After an unusually dry winter, Annapurna is a diamond-hard surface of rock and sheer ice, with almost no snow. For climbers, that’s not necessarily bad.
The eight-man Sherpa team fixing ropes on Annapurna had to retreat yesterday for an unusual reason: They ran out of ice screws. In previous years, they mainly used snow anchors sunk deeply into the fresh snow. This time, all they found was a hard, icy surface where their crampons barely bit in.
Bone-dry winter
“We have never seen conditions like this on Annapurna,” Mingma G of Imagine Nepal told ExplorersWeb.
He noted that this winter was extremely dry in Nepal’s mountains, so the lack of snow cover is not surprising.
Imagine Nepal also helped with the rope-fixing on Annapurna last spring when conditions were radically different. Compare the first video, shot this weekend, with the one below it, taken in the spring of 2024.
Harder but safer
The Sherpas are back in Base Camp but will finish fixing the ropes to Camp 3 on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Imagine Nepal clients are busy finishing their acclimatization around Thorong La, the high point of the popular Annapurna Circuit.
Annapurna Base Camp today, showing how little snow there is on the mountain. Photo: Imagine Nepal
When the clients show up at Annapurna to do their last rotation to Camp 2 before the summit push, they will find technical sections and probably some vertical passages on ice amid seracs. However, unless conditions change, the mountain will be remarkably safe.
Traditionally, Annapurna has been the most dangerous of the 8,000’ers because of the frequent avalanches along its normal north-side route. These big slides fell mostly down the Great Couloir above Camp 1 and from the seracs between Camp 2 and Camp 3.
With the peak so dry, there is no snow to slide. Climbers will have to clip properly to the ropes, though. A slip on the ice could easily send an unroped climber on a fatal whipper.
Helicopters drop gear
The ascent of Annapurna has changed a lot with the commercialization of the mountain. Nowadays, the route has fixed ropes from base to top, including long passages near the summit that were not traditionally fixed.
Both the working staff and the clients also use plenty of oxygen. In recent years, helicopters have shuttled equipment to the highest camp (usually Camp 4 or a “higher” Camp 3 at 7,000m). These airdrops include the ropes for the upper sections and the oxygen for the higher camps.
