Broad Peak

For me, drones come right after leaf blowers. I find the noise generated by the increasingly popular flying machines extremely annoying. Drones sound like mutated giant bumblebees. Torture for my ears. But even I have to admit: On the eight-thousander Broad Peak in the Karakoram in Pakistan, a drone and the guy who flew it did a great job. Eight days ago, on 9 July, the 64-year-old Briton Rick Allen set off alone for a summit attempt. His teammates stayed in Camp 3 at 7,000 meters. When Rick didn’t return, they sounded the alarm because they feared Allen might have been injured or even died. Sandy Allan, who had already descended to base camp due to strong winds in the summit area, contacted the Polish Bargiel brothers in the nearby K2 Base Camp. Andrzej Bargiel is planning to ski the second highest mountain in the world from the summit to base camp for the first time this summer. His brother Bartek is filming the project – also using a drone.

Thanks to Dan Mazur and Co.

Sandy Allan (l.) and Rick Allen on Nanga Parbat in 2012

Bartek let it take off. With the help of the camera mounted on the drone, Sandy, Andrzej and Bartek were able to find Rick Allen’s exact position and to radio it to Camp 3. A seven-man rescue team, consisting of climbers from the expedition operator “Summit Climb”, managed to climb up to Rick and bring him back to Camp 3 in the dark. “Rick returned to Base Camp on 12 July safely thanks to Dan Mazur (the expedition leader of Summit Climb) and his Sherpas,” Allen’s expedition blog said. “After being examined by a doctor at Base Camp, Rick is okay all things considered and has a few superficial cuts and some frostnip.”

The two Britons Sandy Allan and Rick Allen had landed a coup in the Karakoram in summer 2012. At that time they were the first to reach the summit of Nanga Parbat via the more than ten kilometers long Mazeno Ridge. Allan and Allen had been at very high altitude for 18 days. In 2013, they had been awarded for this amazing ascent the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”.

Bielecki and Berg on top of G II

Camp 3 on Gasherbrum II

Meanwhile, further summit successes were reported from the Karakoram: According to Polish media reports on Monday, 35-year-old Pole Adam Bielecki and 37-year-old German Felix Berg reached the 8,034-meter-high summit of Gasherbrum II. “We managed to traverse the summit – we reached it by the fragile and surprisingly difficult West Face and went down the regular route (via the Southwest Ridge),” Adam wrote on Facebook. Their companions Jacek Czech, also from Poland, and Boris Dedeshko from Kazakhstan had wanted to climb via the normal route, but had turned around at 7,500 and 7,800 meters respectively, said Bielecki. It was his fifth eight-thousander, for Felix Berg after Mount Everest (in 2004), Broad Peak (in 2014) and Cho Oyu (in spring 2018) the fourth success on one of the 14 highest mountains in the world.

First summit success on Broad Peak

Yesterday, ten climbers from the Austrian expedition operator “Furtenbach Adventures” according to their own words reached the summit of Broad Peak at 8,051 meters. The group had abandoned their first summit bid last week because the avalanche danger had been still too great at that time. The first summit attempts of this summer season have also begun on K2.

Broad Peak Base Camp in deep snow

Summer in the Karakorum? At the moment it feels more like winter, at least in terms of precipitation. For days Mother Holle has been shaking out her mattress over Pakistan’s highest mountains. “Snowfall all day long”, writes Dominik Müller, head and expedition leader of the German operator Amical alpin at the foot of the eight-thousander Broad Peak. “Our base camp is slowly turning into a winter landscape. Avalanches barrel down from the slopes every hour!” The Austrian expedition leader Lukas Furtenbach, from Broad Peak too, takes the same lime: “Tough weather conditions this year”. The situation on the other eight-thousanders in Pakistan is not different. No matter if from the neighbouring K 2, Gasherbrum I and II or Nanga Parbat – the same messages everywhere: Lots of snow, high avalanche risk.

Mike Horn: “Very dangerous”

South African adventurer Mike Horn threw in the towel on Nanga Parbat last weekend.  “It has been snowing at Base Camp for 12 days now and above 7000m there is a lot of snow. This makes the mountain very dangerous,” the 51-year-old wrote on Instagram, adding that the situation was to worsen since the weather forecast was also bad for the next days: “The mountain will stay here so we can always come back to amazing Pakistan.” Mike had been one of the first climbers to arrive in Nanga Parbat Base Camp in early June.

Even more snow

Meteorologists expect snowfall to continue until Thursday inclusive, so the avalanche risk is likely to increase further. An overhasty start onto the mountain before the fresh snow has settled could be fatal. Climbers therefore need patience – and a good entertainment program in the base camp.

