picture and a note that read: "Monster NE Face, over 3,000 vertical meters!"

"We need to get there and start climbing to properly assess the conditions and ponder our options, because no one has been on the line we want to climb," said Ragazzo.

The team will acclimatize elsewhere on the peak, which may help them evaluate from a distance the conditions on the face.

Exploration mode

The entire expedition has a strong exploratory component. They will have to set base camp pretty low down, at around 3,600m on a moraine, and the proper climb starts at around 4,400m and eight kilometers away from base camp, said Ragazzo.

"It is a huge climb, so we need to study it well and acclimatize as close to it as possible," he said.

Ragazzo explained that the lower part of the face will probably not be so difficult, and the crux will be in the middle of the headwall, on mixed terrain.

"We might acclimatize on the lower part of the mountain and then leave the headwall for the definitive push," he added.

Asked why they aren't acclimatizing on a secondary peak nearby, to keep to the strictest conditions of alpine style, Ragazzo noted there were no interesting peaks between their base camp and the foot of Yukshin Gardan Sar. He also said they had no time to consider a lesser peak, given their already hectic last-minute change of plan.

First-time team

The three members of the expedition have not yet climbed together, but Chris Wright is the joint connecting the other two.

"Chris and I regularly climb together...[in] Chamonix," said Ragazzo, "and he knows Michael from an expedition to India they did last year." He is referring to an attempt on Chiling II in Zanskar.

Yet Ragazzo is confident they will make a good team because each has different skills and excels in something.

Stefano Ragazzo recently rope-soloed Eternal Flame on Nameless Tower in Pakistan and completed the Nose on El Capitan in the same style. Wright received the Piolet d’Or in 2020 for his team’s ascent of Link Sar, and Hutchins has climbed six of the seven major peaks in the Fitz Roy massif.

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"This kind of expedition involves a lot of mental strain, caused by the unknown terrain, the altitude, and the conditions," explained Ragazzo. "What I have experienced on previous expeditions will help for sure."

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Ragazzo pointed out that the financial support through grants has really helped their preparation. "[It] allows us to devote more time to specific training and a bit less work as guides," he said. "Of course, guiding and specific training are complementary, but combining the two of them can be exhausting."

Climbing history of Yukshin Gardan Sar

Yukshin Gardar Sar lies in the Shimshal Valley of Pakistan's Karakoram. Its altitude varies with the source but ranges from 7,460m to 7,600m. Its most widely accepted altitude is 7,530m.

As Ragazzo pointed out, it has been climbed three times, all via the south ridge. An Austrian-Pakistani team led by Rudolf Wurzer made the first ascent on June 26, 1984. They approached from the Yazghil Glacier, camping on the west side, and climbed the south ridge in classic Himalayan style, setting camps along the route, according to their report in the American Alpine Journal (AAJ).

That first ascent was a race between them and a Japanese team from Tokyo University led by Kenshiro Otaki. The Japanese tried to find a line up the north face and failed.

"After a month’s effort, we gave up because of vertical and brittle rock," member Akira Suzuki reported in the AAJ.

In the end, they switched to the south ridge.  When they summited, they found the flags left by the previous team. However, the Japanese climbed the ridge in alpine style.

According to the British Alpine Club's Himalayan Index, Alejandro Arranz, Inaki Aldaya, Alfredo Zabalza, and Tomas Miguel of Spain made the third and latest ascent in 1986. Their descent was dramatic. They struggled down for two days in bad weather, and all suffered frostbite.

Earlier tensions between India and Pakistan continue to reverberate in parts of the Karakoram and have forced some climbers to change goals. While some teams dropped out at the last minute, others switched peaks when closed zones thwarted permit applications.

Piolet d'Or winner Elias Millerioux of France went to Pakistan three weeks ago, but when we asked him about his plans, he replied, "It's complicated."

It turns out that Millerioux's partners dropped out just days before leaving, leaving the French climber at loose ends. He wandered alone up the Momhil Glacier, scouting peaks for future endeavors. He also spent some days teaching climbing to locals in Karimabad. Finally, Medhi Vidault and another unidentified partner came from France to join him in climbing and skiing some Karakoram 6,000'ers.

"We have no clear expectations but are just letting things flow," he wrote on social media. "Some expeditions are all about the unexpected."

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On Monday, the team climbed 6,171m Ambareen Sar, which they dubbed "a little summit" compared to the 7,000m giants around it. Yet the peak has only been climbed twice before: by Austrians Robert Gruber, Kurt Lapuch, and Christine Schmid in 1987 and by Felix Berg and David Langanke of Germany in 2020.

India's permits restricted

In the Indian Himalaya, many mountain areas are closed, forcing teams to find alternative destinations. Last month, Vitaliy Musiyenko and Sean McLane of the U.S. were already in India when escalating tensions with Pakistan denied them a permit to climb Kishtwar Shivling. Instead, they picked an alternative on the go -- Chaukhamba I, which lay in an area they knew nothing about. Their expedition costs doubled, and the climbers found the mountains in this new area were in highly dangerous conditions.

