Departure for summit attempt: Ali, Alex, Tamara and Simone (from l. to r.)

The weather window on Nanga Parbat opens. “Looks like the window is here, the good one, the definitive one”, Igone Mariezkurrena writes from the Base Camp on the Diamir side of the 8,125-meter-high mountain in Pakistan. “The one that, if everything goes OK and bodies respond, can give Alex Txikon, Ali Sadpara, Simone Moro and Tamara Lunger the chance for pushing for this still unclimbed Nanga Parbat winter summit.” Early this morning the quartet set off from Base Camp and climbed on the Kinshofer route directly to Camp 2 at 6,100 meters.

Low wind

After three weeks of bad weather in Base Camp that had reduced the climbers more or less to inaction, weathermen expect stable winter weather on Nanga Parbat without precipitation. Starting Wednesday, the strong wind in the summit region should slow down. Alex, Ali, Simone and Tamara hope that the storm has blown most of fresh snow out of the upper parts of the route. In recent days, many avalanches have swept down (watch the video below). But the climbers will obtain assurance only on their ascent. The same applies to the question of how well acclimatized the four summit aspirants still are.

Heading home

There are no more candidates left on Nanga Parbat. Last week – when I, absolutely offline, had a good romp skiing in Tyrol – Tomek Mackiewicz abandoned his plan to return to Base Camp and dare another summit attempt. The Pole, for whom a crowdfunding campaign brought in nearly 6,000 Euro, is now heading back. Reportedly, the Brazilian-born US citizen Cleo Weidlich has also decided to strike the tent on the Rupal side after two of her three Nepalese Climbing Sherpas have left the expedition. We can only speculate about the reasons. Cleo, Pema Tshiring Sherpa, Temba Bhote und Dawa Sangay Sherpa had arrived on Nanga Parbat only at the end of January. Shortly afterwards, the bad weather had begun. Like the climbers on the Diamir side, Weidlich and the three Sherpas should hardly have left the Base Camp.

Upwards with snowshoes

Harmony is different from what’s obviously going on in Diamir Base Camp on Nanga Parbat. “The collaboration between [the Spaniard] Alex Txikon and Italian Daniele Nardi has become impossible due to obvious and ongoing disagreements about how to proceed during the expedition”, it says on Txikon’s website. There were “different working patterns and priorities” as well as “conflicting interpretations of some events, and also differences regarding the behavior in Base Camp”. It remains to be seen whether the two wranglers are able to overcome their differences or it’s too late to mend their ties. It is striking in any case, that Nardi was absent from the latest trip of the team. On Monday, Txikon, Tamara Lunger, Simone Moro and Ali Sadpara had used a wind break to climb with snowshoes up to 5,100 meters.

Strong wind and snow

Cleo Weidlich with climbers of “Nanga Dream” team

An enduring improvement of the weather is not in sight during the next seven days. In addition to strong winds, new snowfalls are expected almost daily. The climbers will have to sit out the bad weather. Not an easy task considering that two climbers in Diamir Base Camp have problems with each other. There is still no news from Cleo Weidlich’s team on the Rupal side. As reported, the American born in Brazil arrived only one and a half weeks ago along with the Nepalese Pema Tshiring Sherpa, Temba Bhote and Sherpa Dawa Sangay – at a time when the Polish “Nanga Dream” team was already about to depart.

No picnic

A giant, ploughing a lonely furrow

One or another may have wondered why so many expeditions have already failed on Nanga Parbat. First of all, winter climbing on eight-thousanders is an extreme challenge. So far only 40 summit successes (22 of them by Polish “Ice Warriors”) have been recorded in calendar winter, 43 additional in meteorological winter which begins on 1 December. Winter climbers have to deal not only with icy cold but also with even thinner air because in winter the oxygen partial pressure at high altitude is lower than in other seasons. In addition, the days are shorter and the nights so cold that a very early start is rarely possible. It snows more often – and the jet stream is blowing. In this respect, Nanga Parbat is a villain. This eight-thousanders rises about 7,000 meters rises from the Indus valley to the summit in just 25 kilometers, far and wide no other high mountains, which could hold off the strong winds.

Summit of Nanga Parbat

She arrived like out of nowhere. Suddenly these days, Cleonice Pacheco, called “Cleo” Weidlich was standing with her Sherpa team at Base Camp on the Rupal side – to the surprise of most observers. The Brazilian-born US citizen had even made no secret of the fact that she also wanted to try this year to scale Nanga Parbat for the first in winter. But hardly anyone, including myself, had taken notice. And the few who had noticed it might have thought that the 52-year-old had given up her plan. Finally, she appeared in Base Camp only at a relatively late stage, when the Polish “Nanga Dream” team was already preparing to leave after their failed attempt.

