Winter 2016 | A Long Pause for Nanga Parbat Teams (Updated)

A full scale blizzard – with heavy snowfall and winds exceeding 100km/hr – is about to hit the Nanga Parbat. With no respite in weather at least until February 4th, the climbers now fight bad conditions in BC. Two teams have already left the mountain. There are reports of a third group’s departure in upcoming days. So, the action converges on Diamir side and possibly Kinshofer route.

Nanga Parbat summit as seen from C3 on Kinshofer route; Source

International Team
Alex Txikon, Ali Sadpara and Daniele Nardi are well placed for summit push as soon as weather allows. They have fixed ropes till 6700m on Kinshofer route, shifted summit-push gear to C3 and are fairly acclimatized.

“If conditions do not change, from C3 we could notice that it won’t be necessary to fix anything else from 6.700m to summit”, Txikon explains. “We’ve memorized the route, we know how many meters and which rope we have in each section. We’ve amply prepared the route for summit push. Now we just need to be lucky with weather; hope it will give us a chance”.

Ali Sadpara at the site of C3 (6700m) on Kinshofer route; Source

Blue ice between 6500m-6700m. Source

Possible Change in Plans
Simone Moro and Tamara Lunger reached Diamir BC with the intention to climb Messner-Messner-Eisendle-Tomaseth route. They set up C2 couple of weeks ago, but haven’t been able to go any further. (Simone Moro wanted to reach as high as C4 before summit-bid).

In latest development, Dominik Szczepanski – the Polish journalist at Nanga Parbat BC – reported that the two Italian climbers have gone up on January 25th to strip down their camps. It’s speculated that they may change their summit push strategy. They aren’t leaving the mountain immediately, though.

The five remaining climbers on Diamir side; Source

UPDATE (26-Jan-16 1800hrs PST):  It’s official now!

Simone Moro and Tamara Lunger will join the international team on Kinshofer route for summit push.

“Thanks to the information from Tomek and Elisabeth about the state of the seracs, which is at any moment ready to collapse and in addition the bigger and bigger crag, we decided to unite the forces in the Kinshofer route.” Tamara wrote a while ago, “I feel sorry, because the team of Txicon has already done almost all the fixing work and we had not the possibility to participate in it, but what I notice here, is that it never exist a competition here, but that our two teams are grown together in this period and share friendship.”

Yesterday, the two Italian climbers brought everything down from C2 and deposit below C3 on North Face. Together with Ali, Alex and Daniele, they will wait for a summit window now.

Nanga Dream Withdrawal?
Polish team, led by Marek Klonowski, have returned to Base Camp. There are reports that the team reached an altitude of 7500m on Schell route, and this possibly was the final summit push.

With a long period of bad weather and team’s scheduled early February return to Poland, media reports suggest that there will be no further attempts from Rupal side. We don’t have any direct information from the team, yet.

Nanga Dream team in BC hut; Source

Tomek and Elisabeth Return Home
Tomek Mackiewicz and Elisabeth Revol came down from 7200m to BC on January 23rd. They had devised a plan for summit push and inspected the route from 7500m. The plan was to traverse from Northeast side to Kinshofer route (intersecting somewhere around 7600m) and proceed to summit. However, freezing cold and lack of food and gas, forced them to turn back from C4.

The duo left Base Camp on January 24th.

Elisa and Tomek with Simone Moro, before their departure; Source