"[There were] active seracs over avalanche-prone slopes, serious icefalls to cross, and wet slides that start soon after the sun's rays touched the slopes," Musiyenko reported.

They made two attempts on Chaukhamba. On the first try, high winds forced them to retreat. On the second, scorching heat made the route unclimbable.

"The ice we intended to climb was a mix of fractured ice, running waterfalls, and frequent rockfall/wet slides," Musiyenko noted. He also had a close call when he almost fell into a crevasse, which affected him.

"It was difficult to bail...because the story we wanted out of this trip was one of overcoming adversity," Musoyenko wrote back at home. "However, you can’t push it too far; life is more important."

No more Rimo III

Musiyenko and McLane are not the only recipients of an American Alpine Club Cutting Edge grant who were forced to change plans. Michael Hutchins, Stefano Ragazzo and Piolet d’Or winner Chris Wright tried in vain to obtain permits for the 1,600m southwest face of Rimo III. The peak lies in the easternmost part of the Karakoram, within India. Fortunately, the climbers found a new goal, which they will tell us about in an exclusive interview later this week.

Some stick to plans

Not all alpine-style teams had to change plans. Some have already succeeded on their original goals, like the teams on Ultar Sar and Spantik. Others are currently climbing, like Urubko and Goettler's teams on Nanga Parbat. Still others are on their way to their destinations, such as the separate French and Italian teams targeting Gasherbrum IV.

From June 2-7, Mueez Ud Din of Pakistan and Mathieu Maynadier of France opened a new route on the previously unclimbed east ridge of 7,029m Spantik in the Karakoram.

A massive wind slab obstructed the climbers during the final part of the ascent, and they did not quite reach Spantik's summit. Their GPS noted that they stopped at 6,999m.

The climbers named their new route Zindabad ("Long Live" in Urdu) and graded it 1,800m, M5, A1, 80°.

The expedition included Maynadier (leader), Ud Din, videographer Nathanael Sapey, documentary filmmaker Loury Lagardere, drone manager Ozair Khan, and two cooks. During the approach, 42 porters supported them.

The Spantik expedition almost didn't happen because of recent Pakistan-India tensions. Many other planned expeditions pulled out, so that by May 20, Maynadier's team may have been the only expedition in Skardu.

After a long drive, they reached Arandu, a small village in Baltistan's Shigar Valley, near the confluence of the Shigar and Basha Rivers. The village serves as a gateway to Spantik’s base camp.

Tense moments during the approach trek

After three intense days of trekking and 35km of crevassed glacier, the party arrived at base camp on May 26.

The approach journey included a few tense moments, including when a porter fell between two icy walls. He was not injured, but the fall "sparked a brief rebellion among the group," Maynadier wrote. "But after some negotiations, we were able to continue."

Their acclimatization took two days. Seizing the first break in the weather, they spent two nights at higher elevations –- 5,200m and 5,800m –- on Spantik’s normal southeast ridge route. They then returned to base camp for a night’s rest on June 9.

The favorable weather persisted, and though not fully acclimatized, Ud Din and Maynadier pushed for the summit via the east ridge.

The climb

"We spent 25 days on the mountain, 10 of them at base camp waiting for a window that barely opened," Ud Din wrote. "When it finally did, we went for it."

The pair left base camp, situated above a heavily crevassed glacier at 4,200m, and ascended 1,800m over four days.

They crossed the bergschrund at 5,200m and eventually reached their highest point at 6,999m, just shy of the summit. There, a massive wind slab and dangerous amounts of snow blocked the final ridge.

"We made the tough call to turn back, but honestly, the route was the true summit," Ud Din explained in a post.

The ascent required three bivouacs. Connecting their new line to Spantik’s normal route, they completed the descent with one bivouac at 5,800m. After a day and a half, the duo returned to base camp, five days after setting off.

Complex terrain and the crux

The long east ridge presented a complex tapestry of terrain, with snow sections and a mixed crux. As they gained altitude, the ridge sharpened into a knife-edge of snow and rock.

According to Maynadier, the crux arrived on the final day of the ascent: two mixed pitches rated M5, where ice-smeared granite demanded delicate footwork and precise axe placements. An A1 aid section required technical ingenuity to navigate overhanging rock.

"The higher you go, the steeper it gets," Maynadier recalled. The ridge’s exposure, coupled with its technical demands, made every move a calculated risk.

The first two days of the climb had clear skies, but conditions deteriorated on days three and four, as snow flurries dusted the ridge, obscuring holds and slowing progress.

The final bivouac at 6,700m was particularly tough, with 20cm of fresh snow blanketing their camp.

"It was a little stressful," Maynadier admitted, recalling the tension of the wind howling all night and waking to a snow-laden tent.

