Thursday, 5 November 2009

The Piolet 'd Or candidates are stacking up fast

The last weeks quite a few notable climbs has been ticked off in the Himalayas. A few of them certainly looks like good Piolet 'd Or candidates and they have been climbed by past winners so no surprise if some familiar names will return to the nomination list this year. Quite interesting is that Fowler has been active on several of the objectives now featuring new routes or partly new routs or just fine repeats. One can only admire the visionary Fowler and envy his accomplishments.

Guess the boss of the Piolet 'd Or organization will miss out on a price since he did not top out himself but the Trommsorff - Graziani route previously reported here looks brilliant. Personally I would not give a shit in the remaining snow flog either. I'm all for more route focus and less summit frenzy. But thats only me.

Bruce Normand with who I tried Gasherbrum 4 this summer bagged a super nice route on Wuelian Feng 6627 m. The north facing buttress was graded M6 WI5 5.7 R and is 2650 meters. Not a bad conciliation price. Bruce did the route with Jed Brown, Kyle Dempster and Jared Vihauer in a 5 day push. For more info look at www.alpinist.com/doc/web09x/newswire-xuelian-massif-normand

Marko Prezelj, Rok Blagus and Luka Lindic came home from India with three new routes on three different Bhagirathi peaks. The hardest route the trio accomplished was a 1300 meter ED+ / ABO (6b+ M8 WI6+) on Bhagirathi II. For more info please look at www.alpinist.com/doc/web09f/newswire-bhagirathi-prezelj-details

Last years multiple awarded Piolet 'd Or climber Simon Anthamatten with brother Samuel and Michael Lerjen climbed the South Face of Jasemba 7350 m in alpine style in a five day push. The hardest part of the accent was dealing with tricky snow conditions. For further information www.climbing.com/news/hotflas...ce_of_jasemba/

Four Russian climbers bagged a partly new route on Siguniang 6250 m. The attempted new line proved difficult and in the end the Russians traversed in to the Fowler Ramsden route. The route was graded Russian 6b. Several falls was taken on lead and one of the guys spent 3 days recovering from injuries sustained during a fall.

Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman has grabbed the first accent of the much eyed North Face of Chang Himal 6750 m in the Kangchenjung area. This 1500 meter North Face was listed in Alpinist as one of the great unsolved problems of the Himalayas. I'm sure Crux sponsored Bullock is quite please with this accent and I'm very impressed by the teams swift action once established in BC. Chapeau!






Photo of intended Bullock - Housseman route courtesy: www.dmmclimbing.com

From Russia with love... Russian K2 West Face climbers Vitaly Gorelik and Gleb Sokolov has showed off there capacity with a new route on the North Face of Peak Pobeda 7439 m. The two climbed the route in alpine style over seven and half days. This was Sokolovs thirs attempt on this line and he is no stranger to Pobeda with several previous summits of Pobeda. This is impressive stuff and the line looks both interesting and hard.

Picture courtesy of www.bask.ru

Posted by E9 Climbing at 18:36