Across the Karakorum, deep, fresh snow is impeding climbers on their summit pushes.
As on Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II, so it is on the still-unclimbed Muchu Chhish. Here, Pavel Korinek and Tomas Petrecek spent the day wallowing through snow above Camp 3, as they pressed for the summit. “There’s tons of snow!” they joked. “We need a snow blower!”
The team reached Camp 3 yesterday. “We slept under a 20m-high serac, about 200m further than last year,” they reported. “We were planning to cross the whole main ridge today. But as weather conditions were poor — there was a blizzard outside — we left our camp at 8 in the morning.
“After five hours of walking in snow up to the waist, we managed to climb only 250m.”
In the end, the conditions were no joke. They retreated to Camp 3 in extremely danger because of avalanches. Tomorrow, they will retreat to Base Camp.