But their commitment paid off. "After weeks in the Karakoram, we returned with more than just frostbite and memories," Ud Din wrote on social media.

"We are happy. It’s a really cool line," Maynadier told us.

Spantik’s storied past

First ascended in 1955 by a German expedition led by Karl Kramer via the southeast ridge, Spantik has long captivated climbers.

The southeast ridge was first attempted in 1906 by American explorers Fanny and William Bullock Workman, who reached 6,700m, a remarkable feat for the era. Subsequent milestones include the south ridge, climbed by a Japanese team in 1978, and the striking northwest pillar, ascended by British climbers Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders in 1987.

However, the east ridge remained untouched, its steep, exposed line deterring attempts until Maynadier and Ud Din’s bold climb. The American Alpine Journal records no prior ascents of this route.

Unlike the guided, fixed-rope ascents common on Spantik’s more frequented routes, the duo’s approach aligns with the purist ethos of modern mountaineering. Their success not only adds a new chapter to Spantik’s legacy but highlights untapped potential.

Maynadier’s climbs

Maynadier, a 38-year-old French guide from Briançon, has a distinguished career of first ascents.

In 2010, Maynadier, Mathieu Detrie, Maxime Belleville, and Sebastien Ratel made the first ascent of 6,812m Lunag II in Nepal, via the southwest face. Their route, Close the Door (1,300m, ED), earned a 2011 Piolet d’Or nomination.

In 2012, Maynadier, Antoine Bletton, Pierre Labre, and Sebastien Ratel opened a new route on 7,108m Latok II in the Karakoram, reaching the southeast summit at 7,020m.

In 2013, Maynadier, Mathieu Detrie, Jerome Parra, and Pierre Labre carried out the first ascent of the south face of 7,134m Gaurishankar, by their new route Gare au Gauri (2,000m, ED+, M5/A1).

In the autumn of 2015, alongside Julian Dusserre, Maynadier opened the northeast face of 6,295m Dzasampatse in the Mahalangur Himal-Khumbu section of Nepal. Their 700m route was named A La Verticale de la Peine and graded TD+, WI5. They stopped 20m below the summit because of extremely unstable snow on the narrow ridge.

In 2017, Maynadier summited Gasherbrum II.

A close call in 2018

In the summer of 2018, Maynadier, Nicolas Favresse, Jean-Louis Wertz, and Carlitos Molina were probably the first foreign mountaineers to explore the Tagas Valley in Pakistan’s Karakoram. They focused their attention on the west side of a beautiful rock tower near the Second Tagas Glacier, according to Favresse’s report for the American Alpine Journal. The summit, approaching 6,000m, was named Pathan Peak. On August 4, all four climbers reached the summit.

During the climb, right after Maynadier and Favresse had just completed fixing a new anchor, the ledge above them, on which Molina was standing, collapsed. Maynadier was hit and suffered a concussion, a fractured right elbow, and two compressed vertebrae. He was incoherent, but the team lowered him to a portaledge and called for rescue.

However, the next morning, Maynadier was in better shape and descended to the base of the wall. From there, an army helicopter evacuated him to Skardu.

In 2021, Maynadier and Tom Livingstone attempted 6,850m Pumari Chhish East, retreating just 100m from the summit after heavy snowfall.

The next year, Maynadier made the first ski descent of 7,266m Diran in the Karakoram, after reaching the summit at 6 pm.

In 2023, Maynadier, Simon Gietl, and Roger Schaeli opened Goldfish (800m, M6+, A1) on 6,570m Meru South’s southeast face in India.

Ud Din, an emerging talent

Muizz Ud Din, an emerging talent from Pakistan, represents a new generation of local mountaineers. Ud Din’s local knowledge and determination were critical to the expedition’s success.

His partnership with Maynadier is a bridge between global and local climbing communities, and their climb might be the first major new route opened in Pakistan by a local climber.

"It’s a huge step, I hope, for the Pakistan climbing community," Maynadier said.

For Ud Din, Zindabad is more than a route. It’s a beacon for aspiring Pakistani climbers, proving that technical, high-altitude ascents are within their reach.

On June 18, Radoslav Groh and Zdenek Hak climbed the 3,000m Southwest Face of 6,270m Hunza Peak in Pakistan's Karakoram.

The Czech pair made the ascent in a 20-hour, alpine-style push, according to Aktivtono and an Instagram post from their sponsor, Hudysport. They trekked two or three days via the Batura Glacier to the base of the wall.

Hunza Peak lies in the Batura Muztagh above the Hunza Valley and near the Ultar Sar massif. Its southwest face, a steep wall of rock and ice, had been unclimbed until now.

Hunza Peak's climbing history

In the summer of 1991, a British team, including Crag Jones and Mick Fowler, made the first ascent of Hunza Peak, via the southwest ridge, after an earlier unsuccessful attempt on Ultar Sar. That season, a Swedish team also ascended Hunza by an unspecified route. Both climbs were in alpine style.

