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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Alex Txikon seems to be euphoric. “I do not feel tired,” writes the 35-year-old Basque, after having descended from Everest South Col at 7,950 meters in one go to Base Camp at about 5,300 meters. “My body signals to me that we will go to the summit the next time. Soon you will have news of the attack.” Before, Alex – along with the Sherpas Norbu, Nuri, Chhepal, Phurba and Pemba – had ascended to Camp 4 for the first time during his winter expedition.

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Alex Txikon and his Sherpa team have reached the Base camp at the foot of Mount Everest in sufficient time before the beginning of the expected bad weather period. This is shown by his GPS tracker. The 35-year-old Basque was “exhausted but satisfied and very confident to reach the summit,” the Spanish sports newspaper “Marca” reported on Saturday evening. It has not yet been confirmed how high exactly Txikon and Co. have ascended this time.

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Strange. Since yesterday, Alex Txikon‘s GPS tracker, which is to document his ascent on Mount Everest, has not shown any movement. Lastly, an altitude of more than 6200 meters was displayed. Afterwards nothing. I’ve asked. “Yesterday they [Alex and the Sherpas who accompany him] went up to Camp 2 (6,400 meters), where they have slept,” Gontzal Saenz from the press team of the Basque climber writes to me. According to him, the GPS tracker has not been working correctly and is showing the wrong altitude. “I think they were going to keep climbing up today.” The goal was to prepare the route from Camp 3 at 7,400 meters to Camp 4 on the South Col at 7,950 meters by tomorrow. “The weather forecasts are very bad, with very strong winds, for the next few days,” writes Gontzal. “The plan is to return to the base camp tomorrow [Saturday] and wait there for the weather to improve again.”

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Alex Txikon has set off again. At 4.30 a.m. local time, the Basque and his Sherpa team left Everest Base Camp. Their declared destination today: Camp 2 at 6,400 meters. The last entry of his GPS tracker shows a position above Camp 1 in the “Western Cwm” at 6,216 meters. There has as yet been no confirmation that Alex and Co. have reached Camp 2. The 35-year-old wants to scale Mount Everest without bottled oxygen – a feat that before him only Ang Rita Sherpa had succeeded on 22 December 1987, on the very first day of calendrical winter. The Nepalese was then climbing Everest much earlier in the cold season than Txikon now.

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And again snow wins. French climber Elisabeth Revol and her companion Ludovic Giambiasi have abandoned their winter expedition at Manaslu. This is reported by the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”. Heavy snowfall and strong winds in the high camp forced Elisabeth Revol to give up, Rishi Bhandari, head of the Nepalese expedition operator Satori Adventures, told the newspaper. The French team has already broken off their base camp and descended to the village of Samagaon. According to Bhandari, Revol had reached an altitude of 7,300 meters at Manaslu and had planned a summit attempt for Tuesday.

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Alex Txikon has to re-plan. On Sunday his climbing partner on Mount Everest, Carlos Rubio, had to be evacuated by rescue helicopter to Kathmandu due to a lung inflammation. The 28-year-old Spaniard has meanwhile sent a video message from the hospital. His condition is not serious, but he has to recover for a few days at the clinic. “I know he is fine”, Alex Txikon wrote from Camp 3 at 7,400 meters, “but from here we miss him a lot, since he has worked like a champion and I am really proud of him.” Today Txikon and the Sherpas who accompany him want to pitch up Camp 4 at the South Col at almost 8,000 meters, “for all the force he has transmitted to us”, as Alex writes: “In short, this dream would not be possible without you, Carlos.”

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Sunny, but extremely cold. This is what the weather forecast predicts for the next days on Mount Everest. In addition, the wind is to refresh. Temperatures between minus 20 and minus 30 degrees Celsius are expected, Alex Txikon informs. In addition, the wind is to refresh. Nevertheless, the team set off from Base Camp today and reached after seven hours the site of Camp 2 at 6,400 meters. Alex, his Spanish countryman Carlos Rubio and nine Sherpas had previously secured the way through the Khumbu Icefall and pitched up Camp 1 at 6,050 meters, at the entrance of the Western Qwm. It was said, that the team might climb up even to Camp 3 at 7,400 meters within the next days. The climbers are expected back in Base Camp on next Sunday or Monday.

