Everest new route team pushing 8000m after storm
May 6, 2004 13: 05 EST
Today, after being pinned down by the weekend's hurricane, the Russian North Face team made it up to 7750m again.
The guys from the “Siberia” group worked all day freeing up frozen ropes from the weekend storm. They also hacked out most of a semi-hanging camp at 7550m.
Early Friday Kuznetsov and the “Siberia” guys will take advantage of the lower winds and slowly work themselves up through the rocks towards 8000m. Shabaline’s group is back in BC getting some rest after initially establishing 7750 last week.
All progress is extremely slow at present due to the high altitude and absense of supplementary oxygen, but there is still plenty of time left.
If they reach 8500 m during next week the team will be in a very good position for a summit attempt. When reaching the snowfield at 8600 the climbing should be easier and no fixed ropes needed.
Top image: 7750m – present high position, 7900m – rock belt, 8300m – yellow band, 8600m – gray band, 8650m – snowfield, 8750m – summit pyramid.
Bottom image: Full image of the wall.
The most exciting expedition on Everest this spring the Russian Central North Face team.. This is a severe, unclimbed, technical route to the left of the Hornbein/Japanese couloir.
The guys are going straight up, on a clean and lofty face. The technical difficulty of the route along with the extreme altitude makes this one of the most difficult challenges in mountaineering.
The expedition is a Russian dream team. There are previous Everest summiteers, Golden Ice Axe winners, and many, many 8000m veterans.
Koshelenko, who just made the first summit of Nuptse East is on the team as well. The Russians also have a young 22 year old – Alexey Bukinich – Koshelenko pulled for him, and he made the team.
Top image of route courtesy of russianclimb.com compiled by ExWeb.
Bottom image courtesy of Stephen Koch compiled by ExWeb
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