Jones and Fowler proceeded from the Hasanabad Glacier to the col between Hunza Peak and Bublimoting, then mounted the southwest ridge from there over three days.

An Austrian party that included Harry Grun, Klaus Bonazza, and Jakob Karner attempted a 1,200m section of the southwest face in 2008, but failed due to bad weather.

Groh and Hak's first ascent of Mucchu Chhish last year was ExplorersWeb's top expedition of 2024. They named their new route on Hunza Peak Eid al-Adha ("Feast of Sacrifice").

Sebastian Pelletti, Ethan Berman, and Maarten van Haeren have returned to civilization after their landmark ascent of the Southeast Pillar of 7,388m Ultar Sar in the Karakoram.

Still in Pakistan, Pelletti described their new Shooting the Moon route to ExplorersWeb, which they graded M5 WI4 3,100m. The climb took place from June 6 to 13 — six days up and two days down, including one weatherbound day.

The 3,100m route featured steep snow and ice with a rock pillar between 6,700m to 7,200m. For the first three days, they tried to cover as much elevation as possible between safe bivouacs.

Based on what they learned from their 2024 attempt, they spent a lot of time climbing at night and during the early morning hours to optimize temperatures and conditions. Later in the day, high winds and cloud systems typically rolled through, eliminating visibility and forcing them to stop early.

Spartan bivouacs

Excavating bivouacs on this pillar proved challenging, but they eventually carved out platforms big enough for the three of them to sleep together in a hammock.

On the third day, they climbed from 5,800m to 6,650m on mostly 70-degree ice. No bivouacs were possible until the base of the rock pillar, which they reached after a long day.

The rock pillar proved much higher than they had anticipated, and they had also expected the route to have some easier snow slopes. However, apart from the lower entrance fan and the final 200m to the summit, the entire route was steep ice and rock, keeping them on their tools and front points the entire time.

On day 4, they confronted the crux of the climb -- the upper part of the rock pillar. There, mixed climbing up to M5 continued from 6,800m to 7,200m before they gained the final snow slopes.

70+ rappels

After summiting, Pelletti, Berman, and van Haeren went down their ascent line. That afternoon, a storm pinned them down at their 6,650m bivouac. They endured 24 hours of blowing snow before a brief opening in the clouds allowed them to continue down.

By the time they reached 6,000m, the weather had significantly improved. They covered the descent in three stages: the first from the summit to 6,650m, the second (after the weather delay) from 6,650m to 4,300m, and finally, all the way down to base camp in a 31-hour push. They lost count after 70 rappels.

Their timing was exquisite: Back in base camp, a major storm swept through the range for several days.

"This feels like the biggest climb any of us has individually done, and we are still processing the experience," Pelletti told ExplorersWeb. "We’ve all completed multi-day alpine climbs, but this was our first time applying this experience to an objective above 7,000m...We are just super-satisfied in the way we worked together on an objective that seemed too big to contemplate as a whole."

The climbers received financial support from the John Lauchlan Award, a Cutting Edge Grant, and the Mazamas Bob Wilson Grant, and logistical support from Pakistan Higher Ground Expeditions.

There was a time when climbers revealed their plans publicly months in advance, to raise interest for fundraising or solicit beta from climbers who'd been to the area. We now live in more secretive times, where everyone worries that letting a good idea out of the bag prematurely may tempt other climbers to snatch it. So when Lucien Boucansaud of France recently detailed plans for a solo first ascent of Nepal's Khangri Shar this fall, we wondered...why.

"For me, announcing my plans and admitting how little I know about this mountain is like an open call to everyone in the climbing community to look for adventure, to try climbs we don't even know if they are possible," he told ExplorersWeb.

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The soloist

We discovered Lucien Boucansaud when he soloed Pumori in the fall of 2023. Days earlier, Boucansaud had done an alpine-style ascent of the west face of Cho Polu with David Goettler and Guillaume Pierrel. He then used some free time in Nepal to hike up the Khumbu Valley and try Pumori. The aesthetic yet difficult peak rises immediately opposite Everest.

Boucansaud had no idea how far up he would get. But despite difficulties and exposed sections, he summited alone on Oct. 28.

While climbing Pumori, Boucansaud looked westward and noticed a peak nestled between Nepal and Tibet. It usually went unnoticed because Pumori cast a long shadow over it.

"At the end of that expedition, I met a team that had attempted the summit and told me about it," he said. "That peak remained in my mind since then, and now the moment has come. I'll try to solo in the same style and with the same attitude I had on Pumori."

Several attempts

According to The Himalayan Database, the peak has had several attempts, including some by commercial teams. A Japanese team made the first attempt in 2003. In 2004, an Adventure Peaks group from the UK, led by Tim Blakemore, also tried. The year 2018 featured two attempts, one by the late Noel Hanna of Northern Ireland and another by Luke Smithwick of the U.S. and Frederik Strang of Sweden. Adventure 14 organized a team for Delphine Reymond of Switzerland.

