With the rope-fixing work stalled on K2 and Broad Peak, the next summit news might come from the Gasherbrums. Climbers have been in Camp 1, ready to go, all week. Finally, they have a summit plan.
Gasherbrum I weekend summits?
“Forecasts are not optimistic until at least July 19, but the wind is expected to drop to 20-25kmph (which is okay for a summit push) on July 18-19,” Sakhawat Hussain, Managing Director of Summit Karakoram, told ExplorersWeb. “Therefore, we have scheduled the summit push on Gasherbrum I for between July 19 and July 20, if everything goes well. Then we will go for Gasherbrum II.”
Hussain described weather conditions today as “manageable, but they might change at any moment.”
At the beginning of this week, the expedition leaders hoped to attempt one of the Gasherbrums on July 17-18, but the weather halted that plan.
Summit Karakoram, a Pakistani agency, is outfitting a team from Nepal-based company 8K Expeditions, led by Saila Sherpa. However, apparently, all the commercial teams are moving at the same pace. Nirmal Purja is there, aiming to bag his 51st and 52nd 8,000’er summits.
Specific tactics
Both Gasherbrum I and II provide a slightly shorter climb than other 8,000’ers in Pakistan. The key is to take positions on the top of the tricky Gasherbrum glacier, which has become the most exposed section of the climb to both peaks. Warm conditions cause slushy snow with hard ice underneath and many open crevasses. This is why teams leave Base Camp and settle at Camp 1 to wait for the right time to launch summit pushes.
A lack of ropes on the upper sections can be solved with the same tactic used on Nanga Parbat some weeks ago: Sherpa guides will lay ropes as they go, with the commercial climbers following.
French and Italians
There are also some small groups aiming for the summit without Sherpa support. Among them are French climbers Charles Dubouloz and Symon Welfringer, who abandoned their plans to climb the highly difficult West Face of Gasherbrum IV because of a lack of ice on the wall. Mathieu Ruffray has also joined the team as a filmmaker.
“The dryness of these immense fortresses caught us off guard and pushed us to reconsider the location of our base camp for the coming month,” Dubouloz reported yesterday.
The team headed for the common Base Camp for Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II, but has not made their next goal clear. They have, however, been able to acclimatize by climbing up to 6,414m and spending two nights at 5,700m and then 6,000m. They still need a second rotation before heading for a summit.
There is at least one other French team eyeing an alpine-style ascent, and an Italian expedition whose original goal was also Gasherbrum IV, which they hoped to climb from its north side.
Broad Peak
Snow and rain on the lower slopes of Broad Peak. Photo: Lukasz Supergan
The situation is similar on Broad Peak. An optimistic forecast motivated some climbers to go up at the beginning of this week, but the prediction proved wrong. The weather is still bad, with snowfall on the upper part of the mountain and — even worse — rain in Base Camp and on the lower sections.
“Our mountain is melting before our eyes,” Lukasz Supergan of Poland wrote.
