Camp 1 on Kokodak Dome (2014)

Actually, the tent is a place of refuge and security. And most of the time I felt safe when I lay in my tent in the mountains. But there were exceptions. For example in 2004 during my reportage trip to K2, when I woke up suddenly in the base camp at the foot of the second highest mountain on earth, because the glacier made noises under my tent floor, as if it wanted to devour me in the next moment. Ten years later, during the first ascent of the seven-thousander Kokodak Dome in western China, we pitched up Camp 1 at 5,500 meters at a quite exposed spot – and I wondered: What happens if a real storm is raging here? That’s what I remembered when I learned of the death of Italian Simone La Terra on Dhaulagiri earlier this week.

Bad feeling

Dhaulagiri

A violent gust of wind had blown the 36-year-old with his tent from a height of about 6,900 meters from the northeast ridge into the depths. His team partner Waldemar Dominik was an eyewitness of the accident. The Pole had had a bad feeling about the place that Simone had chosen and had searched for an alternative spot. When he returned, he saw from close by how the tent was caught by the gust. Dominik descended to the base camp and sounded the alarm. The body of La Terras was found and recovered the next day at an altitude of 6,100 meters.

Buried by avalanches

Manaslu

It is not uncommon that climbers die in their tents. Objectively, the highest risk of death in the tent is the Grim Reaper coming in the form of high altitude sickness. But as in La Terra’s case, there can also be dangers from outside. In the history of Himalayan mountaineering many climbers lost their lives because they were caught by avalanches while lying in the tent. Just remember the avalanche on 22 September 2012 on the eight-thousander Manaslu, which hit two high camps in the early morning and killed eleven climbers.

One step away from tragedy

Alexander (r.) and Thomas Huber in summer 2015 in the Karakoram

Alexander and Thomas Huber had better luck in summer 2015 on the 6946-meter-high Latok III in the Karakoram. The Huber brothers and their teammates Mario Walder and Dani Arnold were almost blown out of the wall by the blast wave of an ice avalanche. “We were lucky that we had dug out a small platform to position the tents perfectly. The small snow edge of this platform has saved our lives. Otherwise we would have been blown away,” Alexander Huber told me then. “It was much, much closer than I ever imagined. And that’s shocking.”

Blown along the ledge

Also the third ascent of Kangchenjunga in 1979 by a British expedition was not far away from a “tent tragedy”, when a storm broke loose in the summit area. “At 1.30 a.m. on 5 May the wind changed direction and rapidly increased in violence which snapped the centre hoop of the double-skin tunnel tent,” Doug Scott wrote at that time. “The team soon had their boots and gaiters on but at 2.30 a.m. the tent was blown two feet (about 60 centimeters) along the ledge.” The climbers left the tent on the double. A little later, it was torn by the storm and disappeared in the depths.

P.S.: After the first summit success of the 8000er spring season on Lhotse, one more from another eight-thousander was reported on Thursday. “The Himalayan Times” reported that Chinese Gao Xiaodan and her Climbing Sherpas Nima Gyalzen Sherpa, Jit Bahadur Sherpa and Ang Dawa Sherpa had reached the 8,485-meter summit of Makalu, the fifth highest mountain on earth. The 35-year-old from Lanzhou City, located in northwestern China, had not used bottled oxygen, it said. In spring 2017, Gao had scaled Mount Everest and three days later Lhotse too, both with breathing mask.

Everest Southwest Face

“Everything was said 40 years ago. Nothing has changed.” Doug Scott was tight-lipped when I asked him last spring about the British Everest Southwest Face Expedition in 1975. Late on 24 September, today exactly 40 years ago, Doug and his team comrade Dougal Haston, had reached the summit of Mount Everest after they had first climbed the more than 2000-meter-high, extremely difficult rock wall. After their summit success Scott and Haston survived a bivouac at 8760 meters. Their first climb of the Southwest Face was a milestone in Himalayan climbing, one of the “last big problems” was solved. Five expeditions had failed before, among them a British one in 1972.