Last year, a South Korean team led by An Chi-Young attempted Khangri Shar. All attempts came from the Nepal side, all were unsuccessful, and all attributed their failure to bad conditions and objective hazards.

According to Nepal Himal Peak Profile, Khangri Shar is 6,811m, but The Himalayan Database identifies it as 6,792m. It also lists a 6,658m Khangri Shar West.

This fall, Boucansaud will make the first solo attempt, in pure alpine style. "To reach an untouched summit is an alpinist's dream," he said.

Asked whether he is concerned about other climbers stealing his idea, Boucansaud seemed surprised.

"I hope not," he said. "But, well, I guess that should be okay. Everyone has the right to climb the peak."

French climbers Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer are teaming up again to attempt one of the most epic peaks in the Karakoram: Gasherbrum IV.

"Our primary objective is the southwest ridge, starting by climbing the Shining Wall [the West Face] and then continuing along the ridge to the summit," Dubouloz told ExplorersWeb. He noted that this is the route twice attempted by Piolet d'Or winner Jordi Corominas in 2006.

The West Face of Gasherbrum IV is called the Shining Wall because the setting sun lights it up spectacularly. It offers a formidable sight to climbers and trekkers as they reach the glacier crossroads known as Concordia, on their way to K2 Base Camp. The 2,500m-high face is one of the most aesthetic and difficult in the world. It was the scene of some epic chapters in the history of mountaineering.

Given the changeable conditions in the Karakoram and the magnitude of the challenge, Dubouloz, 36, and Welfringer, 31, are hedging their bets. Once at the foot of the wall, they may consider other routes or, if it proves impossible, opt for an alternative goal.

"Other possibilities would be climbing Gasherbrum V [G5] or attempting a G5/G6 traverse," Dubouloz said. "Additionally, if the weather turns bad, we’re open to exploring the lesser-known 6,000m peaks around base camp."

These peaks could also serve as preparatory climbs.

Staying flexible

Adapting to conditions is one of the pair's assets. The last time they climbed together in the Himalaya was in the spring of 2024. On that occasion, they went to Nepal with 7,952m Gyachung Kang in mind. Then Welfringer got sick, and as they were running out of time, they ended up opening an excellent new alpine-style route up the vertiginous west face of neighboring 7,029m Hungchi.

“When you go on an expedition to the end of the world, things rarely happen as expected,” Dubouloz explained at the time.

The climbers plan to keep the same flexibility this year.

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A change of venue

The Gasherbrum massif will be a significant change for Welfringer after last summer, when he teamed up with Matteo Della Bordella, Silvan Schupbach, and Alex Gammeter on remote big walls in Eastern Greenland. The team achieved the first ascent of a 1,980m face.

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Dubouloz is also restless after a busy winter climbing, skiing, and flying at home in the Chamonix area and across Europe and northern Africa. Year after year, his name appears linked to some of the best expeditions in the Himalaya and the Karakoram. He is a regular partner of fellow hard-core visionaries Benjamin Vedrines and Tom Livingstone -- and, of course, Symon Welfringer.

A small number of alpine-style teams in Pakistan are currently acclimatizing. The Spantik team has already moved above Base Camp, while Denis Urubko and Maria Cardell are doing their rounds in the lesser ranges near Skardu before attempting a new route on 8,126m Nanga Parbat.

As a pure alpine-style ascent, it makes sense that they acclimatize on different peaks rather than on their targeted route. Urubko also believes that rotations at high altitude cause a climber to lose fitness.

"The climber gains altitude step by step but becomes weaker," he said in an interview with Mountain.ru. "On the contrary, intense hikes or ascents with a large altitude gain [in lesser ranges] allow you to keep your muscles in good shape."

Mid-altitude hikes and climbs

Skardu's new international airport is the gateway for all expeditions to the Karakoram and the Nanga Parbat region. The town lies at 2,228m and features plenty of straightforward peaks of 4,000m to 5,000m nearby. Some are close enough to summit on day trips.

After arriving last weekend, Urubko and Cardell hiked to 3,101m. The following day, they climbed a 4,560m peak.

Urubko's personal project

In a previous email shared by Mountain.ru, Urubko noted the acclimatization phase would take them a couple of weeks. Then they'll move to the northern, Diamir side of Nanga Parbat to attempt a new route the ace Russian climber has been planning for a while.

This is the first time Urubko has returned to the higher mountains after he suffered frostbite after falling in a crevasse on a winter attempt to Gasherbrum I two years ago. Urubko has made it clear that while his wife will start with him, he is also ready to climb it on his own.

"If Masha [Maria Cardell] can’t keep up, I’ll try it solo," Urubko wrote in his email.

