Allie Pepper of Australia summited Makalu today at 3 pm Nepal time, her home team reported. It was a late arrival, and on the difficult, steel-hard blue ice, the descent became a marathon. Four hours after summiting, her tracker located her far from Camp 3. However, eventually she reached it.
Allie Pepper’s story was posted on Instagram today.
As we noted previously, the Australian set off toward the summit of Makalu yesterday. She is climbing without supplementary oxygen and had waited in Camp 3 at 7,450m for two days until the winds dropped.
Not alone
Her tracker showed her location near the summit area, still far from Camp 3, at 9 pm. Her elevation then was 7,900m. Camp 3, at 7,450m, she reached some hours later.
Pepper is not alone on the mountain. She was part of a large summit group from Seven Summit Treks. The outfitter reported 12 summits today, including Pepper’s, three other clients, and seven sherpa guides.
Two of the guides were Mingtemba Sherpa, known as Mikel Sherpa, and Ngima Wangdak Sherpa. Both supported Pepper on her recent Annapurna climb. Pepper was the only one going without oxygen. It is unclear whether other teams attempted to summit Makalu today as well.
There are extremely dry conditions on Makalu’s upper slopes this season. Photo: Stefi Troguet
Other no-O2 climbers on Makalu include Stefi Troget of Andorra, who returned to Base Camp from Camp 3 today. Bartek Ziemski’s plan is to ski down Makalu, filmed by Oswald Pereira. The two Poles have not reported their whereabouts lately, and one wonders how badly the blue ice will affect their ambitions.
Norrdine Nauar (currently on Everest) reports that Allie Pepper had had some physical problems on Annapurna some weeks ago, but she still made it to the summit without O2. After Makalu, she wants to climb Kangchenjunga. Her goal is to summit the 14×8,000’ers without oxygen, apparently as quickly as possible.