K 2, the “King of the Eight-thousanders”

Will K2, after all, stretch out its hand for reconciliation? Despite the difficult weather and snow conditions on the second highest mountain on earth, today more than a dozen climbers have reached the highest camp on the K 2 Shoulder. “He just arrived at Camp 4,” Lina Moey, partner of the Icelander John Snorri Sigurjonsson, wrote on Facebook. “He is very tired, after almost twelve hours of climbing. This was a very long day and the snow reached up to his waist at some points. Fourteen people are planing to summit the peak, 9 of them are Sherpa. They had to dig 1.5 meter down to be able to put the tent down.” On 16 May, the 44-year-old Sigurjonsson had summited the 8516-meter-high Lhotse in Nepal. He was the first Icelander on the fourth highest mountain on earth. Also on the summit of K2, he would be the first climber of his country. John’s GPS tracker showed an altitude of 7,650 meters.

Furtenbach team returns home, Bargiel still in Base Camp

The British-American mountaineer Vanessa O’Brien also reached this height. “Camp 4”, the 52-year-old tweeted concisely, with a link to her GPS tracker. Like Sigurjonsson, O’Brien also belongs to the team of the Nepalese operator Dreamers Destination. Vanessa tries to climb K2 for the third year in a row. If she reaches the summit, it would be her fifth eight-thousander. Today the team of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures descended. “Sadly weather on K2 played it’s own game again,” the team said. “Avalanche danger became dramatically high very quick so team decided to stop and descend to Base Camp. We do not want to send our Sherpas up in that danger.” The team members arrived safe and sound at the foot of the mountain and want to go home tomorrow. “We are still sitting in the Base Camp waiting for weather to improve,” wrote Andrzej Bargiel today on Facebook. The 29-year-old Pole wants to ski down K2 for the first time from the summit without interruption to Base Camp. However, Andrzej and his team are running out of time.

Cardiach and Co. reached last high camp

Broad Peak

On the neighboring eight-thousander Broad Peak, the Spaniard Oscar Cardiach and his companions reached Camp 3 at 7,200 meters and are planning to climb up to the 8051-meter-high summit on Thursday, if the conditions allow an ascent. Cardiach’s team includes Tunc Findik, who has already summited ten eight-thousanders, making him the most successful high altitude climber of Turkey, Muhammad Ali “Sadpara”, who was among the winter first ascenders of Nanga Parbat in 2016, and Yosuf, a Balti HAP (High Altitude Porter). Broad Peak is the last of the 14 eight-thousanders which is still missing in the collection of the 64-year-old Catalan Cardiach. Oscar has climbed all 13 eight-thousanders so far without bottled oxygen.

Broad Peak

From Pakistan, this summer season’s first ascents on the 8051-meter-high Broad Peak are reported. Seven members of the team of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures and four climbers of the team of the Swiss operator Kobler@Partner reached the summit of the twelfth highest mountain on earth, it said. According to Furtenbach Adventures, expedition Rupert Hauer succeeded, along with three Sherpas and three clients, the first summit success on Broad Peak this season – even though there was a meter of fresh snow above the last high camp: “The sherpas made an unbelievable job and worked really really hard.”

Cadiach turned around

According to Kobler@Partner, their expedition leader Herbert Rainer also reached the highest point, together with two clients and a Pakistani climber. Last weekend, the Spaniard Oscar Cadiach and his group had abandoned their first summit attempt because of too much snow in the upper part of the mountain and had returned to the Base Camp. Broad Peak is the last of the 14 eight-thousanders, which is still missing in the collection of the 64-year-old Catalan Cadiach.

Without fingers on Nanga Parbat

Kim Hong Bin

Already last Saturday, according to the Alpine Club of Pakistan, eight climbers reached the 8,125 meter-high summit of Nanga Parbat – among them the Korean Kim Hong Bin and his Nepalese Climbing Sherpa Lakpa. In 1991, Kim had suffered so severe frostbite on Denali, the highest mountain in North America, that all ten fingers had had to be amputated. For the 53-year-old, Nanga Parbat was his eleventh eight-thousander. Last May in Nepal, he had scaled Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain on earth. In addition to Kim and Lakpa Sherpa, according to ACP, four other climbers from Nepal, a Chinese and a Japanese reached the summit of Nanga Parbat last Saturday.

Track ends at the fracture line

Tragic certainty

Meanwhile, the Romanian climber Alex Gavan, according to the website “Altitude Pakistan”, gave details of the search for the Spaniard Alberto Zerain and the Argentinian Mariano Galvan. As reported before, the two climbers almost certainly had been killed by an avalanche accident on the Mazeno Ridge. Gavan had coordinated the search for the two missing from Nanga Parbat Base Camp and had later flown in one of the two Pakistani rescue helicopters. “We extensively searched this area, looked up the open crevasses, searched the nearby valleys,” Alex writes, “we searched the Mazeno (Ridge) up to almost 7400m, much farther than they could have realistically climb.” Without success. Gavan presented pictures, on which a track in the snow can be seen. It ends at the fracture line of an avalanche. The last GPS point, sent by the GPS tracker of Zerain and Galvan, lies in the avalanche cone. “The evidence was much too heavy, much too hard to digest,” says Alex. “But now everything was clear.”