Three Sherpas to break the trail

Obviously Cleo Weidlich had made a pre-acclimatization in Nepal. She is accompanied by three Sherpas. At my request, the expedition organizer Adventure Tours Pakistan told me the names of the other team members. The 45-year-old Pema Tshiring Sherpa, the 33-year-old Temba Bhote and the 30 year old Dawa Sherpa Sangay, all from Sankhuwasaba District in eastern Nepal, will support Weidlich. On the one hand, they may benefit from the work of the “Nanga Dream” climbers, who had already prepared the Schell route up to an altitude of about 7,300 meters (expedition leader Marek Klonowski contradicted reports that Pavel Dunaj and he had reached a height of 7,500 meters). On the other hand the Sherpas may have to start from scratch doing the trail-breaking due to continuing snowfall during this week.

Partially disputed

Cleo on top of Kangchenjunga in 2011

Cleo Weidlich’s reputation in the climbing scene is not exactly the best. In the past, the 52-year-old sometimes took liberties with truth. At times, Cleo claimed to have scaled ten of the 14 eight-thousanders, later she backpedaled to eight. But only six of her summit successes are confirmed: Cho Oyu (in 2009), Gasherbrum I (2010), Mount Everest (2010), Manaslu (2010), Kangchenjunga (2011) and Dhaulagiri (2012). Her claimed ascent of Annapurna in spring 2012 is still listed as “disputed” in the “Himalayan Database” of Elizabeth Hawley, the legendary chronicler of high altitude mountaineering in Nepal. In autumn 2012, Weidlich also claimed to have climbed Makalu. In this case too, she missed to prove the summit success. Her statements to Miss Hawley were so contradictory that Cleo’s alleged ascent was not even listed in the category “disputed”.

By helicopter to high camp

In spring 2014, Cleo made worldwide headlines, when she was flown – as well as the Chinese Wang Jing – by helicopter from Everest Base Camp to Camp 2 at 6,400 meters from where she wanted to climb the 8516-meter-high Lhotse. At this time, almost all commercial expeditions had left Everest prematurely. This was due to the avalanche in Khumbu Icefall which had killed 16 Nepali climbers on 18 April 2014. It had led to fierce debate on the safety of local high altitude porters. After the departure of almost all teams, the government had granted an exemption to fly to high camp in order to bring down expedition equipment. Normally, helicopter flights on Everest are only permitted for rescue.
After having been flown to Camp 2, Wang Jing and her Sherpa team reached the summit of Mount Everest on 23 May. Cleo Weidlich later said that she had not even seriously tried to climb Lhotse.

Annapurna I

Dead and gone. Why only are single deaths of Sherpa climbers in the Himalayas swept under the carpet so quickly? Almost as if it was just a work accident. According to the motto: It’s sad, but unfortunately it sometimes happens. The most recent example was the accident on the eight-thousander Annapurna four weeks ago. In the days that followed, many obits of the 36-year-old Finn Samuli Mansikka were published. For sure, he had deserved each of them. Samuli was not only an excellent climber – Annapurna was his tenth eight-thousander, eight of which he climbed without bottled oxygen – but, according to all reports of his mates, a cool guy, always up for fun or ready for party. However, we learned next to nothing about the other climber who died. It was 35-year-old Pemba Sherpa, was said in a few reports. Allegedly he was born near the eight-thousander Makalu and was called “Technical Pemba” due to his technical climbing skills. About what Pemba had previously done as a mountaineer, the information diverged widely. I was not content with this confusion.

Common name

The research proved difficult. In expedition reports Sherpas are often passed over in total silence. Not uncommonly their names are missing completely, almost as if they were only numbers, not flesh and blood people. Is it because the authors are embarrassed about having used the support of Sherpas? Or is it due to the fact that Sherpa names are confusingly similar or quite frequently identical? In Nepal many Sherpas bear the Tibetan name “Pemba”. Actually it only means that this man first saw the light of day on a Saturday.

