Face Ouest du K2 : trop longtemps dans la zone de la mort, manquant de matériel, les russes font demi-tour a 100m du sommet.
Après 5 jours dans la zone de la mort, sans oxygène, et avec de la neige jusqu'à la poitrine, une zone rocheuse a finalement obligé les trois russes de la cordée de tête a faire demi-tour a 100m du sommet.
K2 west face: Too long in the deathzone, too short of gear - Russians retreat 100m below the summit
After 5 days in the deathzone without O2, and dealing with chest-deep snow, a rock section has finally forced the three Russian frontline fighters back - just 100 meters shy from the summit!
"The climbers have lost too much energy during the four days and fout nights they spent waiting for 'normal' weather in C5," reports Russian Climb. "All attempts to overcome the vertical rock section at 8550 meters have been in vain. With precipices both to the left and the right of the rock bastion, Alexey Bolotov, Gennady Kirievsky and Nick Totmjanin are too tired, and too short of necessary climbing gear. They have turned back down."
"Alex, Gennady and Nick set off yesterday from C5 toward the summit. They pitched their little tent - camp 6 - above 8.000m. Today at 5:00 am they proceeded up, breaking trail in waist-deep or even chest-deep snow - until they reached the bottom of the rock wall at 8550 m. Exhausted, they have started the descent with only about 100 vertical meters more to go."
Ed. note: RussianClimb has asked ExWeb to publish this story urgently, since the expedition's website has crashed due to excess of traffic.
Viktor Kozlov, Vassily Yelagin, Piotr Kuznetsov and Pavel Shabalin spent a few weeks by the west face in 2004 scouting access routes through the glacier and possible routes on the wall.
Despite bad weather conditions – the guys returned to Russia boiling with excitement: “The first impression is very good,” called out team leader Viktor Kozlov. Their exploratory team had found a pass to the sheer wall near the Chinese border. Right after the scouting expedition, Pavel Shabalin made an alpine-style ascent of Khan Tengri’s North Face with Iljas Tukhvatullin. Pavel paid dearly for it though - losing 3 toes and 5 fingers to frostbite.
But loaded with topos, images and video of the wall, the team has now been feverishly working for two months on the new route they hope to open on K2's west face. There's nothing on the wall, and it has never been climbed before.
After opening a new direct route on Everest’s north face in 2005, Victor Kozlov is again leading a strong Russian team to complete the first direct ascent up K2’s west face. Team members are Nickolay Cherny, Serguey Penzov, Victor Volodin, Valery Shamolo, Dmitry Komarov, Pavel Shabalin, Iljas Tukhvatullin, Andrey Mariev, Vadim Popovitch, Gleb Sokolov, Vitaly Ivanov, Vitaly Gorelik, Eugeny Vinogradsky, Alexey Bolotov, Nickolay Totmjanin, Gennady Kirievsky, Alexander Korobkov, Victor Pleskachevsky, Serguey Bychkovsky, Igor Borisenko, Vladimir Kochurov, Vladimir Kuptsov and Oleg Ushakov.
"The climbers have lost too much energy during the four days and fout nights they spent waiting for 'normal' weather in C5," reports Russian Climb. "All attempts to overcome the vertical rock section at 8550 meters have been in vain. With precipices both to the left and the right of the rock bastion, Alexey Bolotov, Gennady Kirievsky and Nick Totmjanin are too tired, and too short of necessary climbing gear. They have turned back down."
"Alex, Gennady and Nick set off yesterday from C5 toward the summit. They pitched their little tent - camp 6 - above 8.000m. Today at 5:00 am they proceeded up, breaking trail in waist-deep or even chest-deep snow - until they reached the bottom of the rock wall at 8550 m. Exhausted, they have started the descent with only about 100 vertical meters more to go."
Ed. note: RussianClimb has asked ExWeb to publish this story urgently, since the expedition's website has crashed due to excess of traffic.
Viktor Kozlov, Vassily Yelagin, Piotr Kuznetsov and Pavel Shabalin spent a few weeks by the west face in 2004 scouting access routes through the glacier and possible routes on the wall.
Despite bad weather conditions – the guys returned to Russia boiling with excitement: “The first impression is very good,” called out team leader Viktor Kozlov. Their exploratory team had found a pass to the sheer wall near the Chinese border. Right after the scouting expedition, Pavel Shabalin made an alpine-style ascent of Khan Tengri’s North Face with Iljas Tukhvatullin. Pavel paid dearly for it though - losing 3 toes and 5 fingers to frostbite.
But loaded with topos, images and video of the wall, the team has now been feverishly working for two months on the new route they hope to open on K2's west face. There's nothing on the wall, and it has never been climbed before.
After opening a new direct route on Everest’s north face in 2005, Victor Kozlov is again leading a strong Russian team to complete the first direct ascent up K2’s west face. Team members are Nickolay Cherny, Serguey Penzov, Victor Volodin, Valery Shamolo, Dmitry Komarov, Pavel Shabalin, Iljas Tukhvatullin, Andrey Mariev, Vadim Popovitch, Gleb Sokolov, Vitaly Ivanov, Vitaly Gorelik, Eugeny Vinogradsky, Alexey Bolotov, Nickolay Totmjanin, Gennady Kirievsky, Alexander Korobkov, Victor Pleskachevsky, Serguey Bychkovsky, Igor Borisenko, Vladimir Kochurov, Vladimir Kuptsov and Oleg Ushakov.
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