K 2 Base Camp

Trouble’s brewing in the base camps on K 2 and the neighboring eight-thousander Broad Peak. “I got surprised to see climbers here without ropes.”, writes Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, head of the Nepalese expedition operator Dreamers Destination from the base camp at the foot of K 2, the second highest mountain on earth. Only on the normal route via the Abruzzi spur, three teams are climbing without ropes, says the 31-year-old Nepalese: “If this is how climbers come on K 2, then we can expect (the events of the) year 2008 again on K 2.” At that time eleven climbers from seven nations had died in a true mass summit push on the 8,611-meter-high mountain.

Mingma has agreed with the Austrian expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach that Dreamers Destination will fix the ropes on the Abruzzi route on K 2 while Furtenbach Adventures will do the same on the normal route on the 8,051-meter-high Broad Peak and later make mutual use of the ropes. Also Furtenbach is hopping mad that other teams neither participate in the work to secure the route nor in the costs.

“Unfair and fraud”

Broad Peak

“I think, it is, to say the least, absolutely unacceptable to arrive unprepared after the big commercial teams, to use their fixed ropes and to be not fair enough to contribute,” Lukas writes to me. “Most of these teams/climbers should have to leave without fixed ropes, because they are not able to climb the mountain in Alpine style. This is parasitism. It is unfair and fraud.” His Pakistani liaison officer spoke to the officers of the other teams about the problem, but without success, writes Lukas. The 39-year-old threatens to publicly name those teams if they refuse until last to make their contribution and nevertheless use the fixed ropes. Also the self-proclaimed “professional climbers” who want to distance themselves from the clients of the commercial expeditions are in Furtenbach’s bad books: “Two Americans say they will climb with their 40-meter rope in Alpine style and won’t pay anything. In the same breath they explain that they will use our ropes when necessary.”

North side of Everest

Rapid is not enough, it should be as fast as a flash. This could describe the concept of the Austrian expedition operator Lukas Furtenbach: for eight-thousander aspirants with a big pile of money, but little time budget. After the US operator Alpenglow had halved the duration of an Everest expedition with their “Rapid Ascent Expedition” from about 70 days to 34 days, the 39-year-old Tyrolean wants to go one step further next year. In spring 2018, the “Everest Flash Expedition” of Furtenbach Adventures on the Tibetan north side of the mountain is to last a maximum of four weeks.

Up to 16 bottles per person

Lukas Furtenbach

This is Furtenbach’s plan: The pre-acclimatization of the clients takes place at home for six to eight weeks with a special training plan and a newly developed hypoxic tent system, which is capable of simulating high camp nights up to an altitude of 7,300 meters. On the spot, there will be no more acclimatization climbs, but – of course, depending on the weather – a summit attempt. Furtenbach guarantees unlimited oxygen for each member. The plan is to use a special regulator “designed for us by Summit Oxygen, with a possible flow rate of up to eight liters per minute” (a flow rate of four liters per minute is currently common on Everest) and a total of up to 16 (!) oxygen bottles per client on the mountain.

Battle of material

“Alpine moral – if you want to use this terrible term – makes no difference whether half a bottle or 16 were used,” Lukas writes to me from Kathmandu. “It remains a climb with supplemental oxygen. But more oxygen makes the climb definitely safer. That’s a fact.” Material and staff should be “100 percent redundant”, says Furtenbach: “Bottles, masks, regulators and even Sherpas on the bench.” The whole thing has its price, which is on the upper end: US $ 95,000. Nevertheless, the expedition operator from Austria is convinced that his tactics “will develop into a new industrial standard within just a few years”. In his opinion, commercial climbing on the eight-thousanders has remained “on the level of the early 1990s”.

“Great room for experience”

Camp 1 on Everest North Col

This spring, Furtenbach will be with a team on the north side of Everest. Once again he wants to test the newly designed regulator during the expedition. It is clear to Lukas that he will trigger off a discussion with his radical concept. Here are his answers to three other questions I asked him:

Shorter expedition time also means less time for the Nepali or Tibetan staff. Will less money remain in the respective countries?

We need more Sherpas for the “Flash Expedition”, and they will be hired for at least the same time as on conventional expeditions because they prepare the route. Significantly more money will remain in the respective countries, definitely. We pay our Sherpas significantly better than other Western operators usually do.

Does the new concept lead to even more summit aspirants on the eight-thousanders, who actually do not have the necessary skills – because they say: Cool, that suits me, under these circumstances even I can do it?

Furtenbach on the summit of Everest (in 2016)

We look very carefully at each aspirant – no matter whether on a Flash or a normal expedition. If someone seems to us inexperienced or unsuitable, we offer him a special program to develop his skills, which may take a longer period, or we reject him in principle. The real problem on Everest is currently the uncontrolled hordes of mostly completely inexperienced Chinese and Indian clients of essentially two Nepali low-cost operators, who have been responsible for most of the deaths (clients and Sherpas) of the past years.

Flash Expeditions are certainly more attractive for the clients because they are not missing work for such a long time. However, doesn’t the special expedition experience fall by the wayside due to the short duration?

Four weeks are still a long time with plenty of space for adventure. For most people, even a four-week holiday is a far-away dream. Nevertheless, we continue to offer a classic expedition on Everest, in which the members can approach the mountain in the way climbers have been doing for almost 50 years.