They have been on the road for the last three weeks and are expected to have meanwhile arrived at the destination of their expedition. The Swiss climbers Stephan Siegrist and Julian Zanker and the German Thomas Huber want to tackle the still not mastered West Face of the 6155-meter-high Cerro Kishtwar. The mountain, located in the Indian part of the crisis region Kashmir, has been scaled only three times so far. In 1993, the British Mick Fowler and the American Steve Susted succeeded the first ascent via the Northwest Face. In 2011, Siegrist, his Swiss countryman Denis Burdet and the Austrian David Lama reached the summit of Cerro Kishtwar as the second rope team, after opening a new route on the edge of the West Face. The third ascent was made in 2015 by the Slovenes Marko Prezelj and Urban Novak, the American Hayden Kennedy and the Frenchman Manu Pellisier. They were awarded the Piolet d’Or, the “Oscar of the Climbers”, for their first ascend of the South Face.

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Who says that there is nothing left to explore! During their expedition in northern India this fall, the Swiss mountaineers Stephan Siegrist, Dres Abegglen and Thomas Senf first climbed three shapely mountains, all of them almost 6,000 meters high: Bhala (also called “Spear”, 5,900 m), Tupendeo (5,700 m) and Te (translated “Crystal”, 5,900 m), each of them on challenging routes. Indian Kashmir is still regarded as an insider tip among climbers. Because of the conflict with Pakistan, the mountain area had been closed to foreign visitors for a long time, until it was reopened in 2003. “The region was simply somewhat forgotten”, Stephan Siegrist tells me. The 42-year-old top climber has become almost an expert for Kashmir in recent years.

Stephan, three first ascents during an expedition cannot be matched by many other climbers. Have you been on a roll?

The motivation was very high. We climbed the first two peaks rather quickly. It is a great advantage that the time you need to acclimatize for altitudes up to 6,000 meters is much shorter, you almost don’t need any time. And the weather conditions were great.

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