Everest Southwest Face

Everest hard way. So the two Slovakian climbers Zoltan Pál and Vladimir Štrba had named their expedition on the south side of the highest mountain on earth. They wanted to reach the 8850-meter-high summit via the difficult route through the Southwest Face, which had been opened by Doug Scott and Dougal Haston in 1975. In contrast to the legendary British climbers, the two Slovaks planned to climb the route in the wall if possible in Alpine style: without Sherpa support, fixed ropes, high camps and also without bottled oxygen. Now they have run into difficulties in the wall.

Eye injury

At an altitude of about 7200 meters, Štrba and Pál were hit by an avalanche, said the operator Utmost Adventure, who had organized the Slovakian expeditions. “Vlado is physically fine, Zoli was hit in the eye and can not see properly,” their Base Camp team informed on Facebook. A rescue team of four Sherpas will try to help the Slovaks down to camp 2, from where they are expected to be flown down by helicopter on Wednesday. Due to the still unsettled weather, rescue helicopters could not take off today.

The two Slovaks are the only climbers this spring on the Nepalese south side who want to ascend on an extremely demanding instead of the normal route. According to his own account, Štrba scaled Cho Oyu in 1997 and tried his hand at the eight-thousanders Makalu, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Broad Peak without reaching the summit. Pál has so far climbed several seven-thousanders.

Update 11 May: The two climbers are in C 2, thus safe. Now they only have to wait for the rescue helicopter to be flown out.