Something happened on the upper slopes of 8,167m Dhaulagiri that made the climbers pushing for the summit retreat. They have shared no details or explanations.
As they return to Base Camp, two other groups — probably the last of the season — are on their way up. The climbers hope to reach the summit on Monday, when good weather is expected.
Russians retreat
“At 10 pm, we set out for the final assault, we decided to take the risk,” skier Vitaly Lazo reported on social media today. “Our pace was slow, we walked all night and approached the wide couloir at 7,700m in the sunlight,” he explained, referring to the couloir that leads to the summit ridge of Dhaulagiri, after a long traverse.
What follows is Vitaly Lazo’s partial account of events. It sounds like a film teaser, and indeed, the Russians — like most 8,000m climbers these days — are documenting their climb for something they call The Film.
We approached the place where five guys from St. Petersburg fell (in an avalanche) last year. That’s when strange things started…For several hours, Anton and I were the only people above 7,300m but, as it turned out, that was not quite the situation. I can’t tell the details of this event now, but there will be a story about it in the film.
Whatever happened, Lazo and Pugovkin, who had hoped to ski down Dhaulagiri, turned down at 7,900m, and the reason they gave was nothing mysterious — a simple lack of acclimatization.
“We had wanted to climb the mountain within the current weather window, so instead of a third acclimatization trip, we went straight for the summit,” Lazo explained. “[But] if we had [continued to] the summit, we would never have made it back down.”
Benjamin Lieber, a Western guide with 14 Peaks Expedition (Seven Summit Treks’ sister company), confirmed that his group didn’t get to the top but shared no details, either.
“Dhaulagiri 1 is such an impressive peak and not so easy,” he wrote. “The weather is fickle and so are the snow slopes.”
Naoko Watanabe of Japan is also on Dhaulagiri (she previously summited it in 2021) and mentioned she launched a summit push with a climbing partner identified as Sato, who reportedly became too weak during the summit push. Both retreated from 7,755m.
Final summit push
While the climbers returned to Base Camp, another group departed on what was likely the last push of the season on Dhaulagiri.
Among them are David Klein and Marci Nagy of Hungary, climbing without supplementary oxygen or personal porters. Last week, Nagy had been airlifted to the hospital, reportedly suffering from kidney stones. Klein’s home team reported the climbers expect to summit on October 13.
They will not be alone on the fixed ropes: An Imagine Nepal group also hopes to summit on Monday.
