Alex Txikon throws in the towel. His second summit attempt failed too – and so did the entire winter expedition. The 35-year-old Basque and his Sherpa team decided in Camp 2 at 6,400 meters not to ascent further up. Instead, they packed up and returned to Everest Base Camp today. “It really would have been suicide to go on,” Txikon told his team by satellite phone. “As the head of the expedition, I should not endanger the lives of my companions. And not my own.” Nevertheless, the decision to abandon the summit attempt was not easy, Alex admitted.

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Krzysztof Wielicki is skeptical. “I think they can have a problem because they only slept in Camp 3 and not at 8,000 meters,” answers the Pole when I meet him at the trade fair ISPO in Munich and enquire him about the chances of the Basque climber Alex Txikon on Mount Everest. Txikon, who wants to scale the highest mountain of the world this winter without bottled oxygen, is currently waiting in Everest Base Camp to set off for his first summit attempt. “In my opinion, you should have slept at the South Col, if you want to push to the summit,” says Wielicki. “I wish him good luck, I hope that nothing happens. It’s most important that they’ll come back safely. It doesn’t matter if they climb to the summit or not.”

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Nanga Parbat falls back into hibernation. After the 8125-meter-high mountain in Pakistan was bustling over the past years with expeditions who tried to climb it for the first time in winter, it now looks as if the “naked mountain” remains a lonely one in the coming months. This winter even the Polish climber Tomasz Mackiewicz will not change his living room – as he did in the last six years – with a cold tent on Nanga Parbat.

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I am sick and tired of it. In recent days, I almost felt like I was reporting on a reality TV soap in a jungle camp instead of what happened in Base Camp on the Diamir side of Nanga Parbat. The dispute between the Spaniard Alex Txikon and the Italian Daniele Nardi is increasingly turning into a soap opera – at the latest, since it is about money. It is undeniable that the story has a certain entertainment value, as always when dirty laundry is washed in public. And as I do have still a few questions in this respect, I could probably add more episodes to this soap opera. But it isn’t my job to play constantly the gossip reporter. Txikon and Nardi are professional climbers and in mountain business for many years. They should actually be able to find a solution to their dispute themselves, without going through the media.

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“Only five are left. We don’t give up now“, Tamara Lunger writes on Facebook. The 29-year-old South Tyrolean mountaineer and her Italian team partner Simone Moro hope for better weather on Nanga Pabat. Snowfall is predicted until the weekend, in addition a strong wind is blowing at the 8125-meter-high summit, which currently makes an ascent impossible. The other team still staying in Base Camp, the Spaniard Alex Txikon, the Italian Daniele Nardi and the Pakistani Ali Sadpara, are also waiting for an end of the bad weather.

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The first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat is in the air – say my gut instincts. Sunny days and clear nights are expected on the eighth highest mountain on earth until the weekend. The wind is to calm down, to a speed of just ten kilometers per hour on Friday. That sounds like ideal conditions for a summit attempt – if we can still speak of it in winter at all. After all, the temperature at the 8,125-meter-high summit is about minus 40 degrees Celsius. Maybe the reason for my optimistic gut feeling is simply that the teams on Nanga Parbat are currently rather stingy with information. Almost as if they are fully focused on climbing and don’t want to be distracted by „public relations“.

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If mountains really have a soul, Nanga Parbat obviously suffers from a full-blown winter depression. Year after year the eight-thousander in Pakistan rebuffs climbers who try to climb it first in the cold season. Almost as if to say: “Get off my back! If you bother me, see where that will get you! “ Now, this winter’s second summit attempt also failed. On the Rupal side, the south side of the mountain, Russians Nickolay Totmjanin, Valery Shamalo, Serguey Kondrashkin and Victor Koval had to turn around from Camp 4 at 7150 meters. The four climbers from St. Petersburg had tried to sit a snow storm out, with wind speeds of 100 km/h. No chance.

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Does Nanga Parbat show its teeth again? More than 20 winter expeditions already failed on the 8125-meter-high mountain in Pakistan. Beside K 2, Nanga Parbat is the only eight-thousander which has still not been scaled in winter. That’s why the “Naked Mountain” has been an attractive destination for professional mountaineers over the past years. The Polish climber Tomasz called Tomek Mackiewicz is trying to climb the  ninth highest mountain on earth for the fifth consecutive year. After having reached an altitude of about 7200 meters with the German mountaineer David Goettler on the south side of the mountain (Rupal side) last year, Tomek is now climbing on the northwest side (Diamir side). Today he and the Frenchwoman Elisabeth Revol returned safely from a summit attempt to base camp.

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Even if it may seem in spring again as though there was only Mount Everest, it is also worth looking to other eight-thousanders. A highly qualified team has been formed to open a new route via the north face of Kangchenjunga: Denis Urubko and Artem Brown from Russia, Adam Bielecki from Poland and the Basque Alex Txikon. Urubko has initiated the project. Denis, who was born in Kazakhstan but is now a Russian citizen, wants to draw a definite line under the past year which was so unfortunate for him.

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