Karakoram Diaries – 15th July
A round-up of today’s events on the mountains of the Karakoram.
(Updated throughout the day)
“The first rotation of the Alpomania-Pioneer team is complete. All participants feel great, everyone is in the sun. Several members of the Jasmin team made the second rotation to C3. Team Madison spent 2 nights in C1 and 2 nights in C2, already descended into the BC. So far, the situation is as follows. At 14.07. the railing is fixed to C3. Several high altitude porters of the Karakoram expedition team tried to bring oxygen to C3, but did not reach 200m. 13-14.07 two days of bad weather with wind up to 55 km / h. All teams are sitting downstairs. In C2, three tents of the Madison group were blown away by the wind. On # K2, according to the plan, the Sherpas of the two teams will go on 16.07 to C2 and then to C3 for oxygen delivery. On Broad Peak, the teams are preparing to take the assault early in the morning of 15.07 right at C2. Forecast for Broad Peak for 16-18.07. excellent, wind 5 km / h on the summit! Our friends are there! Let’s wish the guys good luck!”
Karakoram Expeditions (Broad Peak)
“Finally, the Karakorum Expeditions rope fixing team left to fix ropes to the summit from camp 3. The team will spend a night at camp 2 and then head out for the hard job.
“The team will be joined by Don Bowie and Lotta Hintsa
“The team aims to fix the ropes to the summit on Saturday 17th July 2021 and on 18th July our clients!”
“We held a meeting among the teams planning to climb Broad Peak. I am glad that most of them go without oxygen and are ready to interact on the most problematic sections of the route (how was this lacking on Annapurna, where the majority followed the lead of commercial climbers). The weather forecast gives us hope to make the ascent on July 17 or 18. Hope the weather won’t let you down. The main problem is a lot of snow in the section from camp 3 to the top. We need to replace each other to punch the path. Today we left the BC at 4:00 am to the mountain. Now I’m writing from C1. I work in a duo with Saulius from Lithuania, together with the teams of Vitaly Lazo and Don Bowie. We will have a little rest and continue our ascent to C2. The weather during the day should be normal and we hope that the slopes above the second camp will have time to clear of the fresh snow that has fallen in the last few days. Tomorrow ascent to Camp 3. Well, then we will make every effort to reach the top and go down.”
“Low clouds slowly rising. We leave shortly for second rotation.”
‘Death Zone Freeride’ (Broad Peak)
“Avalanche on Broad Peak — and all alpinists are OK!
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“Early in the morning of July 15, Death Zone Freeride team started the ascent from Base Camp.
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“After they left, an avalanche descended on the slope. But you shouldn’t worry, the guys got in touch, everyone is all right!
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“On July 16, alpinists will climb to Camp 3
“On July 17, an ascent to the summit is planned
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“Together with DZF, 5 more groups are ascending.”
Still jabbing at 7000m! Hoping to summit Broad Peak tomorrow!”
“Second Rotation !!
“Asif Bhatti just reached Camp 1 again. All fit and better performance than first rotation Ma Sha Allah !!
“Time for Hi Tea at some serious High Altitude … the real essence of hi tea!”
The Altitude Team (Gasherbrum I)
“The moment of the summit attack arrives. The whole team is ready and acclimatized to leave the five together this next morning towards C1, crossing the glacier at night to have optimal conditions. We will leave in two hours, and we will inform you about the stages! In principle, if there are no unforeseen events, the plan is as follows: Julyy 15th → C1, July 16th → C2, July 17th → C3 – Summit Push July 18th → Summit at 11h local time (8h BCN time) → C3 Our intention is to do the stages of dawn since it is when the mountain is more stable.”
Marco Confortola (Gasherbrum II)
“Tomorrow morning from BC we’ll push ourselves up to C2 and the next day we’ll try to finish work to equip the route. BC hasn’t snowed much these days, unlike higher altitudes, we have no news of how much snow we’ll find during the climb. Everything is ready and as usual we will leave CB around 2.00 hours local.
The past few days with Mario Vielmo we did a good job, but it must be finished. The collaboration of the whole team that divided with us the load up to those shares is precious.”
Paul Diac and Iulian Costan (Gasherbrum II)
Paul and Iulian arrived in C1 after 8 hours, they are feeling very good, they are going to go to sleep and tomorrow to climb C2.”
“Weather forecast seems promising until the end of weekend! We started our first attempt to Muchu Chhish peak. The route is well known to me from the previous expedition so we reached C1 camp pretty fast. Punkac, Lukas and Drobek stayed at C1 overnight and I continued with Tomas until C2. It was really exhausting, 1600 height meters. We continue to C3 tomorrow morning. Guys will follow us. Fingers crossed!”
Summer Season in the Karakoram – 2021
Photo: Czech / Slovakia Expedition