Billi Bierling

I made a request to the Kathmandu based expedition operator Dreamers Destination for whom Pemba Sherpa had worked – however, as it turned out later, for the first time. My questions remained unanswered as well as those to the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA). Fortunately I could ask Billi Bierling for assistance, a German mountaineer and journalist, living in Kathmandu. She is working for the Himalayan Database, the chronicle of the legendary American Elizabeth Hawley. Thus she has always a finger on the pulse of mountaineering in the Himalayas. At first Billi was groping in the dark too. Almost everyone she asked for the Sherpa who had died on Annapurna seemed to mean another Pemba. The information about his age, his origins and achievements as a high altitude mountaineer diverged topsy-turvy. The data that she received didn’t fit to any Pemba Sherpa in the Himalayan Database.

Four times on top of Everest

Billi was sticking to her guns. After about two weeks, she succeeded in lifting the fog. To her research, Pemba Sherpa who died on Annapurna is listed in the archive of Miss Hawley as Pema Tshering. He was born on 16 June 1970 at upper Walung in the Makalu-Barun National Park. Until 2014, Pem(b)a made twelve ascents to the summits of eight-thousanders: Four times Mount Everest (in 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2013), three times Dhaulagiri (in 2005, 2009, 2012), twice Kangchenjunga (in 2009, 2011), twice Annapurna (in 2010, 2012) and once Lhotse in (2008).

With Oh Eun-Sun and Cleo Weidlich

It is striking that he often accompanied female climbers to the summits of eight-thousanders: three times each the South Korean Oh Eun-Sun and the US-Brazilian Cleo Weidlich. In 2010 “Miss Oh” war the first woman to complete her 8,000er collection, though her success on Kangchenjunga in 2009 is listed in the Himalayan Database as “disputed” to this day. Unlike another member of her five-strong Sherpa team, Pemba stated that Oh Eun-Sun and he had really reached the top of the third highest mountain in the world. A year later, Pemba also joined the Korean on her way up to the summit of Annapurna, her last eight-thousander. In 2014, he accompanied Cleo Weidlich, with whom he had previously reached the summits of Annapurna, Dhaulagiri and Kangchenjunga, in her attempt on Lhotse. The expedition made headlines around the world because Cleo (like the Chinese Wang Jing) flow to the high camp above the Khumbu Icefall by helicopter.

Amateurish? Not hardly!

Pemba’s 13th eight-thousander ascent, his third on Annapurna, was fatal for him. We will probably never know what exactly happened to him and Samuli Mansikka during the descent. Their bodies were discovered in a crevasse at 7,200 meters. It seems to me too hasty to accuse the Sherpa and the Finn of “amateurish behavior” and “carelessness”, as an expedition member did after the accident. Like Samuli, Pemba was a very experienced high altitude mountaineer, anything but an amateur. Pem(b)a Tshering Sherpa was 44 years old. He leaves behind a wife and a four-year-old daughter.

Update: It looks as if we were wrong. Mingma Sherpa, owner of Dreamers Destination, told me the Sherpa who died on Annapurna was Pemba Sherpa from Sankhuwasava: “He has climbed Annapurna in 2009,2010,2012 and 2015, Kangchenjunga from India, Dhaulagiri in 2012, Makalu in 2011. He was on K2 in 2009 and 2014. I met him on K2 last year and I was surprised by his work because he alone made all the way from Camp 2 to Camp 4 on the Senchen Route. He was a really experienced and technical climber so named technical Pemba.”

How much helicopter should be allowed on Everest?l

The spring season on Mount Everest is over, but not the discussion about what happened at the highest mountain in the world. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has set up a committee to clarify whether, when and how often helicopters were used to airlift team members of the Chinese female climber Wang Jing and the Brazilian-American Cleo Weidlich to Camp 2 at 6400 meters. On 23 May, Wang was the first person who reached the summit of Mount Everest this spring, just before the first successes from the north side were reported. Weidlich originally planned to climb Lhotse, but in her own words she made no real attempt to reach the summit.

Pilot confirmed passenger transport to Camp 2

According to the newspaper Himalayan Times the Italian pilot Maurizio Folini has confirmed that he has flown Wang Jing from Base Camp to Camp 2 on 10 May and also picked her up again there by helicopter on 25 May. After returning to Kathmandu the Chinese woman reportedly claimed that she never used a helicopter to reach Camp 2. Only two Sherpas had been flown up, she said. “This would seem to be a distinction without a difference since they were helping her ascent”, the legendary chronicler of Himalayan mountaineering, Elizabeth Hawley, writes to me. So far only rescue flights were allowed higher than Base Camp. This spring the Nepalese government had only made an exception to let fly out material from Camp 2 after the premature end of all expeditions.

