Everest North Face (now)

I know this view. But how different is Mount Everest looking now this fall. The Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki has pitched his Advanced Base Camp (ABC) exactly where our tents stood eleven years ago. In spring 2005, I accompanied the Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, the German Ralf Dujmovits and the Japanese Hirotaka Takeuchi to Everest North Face and reported from ABC at 5,500 meters on DW Radio and the Internet on the progress of the expedition.

Having survived a cerebral edema

North Face (in 2005)

Originally, the trio had planned to climb via the so-called Supercouloir route to the summit at 8,850 meters: in the lower part through the Japanese Couloir (first climbed by the Japanese Shigehiro and Ozaki fin 1980), in the upper part through the Hornbein Couloir (named after the US climber Hornbein, who was in 1963 along with his compatriot Unsoeld the first who dared to climb into the steep North Face at an altitude of about 7,600 meters). The conditions in the wall made it impossible, the three professional climbers turned to the normal route. In the end the expedition failed because Hiro suffered from a cerebral edema above 7,000 meters, which he survived with luck. Seven years later, in 2012, Takeuchi became the first Japanese who climbed all 14 eight-thousanders.

High danger of avalanches

In spring 2005, the wall was significantly less snowy than now. Nobukazu Kuriki has announced that he would try to reach the summit of Everest via the “Great Couloir”, solo and without supplemental oxygen. The Australian climbers Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer had opened the route “White Limbo”  through the Norton Couloir in 1984, without breathing masks. At that time the wall was also covered in snow. Since then the route has not been repeated.

The 34-year-old Japanese has already been at the foot of the wall and spoke of high danger of avalanches. As reported before, Kuriki is trying for the sixth time to climb the highest mountain in the world in the post-monsoon period, for the first time, however, on the north side. He had got a first impression of the North Face in 2012. In this failed attempt via the West Ridge he had suffered so severe frostbite that later nine fingers had to be amputed almost completely.

Jornet: “A lot of snow”

The Spaniard Kilian Jornet is informing the public significantly more incommunicative than Kuriki about the progress of his Everest expedition, also on the north side. “We continue with the acclimatization,” the 28-year-old tweeted a week ago. “There’s a lot of snow, but everything is okay.” Since then there has been silence. Kilian wants – as you could also read in my blog – to speed climb Everest: in a single push from the Rongbuk monastery to the summit, without bottled oxygen and Sherpa support. It is possible for both Kuriki and Jornet will get stuck in the snow or they will battle through it. So it will remain interesting.

Hirotaka Takeuchi

Hiro has experienced a lot on Everest. „It is a very special mountain for me”, Hirotaka Takeuchi wrote to me, after I had asked him for his statements on the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent. „I learned a lot from climbing Mt. Everest, and all those lessons and experiences were very important and helpful to me to climb all the fourteen 8,000 m peaks. Thus, I think Mt. Everest was a great learning place forme.” In one of the ‘classrooms’ the Japanese climber had been close to lose his life. 

First with oxygen mask

In May 1996 everything went well. Hiro, in the age of 25, climbed Mount Everest. He used bottled oxygen – like the year before on Makalu and later in August 1996 on K 2. When Hiro started to climb with German Ralf Dujmovits and Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner he did it like them: always without supplementary oxygen. 

Survived 

30. May 2005: Hiro, Gerlinde and Ralf have abandoned their plan to climb through the north face of Everest due to bad conditions and have made their way to the Tibetan normal route. Near their camp on 7650 meters Hiro collapses and hardly responds. Symptoms of a life-threatening high-altitude cerebral edema. 40 percent die of it. Hiro survives, because Gerlinde and Ralf administer emergency medication, save him over the night and take him down the next day. 

First Japanese on all 8000ers 

Back in basecamp with Gerlinde (r.) und Ralf (l.)

At that time I was fearing for Hiro’s life in the basecamp on the central Rongbuk glacier, where I was reporting about the expedition. One year after this almost-tragedy my Japanese friend climbed Kangchenjunga, his eighth 8000er. In 2007 we experienced his number nine in a team: he standing on top of Manaslu, I reporting from basecamp. Later in the same year he cheated death once again. With a lot of luck he survived an ice avalanche on Gasherbrum II with serious injuries. But already in the following year he had a big comeback scaling G II. And in May 2012 Hirotaka Takeuchi achieved his great goal: He climbed Dhaulagiri, his fourteenth and last 8000er. He is the first and only Japanese who has climbed all 8000-meter-peaks. 

Searching for an unclimbed peak 

Since then Hiro has been enjoying time with his wife and two children in Tokio. But this spring the 42 year old climber will go again to Nepal for a trekking – as he writes – probably looking for a nice, unclimbed peak. Maybe one day Hiro will also return to Mount Everest. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent he wishes Mount Everest that „it would be a mountain where many people would able to climb repeatedly”. 

P.S. You can read Hiro’s full statements on the two Everest-60-pinboards on the right side of the blog.