ISLAMABAD: Nanga Parbat, the Killer Mountain, has sent four more winter challengers packing.
The Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) said the expedition, consisting of Russian climbers Nickolay Totmjanin, Serguey Kondrashkin, Valery Shamalo and Victor Koval, was turned away from 7,150 metres of the 8,126 metres high peak.
Karrar Haidri, member of the ACP executive council, explained how in their summit push a week ago the team had fought hurricanes and blizzard at camp IV for two days. After the two-member team of Polish and a French climber last week, the Russians were the second to call it quits.
“The four climbers eventually descended to the base camp in an unfavourable weather on February 3,” said Mr Haidri, explaining how they had been on the mountain for over 45 days now.
The Russians were attempting to summit the ninth highest peak via the Schell route on the Rupal side, which is one of the three faces of the mountain. According to the ACP, this expedition arrived at the base camp in late December. By the third week of January, the team had established three camps.
The ACP said the weather on Nanga Parbat had been terrible since the end of January. Despite unfavourable conditions, the climbers continued to push. They had been in the Camp IV on Jan 31 but the conditions were too bad to climb.
Nonetheless, a Spaniard and three Iranian climbers were still on the Diamir face of the mountain. The two teams reached the Diamer base camp at the end of January. The Iranians - Reza Bahadorani, Iraj Maani and Mahmood Hashemi - were delayed by visa issues. Spaniard Alex Txikon was climbing with Ali Sadpara and Mohammad Khan. Both teams had decided to work together.
The two teams established camp I higher than 5,050 metres and left the base camp on February 4 to resume the route fixing and setting up camp II and camp III. Fresh snow covered the tracks and it took them seven hours to reach the camp I. “It was a hard day, very deep snow,” Alex Txikon wrote on his website.
According to the ACP, Italian mountaineer Daniele Nardi had established camp III as high as 5,600 metres and planned to climb higher given good weather conditions. Daniele Nardi had left the base camp on February 4. He climbed directly to the camp II at 5,200 metres, where he found his tent broken down under the weight of snow. He had to work a couple of hours to fix everything.
It may be noted that K2 and Nanga Parbat are the only two peaks in the world that have never been summated in the winter season.
Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2015
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