Family issues prevented Cardell from joining until last week, but she is at least partly acclimatized, as she worked all winter as a ski patroller at a resort located between 2,200m and 3,300m in Spain's lofty Sierra Nevada. But a new line on Nanga Parbat is a major endeavor, and the Diamir face is huge, from 4,900m of the base of the wall to the summit at 8,126m. In some sections, the avalanche risk is considerable.

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Spantik

Further north, in the Shigar area, a French-Pakistani team led by Mathieu Maynadier is ready to start climbing 7,027m Spantik.

They set off from base camp at 4,200m last weekend, after a rather rough approach trek over a glacier, which included some difficult passages among crevasses. It was hard to find a safe passage for the entire convoy, which included the climbers, two cooks, 42 porters, 8 chickens, 1 goat, 17kg of rice, and all the camping and climbing equipment.

Maynadier is teaming up with local climber Muizz Ud Din, as well as fellow Frenchman Loury Lag, and videographer Nathanael Sapey-Triomphe. Drone operator Ozair Khan will film the climbers from base camp.

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Hellias Millerioux of France has also posted some photos from his below-the-radar expedition. He is currently on an approach trek but has not shared details about the peak.

Denis Urubko of Russia has confirmed he and his wife Maria Cardell will attempt Nanga Parbat (8,126m) via a new route in the next few weeks.

Yesterday, we wrote about how the improving situation in Pakistan could prompt climbers to visit this season, especially smaller, alpine-style teams.

Urubko has not yet revealed details about the route, but he made his priorities clear when he spoke about his plans during a lecture in Italy in March: “No route has ever been opened without oxygen and in authentic alpine style." At that moment, he said his goal was to open a new route on the mountain's Diamir Face.

Two years badly frostbiting his fingers while trying to open a new route on winter Gasherbrum, Urubko is back to high-altitude mountaineering. He is also the first climber attempting a new route on an 8,000m peak this year.

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Urubko announced the expedition on his 52nd birthday.

Mountain master

Denis Urubko has summited all the 8,000m peaks without supplementary oxygen or Sherpa support. He also has two first winter ascents, on Makalu (with Simone Moro) and Gasherbrum II (with Moro and Cory Richards).

Urubko has opened new routes on the highly difficult south side of Cho Oyu, Manaslu, Broad Peak, and Gasherbrum II (solo). He has also made a name for himself — and friends around the world — for the many rescues he has performed in the Himalaya.

One of them made him an international hero and earned him France’s Legion of Honor. In 2018, he and Adam Bielecki of Poland abandoned their own attempt on winter K2 and hurried to Nanga Parbat to launch the nearly impossible rescue of Tomasz Mackiewicz and Elisabeth Revol. They couldn’t reach Mackiewicz but saved Revol’s life.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have abated after the flare-up in early May, and some alpine-style teams are already tackling difficult routes in Pakistan. At the same time, outfitters have confirmed their commercial expeditions to K2 and Broad Peak and reached a compromise with local authorities on the new price of climbing permits.

At least three teams are currently working on alpine-style routes on 6,000m and 7,000m peaks in the Karakoram.

The first team to reach Pakistan was the American expedition to 7,388m Ultar Shar in the Batura Muztagh range. Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren, and Sebastian Pelletti had their original flight cancelled during the political turmoil but boarded the first available plane once the situation calmed down. The team has been in Pakistan for the last two weeks.

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French alpinists

Piolet d'Or winner Elias Millerioux has not revealed his goal or his team, but he is currently setting up Base Camp on the Momhil Glacier in Shimshal. This is where the late Kazuya Hiraide and Kenjo Nakajima achieved two of their most applauded first ascents, on Karun Koh and Shispare. Last year, Millerioux and fellow Chamonix guide Yannick Graziani attempted a new route up the southeast ridge of Trivor Peak in the nearby Batura range.

French guide Mathieu Maynadier is attempting a new route on Spantik via the Chogho Lungma Glacier. He has again teamed up with local climber Mueez Ud Din.

"At one point, the expedition was on the verge of cancellation due to recent Pakistan-India tensions, which led to many teams pulling out, but against the odds, we’re here," Ud Din wrote on social media.

Ud Din recognizes that this kind of alpine-style expedition is "the beginning of something bigger for Pakistan’s mountaineering community."

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They started the 35km approach trek three days ago from the village of Arandu and set up their Base Camp yesterday at the foot of Spantik.

"We’re the first team to break trail this season," Maynadier wrote. "The route wasn’t always easy, with many crevasses to navigate, but the whole team and the porters arrived safely."

Climbing fees confirmed

Several local outfitters have told us about the compromise reached over climbing permit fees. An official announcement that tripled the cost of 2025 fees discouraged many climbers and concerned local outfitters.

Outfitters and the authorities have now agreed to split the difference, so the final figure falls midway between the authorities' original proposal and the current low rate. As we announced earlier, the permit fee for K2 is $3,500 per climber, and the rest of the country's 8,000'ers cost $2,500 each.

