The joint summit push of Seven Summit Treks and Imagine Nepal on Dhaulagiri ended at Camp 1, when an avalanche hit some of the tents. No one was injured, but a climber from the Imagine Nepal team told ExplorersWeb that the slide buried most of the oxygen stored in the camp, along with gear from other teams
Even getting to Camp 1 had been extremely slow for the Sherpas climbing ahead of the group, because so much fresh snow had fallen some days ago that it buried the ropes and forced the leaders to break trail again.
David Klein and Marcy Nagy of Hungary had considered climbing roped up to each other if the fixed ropes were buried all the way. In the end, however, they cancelled their push when they learned that the slide had buried their gear in Camp 1.
Makalu
Over the weekend, Artem Tsentsevitsky and Denis Alekshenko climbed completely alone on Makalu, without supplementary oxygen, a broken trail, or fixed ropes. The climbers were out of touch, although Aleksenko had a tracker that allowed us to check his live location.
The two men struggled on Sunday, with very slow progress — some 400m in six hours, according to Alpymon. Today, they passed the Makalu La — the wide col between Makalu’s main peak and Kangchungtse — and continued up the ridge that led to the summit area. However, something apparently went wrong, as they retreated in the afternoon.
Denis Aleksenko’s tracker on Makalu shows that he had passed the Makalu La and started up the final ridge today, but retreated. Track by InReach on Google Maps
According to the tracker, the highest point they reached was 7,687m, at around 1 pm Nepal time. By 4 pm, Aleksenko was descending fast and had reached 6,480m. His partner, Tsentsevitsky, does not have a tracker. We will wait for details when both have returned to Base Camp.
The two Russian climbers had launched their summit push on Friday, despite running out of time and money to cover the cost of returning to Kathmandu. Their determination and austere, self-sufficient style are rare on the 8,000’ers these days.
Cho Oyu summits
IFMGA guide Chhiring Sherpa has completed his 14×8,000m list on Cho Oyu with a speed climb from Base Camp to the summit.
Chhiring Sherpa shared summit news on Instagram today.
Chhiring has guided for several companies, mostly 8K Expeditions, where he climbed with American Chris Warner on 9 8,000m peaks. Recently, he’ been working as the head of his own company, Expedition Base.
The Madison Mountaineering team also reached the top today, in apparently good conditions.
Both Adventure Consultants and the Seven Summit Treks team are also on the way to the summit and are currently at Camp 1.
Ama Dablam ready
A team of seven Sherpa rope fixers, assigned by Nepal’s Association of Expedition Operators, made the first summits on Ama Dablam this autumn. Nuru Wangchu Sherpa led the rope fixers, as he has for the past four seasons, The Tourism Times reports. Today, a number of commercial climbers followed them to the top.
Ama Dablam is one of the most popular peaks in Nepal and is mostly climbed between the second half of October and the beginning of winter.
Climbers on their way to Camp 3 on Ama Dablam. Photo: 8K Expeditions
Last fall, 494 climbers summited Ama Dablam, a success rate of 95.5%. It was the most summited mountain that season, even more than Manaslu, which had 313 summits in 2024. Seven more climbers climbed Ama Dablam in the early winter of 2024, and all of them topped out, according to The Himalayan Database.
