On the Rupal side (© David Goettler/The North Face)

Over an out. The Russian winter expedition on Nanga Parbat is finished. Nickolay Totmjanin, Valery Shamalo, Serguey Kondrashkin and Victor Koval decided to go home. “Today is exactly the 45th day since we left St. Petersburg, and, unfortunately, the time for our expedition runs to the end. The mountain is clear at last, for the first time in two weeks, but there’re still snow flags on the top due to the strong wind“, the four climbers told Russianclimb via SMS. “We pack Base Camp and are going down.“ A few days ago, they had reached Camp 4 at 7,150 meters on the Rupal (south) side of the mountain, but had been forced back by storm and cold. Thus, only the climbers on the Diamir (north) side are staying on Nanga Parbat. Meanwhile, Italian climber Daniele Nardi reached above Camp 3 an altitude of 6,100 meters on the Mummery Rib. The team of Basque climber Alex Txikon and the three Iranian climbers have to do a lot of tracking work on the Kinshofer route. “Just managed to fix until 5,800 more or less. Snow was too deep“, Alex wrote in his blog.

Simone’s secret

Simone Moro auf der ISPO

“I’m surprised“, Italian climber Simone Moro said when we met at the trade fair ISPO in Munich today and talked about the end of the Russian expedition. “I really thought they could make it.“ If Nanga Parbat remains unclimbed once more this winter, it would be an option for him to try again, Simone told me. Moro has already failed twice on Nanga Parbat in winter: with Russian Denis Urubko in 2012 and with German David Goettler in 2014. Simone will travel to the Himalayas next week. Only then he wants to disclose the secret about his upcoming winter climb. At the ISPO, I failed prising the secret out of him. We still have to wait a few days more.