Below, an updated list of prices for climbers and trekkers, with the fee initially proposed by the authorities and, on the right, the agreed-upon final price for this season:

While several outfitters in Pakistan confirm that they are running climbs to K2 and Broad Peak, there is no news yet about any Gasherbrum climbs. As for Nanga Parbat, where the season starts in June, the situation is uncertain. Several teams canceled their trips when the political conflict escalated in early May. The mountain will likely be pretty lonely, but a few teams may still apply for permits at the last minute and enjoy the peak without the usual crowds.

One potential entrant is Denis Urubko. He has not yet confirmed this, but he recently said that he intends to open a new route on the peak's Diamir Face, probably with his wife Maria Jose Cardell. For the time being, Urubko is training hard to get as fit as possible, "just in case."

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The fact that the only team with serious plans for Nanga Parbat is a pair of alpinists could signal a limited return of old-fashioned expedition climbing on at least one 8,000m peak.

Yuri Koshelenko and Aleksey Lonchinski have just returned from a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt on one of the great unclimbed walls of the Himalaya: the East Face of Jannu East.

The Stoic's advice

Before the expedition, Koshelenko had simply said that he and Lonchinski were heading to the Kangchenjunga region but preferred to keep their goal quiet until their return.

"[Marcus Aurelius] and other Stoic philosophers don't recommend [speaking about future goals]...it can break the motivation," the Russian Piolet d'Or winner said.

After acclimatizing on Langtang's Langshisa Ri, they obtained a three-person permit for Jannu, Koshelenko told ExplorersWeb today. They jumped on a helicopter, piloted by Simone Moro, on May 8. Alexandr Semenov was the third man on the team.

The expedition would not have flown under the radar so easily if they had revealed their plans. The unclimbed East Face of 7,468m Jannu East is one of the most coveted and difficult goals in Nepal's Himalaya.

The helicopter deposited the climbers right on the glacier, about one hour from the start of their route.

Impossible conditions

A dozen attempts

Peter Hamor of Slovakia and Nives Meroi and Romano Benet of Italy have made the first ascent of the west face of 7,412m Kabru I. They waited to announce their success until after they returned home.

The style, the goal, the line, even the name they picked for the new route -- graded D for moderately difficult -- describes their whole approach to mountaineering. They do Himalayan trad climbing, as opposed to speed climbing or other fashionable variants of high-altitude mountaineering.

Unstable weather

 

"The weather was really unstable," she added. "Days and days of snow, and the rest were very windy."

Second try

They began their second attempt on May 2.

"We managed to meander through an unpleasant section full of hidden cracks and dangerous seracs to about 6,300m, where we found a relatively safe place for our bivy tent," Hamor reported on his website.

The team progressed for one more day. Then, after a short rest in a second bivouac, they left for the summit at 1:30 am on May 4 in stable but very cold weather.

"Sunrise caught us just below the ridge connecting Talung Peak (7,349m) and Kabru," Hamor wrote. "At that point, the terrain was a little easier but still very dangerous due to avalanche-prone snow and huge cornices."

Luckily, the three climbers climbed along the ridge without incident and finally reached the summit area, a short, steep section of rock and ice. They stood on top at 5:00 pm.

A cold descent

The climbers stayed just long enough for some quick photos and immediately started down, following their footprints in the snow even after nightfall.

"The problem was that, as we arrived at the place where we had previously bivouacked at 6,300m, we couldn't find our tent," said Hamor. "A night in the open in such cold conditions would certainly not be without consequences."

It was 11 pm before they finally found their tent. They went inside, melted snow to rehydrate, and got some rest after the 22-hour day. The following morning, they continued down to base camp.

Trad style

"Our first ascent of the west face of Kabru was done in an easy, fair style, on our own, without the use of fixed ropes, bottled oxygen, high camps, or a helicopter, and we left nothing on the wall except a few bamboo poles," Peter Hamor noted. They called the route simply Himalayan Trad.

Instead of seeking maximum difficulties, they followed the most logical line to the summit. Hamor said it's only doable in the right conditions, since the avalanche risk can be very high.

"It was a pleasure to complete this beautiful, logical, long...and exhausting route," Nives Meroi told ExplorersWeb.

She recalled, in particular, the solitude they enjoyed. It was just the three of them, climbing in real trad style.

A good area for new routes

Hamor, Meroi, and Benet were on their third visit in three years to the subsidiary peaks of the Kangchenjunga area. Their main goal was 7,590m Yalung Peak, and they had eyed Kabru I as a preparatory ascent. Two years ago, the climbers opened a new route on the nearby Kabru IV, which earned Nives Meroi a Piolet d'Or.

The European trio was one of the few teams targeting new routes in Nepal's peaks this spring. Earlier today, we heard from Piolet d'Or winners Yuri Koshelenko and Alexey Lonchinsky of Russia, who were also climbing near Kangchenjunga. More on their expedition in an upcoming story.