Good idea

Miura after his return to Base Camp by helicopter

I had written to Elizabeth Hawley because I hesitate to call Wang Jing’s summit success a complete ascent of Everest and wanted to know how the 90-year-old U.S. chronicler deals with this climb in her “Himalayan Database”. “You have raised a good point about climbers using helicopters to fly over dangerous terrain in their ascents”, answered Miss Hawley. “We at the Database think we need to add a new category of caveats perhaps called aviation-assisted climbs. That category would also include Yuichiro Miura’s climb of Everest in spring 2013, when he flew out of Camp II to Base Camp to avoid the Icefall. And Cleo Weidlich’s attempt on Lhotse this spring.” I think, it’s a good idea. After the action of the 80-year-old Japanese Miura who had set a new age record last year, I had already asked in my blog how much helicopter should be allowed on Everest. After the avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall on 18 April which killed 16 Nepalese climbers this question could be more urgent than ever.

Update 8 June: Wang Jing meanwhile admitted that she had used a helicopter on Everest. “The Sherpas have great mental pressure and they were reluctant to step into that place”, Wang said in an interview of China News Service. “I knew our decision could discount the climbing efforts. However, I would like to accept the losses for the sake of safety.”

Wang Jing

Is there still some climbing possible on the Nepalese side of Mount Everest? The “Himalayan Times” reported that the Chinese female climber Wang Jing was ​​with seven Sherpas on the way to base camp. The 40-year-old wanted to climb the highest mountain on earth. Wang was already once on the summit of Everest, on 22 May 2010, becoming the first Chinese woman who climbed the mountain from the south side. In her home country she is a star. Wang has written a book about her mountaineering and is leading an outdoor outfitter in Beijing.  Everest is part of her “Project 7+2”. She wants to scale the “Seven Summits”, the highest peaks of all continents, in record time and in addition reach the North and the South Pole.

She has already four of the “Seven Summits”

Since 2011, this record is held by the former Welsh rugby player and adventurer Richard David Parks who completed his project in six months and eleven days. So Wang Jing has not much time. Earlier this year she was at the South Pole and reached the summits of Mount Vinson (Antarctica), Aconcagua (South America), Mount Kosciusko (Australia) , the Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania) and Mount Elbrus (Europe). A spokesman of the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism reiterated that Mount Everest and Lhotse were not officially closed, even if all the big operators had canceled their expeditions after the avalanche disaster on Good Friday.

By helicopter to Camp 2

Cleo Weidlich

These words are grist to the mill of Cleo Weidlich. The 51-year-old, who was born in Brazil and lives in the USA, wants to climb Lhotse. In her words, it would be her ninth 8000er (some of her climbs are disputed), she scaled Everest in 2010. A year later, she made ​​headlines worldwide when she had to be rescued because she had got snow-blind and hurt during the descent from Kangchenjunga.

According to the Himalayan Times, Weidlich was flown by helicopter from the village of Gorak Shep at 5200 meters to Camp 2 at 6500 meters. So far, only rescue flights on Everest were allowed. But after the avalanche the government had been clement and had allowed the expedition teams to bring down their material from the Camps above the Khumbu Icefall by helicopter. Supposedly, Wang Jing was meanwhile also flown to Camp 2. The normal routes to Lhotse and Everest are identical up to an altitude of about 7500 meters.

Harsh words

In the past week Cleo Weidlich had complained several times vehemently about the “Icefall doctors” via Facebook. She accused them of sabotaging her and described them as “Everest mafia”. Not just a sign of tact. “Anyone who climbs Everest in this 2014 Spring season is not a climber, is a beast of ego and arrogant”, writes Dawa Steven Sherpa, leader of the “Eco Everest Expeditions”. “How can you fit in the brotherhood of climber’s community if you don’t respect those who perished in order to take you on top of the mountain?”

P.S. It remains to be seen whether ascents of Everest and Lhotse from Camp 2 can count as full summit successes. A case for Elizabeth Hawley, the 90-year-old legendary Himalayan chronicler in Kathmandu.

Update 12 May: The New Zealand expedition organizer Russell Brice reports that he has contacted the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism to make clear that he has nothing to do with Wang Jing’s flight to Camp 2. The Chinese originally ran on the permit of his “Himalayan Experience” expedition. Also Murari Sharma of “Summit Climb”, who had got the permit for Cleo Weidlich, is reported to be annoyed. The organizers fear that the Everest permits of their other clients could expire or that they could face other sanctions because Wang and Weidlich have defied the announced end of the expeditions.