Superb climbers

Route(s) through the Southwest Face (© Thincat)

This expedition as well as the successful three years later was led by legendary Chris Bonington. “In a way the expedition was my baby”, Chris told me last spring. “It was my vision and concept. Then I got together the group of superb climbers to actually complete it.” The team was based on climbers from the British 1970 Annapurna South Face and 1972 Everest Southwest Face expeditions and included aside from Scott and Haston such excellent climbers as Mick Burke, Nick Estcourt, Peter Boardman and Paul (“Tut”) Braithwate. “I had always seen very clearly in my mind that my first priority was the success of the expedition and not just the success of getting to the top of the mountain, but also the success of doing so harmoniously”, said the meanwhile 81-year-old Bonington. “And from that point of view it was a wonderful expedition. The only very serious cloud of course was the fact that in the second attempt we lost Mick Burke.” He disappeared during a second summit push. Burke was last seen alive only a few hundred meters from the highest point.

“Possible without breathing mask”

Bonington (l.) and Scott (in 2015)

The successful climb of the Southwest Face was a perfect teamwork. Scott and Haston were the members to complete it. “The way we did was a bit like the way the North wall of the Eiger was first climbed”, said Chris Bonington. “We found the easiest way, a kind of ‘serpentining’ our way up the mountain.” It was “the only line possible, the natural line”, Doug Scott finally told me last April. He and Haston had been using breathing masks. “When I bivouacked at 8,700 meters without oxygen, I knew, it would have been possible without it”, said Scott, aged 74 now. Afterwards there have been only a few successful climbs through the Everest Southwest Face. “The obviously challenge that nobody has done is a direttissima”, said Chris Bonington. “That is to go straight up the middle of the rock band and thus straight up to the summit.” Another “last problem”.

Chris Bonington

„This award for my live achievements means a lot to me“, said Sir Chris Bonington visibly touched. „It honours not only me but also my peers and fellow mountaineers.“ On Saturday evening in Courmayeur, the 80-year-old British mountaineering legend will be awarded the „Piolet d’Or Career 2015“ for all his outstanding performances as climber and expedition leader that has been inspiring the following generations of extreme mountaineers. The previous evening in Chamonix, Boningtons achievements were presented, by himself and by his former British climbing mates Doug Scott (who got the Piolet d’Or Career in 2011) and Paul „Tut“ Braithwaite.

Real teamwork

Chris Bonington made many first ascents in UK, in the Alps, in Patagonia, in the Himalayas and in Karakoram, such as those of Annapurna II (7,937 m, in 1960) and Nuptse (7,861m, in 1961) in Nepal – or the first ascent of Ogre (7,286 m, in 1977) in Pakistan. His climbing mate then was Doug Scott. „On the last pitch, Doug had to climb a great granit eblock. It was probably the hardest climb that was even done in high mountains“, Bonington remembered. On their way back down Scott fell and broke both ankles. It took them and two other team members, who had climbed up to support them, five days to reach the base camp, by the way without food. „Doug crawled all the way back down“, said Chris. „We survived because we remained together as a team.“

Doug: „I was a lucky man“

Bonington and Scott, earlier and now

Two years ago, in 1975, Bonington had led an successful expedition to the Southwest Face of Mount Everest. Doug Scott and Dougal Haston succeeded in reaching the summit on the first route through the extremely difficult and dangerous wall. „I could not be in better care“, Doug said about Chris, the leader of the expedition. And looking back to all their joint climbs Scott resumed: „I was a lucky man to share those climbs with him.“ Tut Braithwaite, another member of the successful Everest Southwest Face expedition, called Bonington a „great ambassador for what we all do“. Not only in the past, but in the present too.

A traverse and two new routes

Such as the climbers of the three teams that were nominated for this year’s Piolets d’Or, the „Oscar for mountaineers“. Their achievements were also presented during the evening in Chamonix: The Americans Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold (who could not come to France due to other commitments) succeeded in completing the full traverse of the Fitz Roy range in Patagonia, over seven summits with a total of 4,000 meters of ascent, within five days.

The Russians Aleksander Gukov and Aleksey Lonchinsky were chosen for their new route through the South Face of 6,618-meter-high Thamserku in Nepal. They had six bivouacs in the wall during their ascent and another on descent on a different route.

[See image gallery at blogs.dw.com]

The third team that was nominated for the Piolets d’Or, the Golden Ice Axe, comes from Slovenia: Marko Prezelj, Ales Cesen and Luka Lindic were the first who climbed the steep North Face of 6,657-meter-high Hagshu in Northern India. In 1991, Prezelj and his compatriot Andrej Stremfelj had received the first Piolet d’Or ever, for their climbing of the South Face of the eight-thousander Kangchenjunga in Nepal. Later Prezelj had criticized those responsible for the Piolet d’Or. And he is still sceptical: „I think it’s impossible to judge love and passion in the mountains“, the 50-year-old said in Chamonix.