It’s not exactly alpine style up a new route, but Vassiliy Pivtso, 49, and his small team will try to make their Makalu climb as retro as possible in this commercial age.
The Kazakh climber once summited all 14 8,000m peaks without supplementary oxygen or personal sherpa support. Now, he is repeating the feat with two younger partners.
However, the atmosphere in Nepal’s mountains has changed as the high peaks have gone commercial. New regulations discourage self-sufficient teams these days. Pivtso’s expedition to Makalu will try to see whether an old-fashioned approach can coexist with this new reality.
Independent climbers
Soon, hundreds of climbers will head up the highest peaks on Earth, clipped to fixed ropes and often waiting in long lines. New regulations state that foreigners on the 8,000’ers must have a local guide with them. Yet a significant number of those on the normal routes will try to distinguish themselves either by climbing without bottled oxygen and/or without a personal guide every step of the way.
Some will aim for speed, such as Karl Eggloff and Tyler Andrews on Everest, and Vadim Druelle on Annapurna. Only a very few will try to follow a style common before commercial climbs took over Nepal’s 8,000’ers. In those more innocent days, teams met in Base Camp and agreed to collaborate on the route. Mostly, they’d progress on their own above Base Camp and not use O2 except sometimes on Everest or K2. Expeditions lasted about two months, and climbers attempted one mountain per season.
The turn of the millennium
The good ol’ days: Kazakh climbers Vassiliy Pivtsov, left, and Maxut Zhumayev were a killer pair during the early 2000s. Photo: Facebook
Vassiliy Pivtsof was one of the regulars during the first decade of the 21st century. He and partner Maxut Dzumayev shared permits and joined forces to climb one 8,000’er after another.
Only K2 resisted them. Finally, in 2011, they summited via the difficult North Ridge with Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and Darek Zaluski. It was Pivtsov’s sixth attempt and Zhumayev’s fifth.
Through all his climbs, Pivtsov never used or even carried supplementary oxygen except once. He was administered emergency oxygen on his descent from Everest in 2007 when he fell sick with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema.
Pivtsov returned to K2 in the winter of 2018-19 on a team led by Artem Braun. It was his second attempt on K2 in winter, again without oxygen or porters, after first trying with a Polish team in 2008-9.
Turned to 7,000’ers
Other than winter K2, Pivtsov has taken a rest from the 8,000’ers over the last 20 years.
“But I never stopped climbing,” he told ExplorersWeb. “I turned instead to 7,000’ers in the Pamir and Tien Shan ranges. It was there that I met Mikhail Tarasov from Moscow and Peter Shulgin from Omsk. We made a good team together, so last year, we tested ourselves at high altitude by climbing Broad Peak.”
The successful Broad Peak experience encouraged his two young partners to add more 8,000’ers to their list. They eventually decided to try Makalu this spring.
File summit picture of Vassiliy Pivtsov. Photo: Facebook
Last summer, Pivtsov saw how much the Himalayan climbing scene had changed.
“I didn’t see any independent climbers in Base Camp; they were all members of guided groups,” he said. “I also saw how much the Pakistani climbers have improved in their performance at altitude, especially on K2.”
Pivtsov’s team has no intention of changing their climbing approach on Makalu. He terms it a “sportive style.” It consists of summiting the way climbers did it after siege-style expeditions fell out of fashion but before 8,000m climbing became big business — without oxygen or porters.
“Otherwise,” he says, “we are planning to go up Makalu’s classic route with two acclimatization rotations before the final summit push. We will also set up our own high-altitude camps.”
The team will report on their progress on a Telegram channel.
Incidentally, Pivtsov’s old partner Maxut Zhumayev has also returned to the 8,000’ers. Last fall, he led a team on Manaslu.