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Winter expeditions are not for wimps. “Today we have climbed up to 6,050 meters to build Camp 1”, the Basque Alex Txikon wrote in his blog from Everest on the weekend. “At the moment, we have less than minus 30 degrees Celsius.” After all, the team of eleven – Alex, his Spanish countryman Carlos Rubio and nine Sherpas, including two “Icefall doctors” experienced in dealing with the dangerous Khumbu Icefall – are quicker than expected. At the beginning of last week, Txikon had assumed that it would take four weeks to reach Camp 2 at 6,400 meters.

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It is a long and hard way up to the 8850-meter-high summit of Mount Everest – all the more in winter and if you want to do it without bottled oxygen. And Alex Txikon and his teammates are just at the beginning. The Basque, his Spanish companion Carlos Rubio and nine Sherpas have begun to find and fix a route through the Khumbu Icefall. “Honestly, it’s what I’m afraid of climbing Everest, I do not want us to get stuck and we’re equipping it for a month”, Alex writes in his blog: “We are working hard, we have to climb a lot of stairs. In short, we have to equip a labyrinth of ice blocks. The terrain “is technical, difficult and demanding,” says Alex. I sent three questions to Everest Base Camp.

Alex, after your winter success on Nanga Parbat in February 2016 you now tackle Mount Everest. Which challenges do you expect on the highest mountain on earth and how high do you estimate your chance of success?

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Ready to go. “We are already at the Base Camp,” Alex Txikon writes on Twitter from the Nepalese south side of Mount Everest.  The Basque climber and his companions have pitched their tents in the 5360-meter-high Base Camp at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall. For one week, the team had trekked from Lukla via the Khumbu region to BC. Txikon reported on dry but cold winter weather.

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I was probably too hasty. One and a half weeks ago I had prophesied a quiet winter time on the highest mountains in the world. Now there will be a spectacular expedition. The Basque Alex Txikon wants to climb Mount Everest in winter, without the use of bottled oxygen. This is consistently reported by Spanish media. The 35-year-old will be accompanied by the internationally still relatively unknown 28-year-old Spanish climber Carlos Rubio, who has hitherto made more headlines as an extreme skier. In addition, the two mountaineers Aitor Barez and Pablo Magister will belong to the team as cameramen.

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The K 2 will probably remain for another year the only eight-thousander that has not been climbed in winter so far. The Polish expedition to the second highest mountain in the world, originally planned for next winter, will take place only in 2017/2018, reports “Taternik”, the journal of the Polish Mountaineering Association PZA. The time to prepare the expedition logistically had run short. After all, the financing by two state-owned companies is in place now, says “Taternik”. In early September, the designated expedition leader Krzysztof Wielicki had mentioned in an interview with Polish radio that there was still a gap of 700,000 Zloty (160,000 Euro) in the expedition budget and that time was running short to close it.

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Heavily armed police officers in the base camp – honestly, that would spoil my joy of mountaineering thoroughly. Soon these special forces are to be not only the exception but the rule in Pakistan, at least at “prestige mountains” like Nanga Parbat (8125 m), K 2 (8611 m) or Rakaposhi (7788 m) and also in much visited camps on the glaciers in the north of the country. In the region of Gilgit-Baltistan, a special “High Altitude Police Unit” was introduced this week. It consists of 50 men now and should be increased to 100 police officers later. The security forces get special clothing against the great cold and are trained by mountaineers, so that they may help in rescue operations in case of emergency. But first and foremost it is their duty to protect foreign climbers.“Because of the ongoing military offensive in the country, there is a high risk of reprisal attacks and we can’t afford to repeat any incident like Nanga Parbat”, police spokesman Mubarak Jan said.

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“He who says patience, says courage, endurance, strength”, Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach once wrote. Of course the Austrian writer, who lived from 1830 to 1913, meant it generally. But with her words she described almost exactly the characteristics that are needed to climb an eight-thousander such as Nanga Parbat in winter. After more than two dozen unsuccessful winter expeditions, courageous, persistant and strong climbers try again to scale the ninth highest mountain on earth this winter. Currently, the attempt of the Russians Nickolay Totmjanin, Valery Shamalo, Serguey Kondrashkin and Victor Koval on the Rupal side, the south side of Nanga Parbat, seems to be the most promising try.

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