Escalating hostilities between India and Pakistan have thrown spring climbing expeditions into disarray, and even the June-July Karakoram season is uncertain. Sean McLane and Vitaliy Musiyenko of the U.S. flew to India last week to attempt 5,935m Kishtwar Shivling, but the conflict in Kashmir has forced them to adapt on the fly and move to Garhwal instead.

At least, they made it to the mountains. But today, as flights to Pakistan are canceled and India restricts or halts operations at several airports, the pair wonders whether their expedition will continue. And what of the many climbers and trekkers who've not yet packed their bags?

Flying into uncertainty

Musiyenko and McLane obtained a Cutting Edge Grant from the American Alpine Club to attempt a new route on Kishtwar Shivling in India's Kashmir. They were preparing to leave when a terrorist attack left 27 people dead not far from where they planned to start. The attack, claimed by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, re-ignited the conflict between the two countries over long-disputed Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack, which Islamabad denied, according to CNN.

"I was monitoring the situation from home after the terrorist attack and saw articles on April 27-28 about Jammu and Kashmir being closed to trekkers,"  Vitaliy Musiyenko told ExplorersWeb. "My flight to India was on the 29th. I started researching potential Plan Bs a day before departure. Our logistics company said it was all ok with going to J&K, but when we landed, one of the people who works for the company and lives in the area met with local officials. They confirmed that it’s not allowed to climb there."

Adaptation required

Muyisenko considered some options, like approaching Kishwar from the northeast, via Zanskar, which is still technically open to climbing. However, the uncertainty about how the situation might evolve made them reconsider.

Musiyenko notes he is a climber and an ER nurse, and acted as such: "I am open to rolling with the punches and adapting to big changes," he said.

Within 24 hours, they had made a decision: They would climb in India but in a different area.

"We ended up applying for Chaukhamba 3," Musiyenko told ExplorersWeb. "It looks like a very challenging peak, supposedly still unclimbed and a totally new area to my partner and me, so we are at least as excited about it as we were about Kishtwar."

Chaukhamba III

McLane and Musiyenko left for Rishikesh, the start of the trek, last weekend. They will be off-grid while they climb 6,974m Chaukhamba III, located in the Gangotri group of India’s western Garhwal Himalaya.

Chaukhamba III is rarely visited but had some unexpected drama last September, when Fay Manners of the UK and Michelle Dvorak of the U.S. had a close call while attempting its east buttress and had to be rescued.

A different line

They have not mentioned if they have a particular route in mind, except that it will not be the same one that Manners and Dvorak took. The two women have just received a Grit&Rock award to return to Chaukhamba III to finish their route. But if Musiyenko and McLane succeed, they will lose the first ascent.

"Hopefully, they can return and finish their business," Musiyenko said. "If we had more time to look, I’d prefer not to attempt peaks that others are trying, but there are just not many of that size and difficulty, potentially unclimbed, which are inspiring and easy to get a permit for."

Situation uncertain

Jammu and Kashmir is currently closed to foreigners and will likely remain so for the rest of the season. Other mountain areas remain open, but the situation is fluid.

Today, before dawn, India retaliated for the April 22 terrorist attack by bombing objectives reportedly linked to the terrorist group in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has promised to respond to today's strike.

Even if some mountain areas are unaffected by the hostilities, getting there may become a problem.

As we wrote in a story earlier today, most commercial airlines have avoided flying into Pakistan since the attack. India had already closed its airspace to flights from Pakistan, but today, after its missile strike, it further restricted it. Indian authorities have canceled over 200 domestic and international flights and closed 18 airports, including Srinagar, Leh, Amritsar, and Chandigarh, India Today reports.

Far enough from trouble?

Communication in backcountry India is complex even in peacetime, since the country bans satellite phones and InReach devices. Musiyenko and McLane are now out of touch and probably on their way to base camp. We won't hear from them until they return. However, they and their liaison officer will surely have contact with the local outfitter. So far, the skirmish has not affected the Garhwal Himalaya, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. But this could change.

Before leaving for the mountains last Friday, Musiyenko shared how lucky he and his partner were not to have traveled to India before April 22. If they had been in Kashmir when the attack took place, "I could see having to leave the area in the middle of our trip," Musiyenko reflected.

With the worsening situation, it is unclear whether Garhwal will be far enough away from trouble. The uncertainty also affects those preparing to travel in the next months. Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren, and Sebastian Pelletti were heading for Ultar Shar today but didn't get any further than the airport lobby in Calgary. Their flight to Pakistan was canceled before they even boarded the plane. The entire summer Karakoram season is in jeopardy.

For now, we can only hope the situation improves before Fay Manners and Michelle Dvorak return to Chaukhamba III in the fall. At least the women have plenty of time to devise a Plan B.