The Pakistan climbing season is slowly grinding to a halt with just a few teams still active in the region. Unfortunately, there have been few updates over the past week or so as climbers continue to proceed with some major climbs.
K2 remains a focus of course with Al Hancock still on the mountain. In his last update, which came over a week ago, Al indicated that his team had been up as high as Camp 2 and that they were back in Base Camp, resting and preparing for a summit push. Since then there has been no word on the team’s status and we can only assume that they may have started their ascent. For now we’ll just have to wait for Al to re-emerge and fill us in on the expedition.
One climber who did successfully top out on K2 last week was Polish mountaineer Adam Bielecki who made the ascent without the use of supplemental oxygen. Adam has posted a debrief on his climb on PolishWinterHimaism.pl in which he shares some details on the climb and some great photos as well. Bielecki notes that July 31st was an unprecedented day on the mountain with 28 climbers reaching the summit. For K2 that is an unbelievably high number and gives us a good indication of how good the conditions must have been during that ascent. Thanks to ExWeb for sharing the link to Adam’s debrief and be warned. If the link to the Polish website set off the malware warning in my browser. I’m not sure if the site will cause problems or not, but be aware before you head over to read the update.
Finally, the Trango Air Wall expedition should be proceeding on schedule as well, but there haven’t been any updates on their progress either. The team did post the video below however which gives some insights into what they are hoping to accomplish on the climb and how the four members came together to make an attempt on the 6286 meter (20,623 ft) Great Tower which they hope to BASE jump off the top. Hopefully we’ll get more news on their progress soon as well.
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