An energetic foursome of young French climbers had a busy time recently in Nepal’s Rolwaling Valley, east of the Khumbu. Eric Bazon, Pierre Girot, Sophie Jacob, and Kilian Moni did two new routes, including a first ascent of a 5,205m rocky spire and one very difficult line. They then climbed another peak on a “rest” day.
ChekiGo West
As soon as the climbers reached Rolwaling, they had to change their primary goal, which was in poor condition. Their acclimatization was also progressing more slowly than expected. Instead, they focused their attention on a ridge they saw from their base camp every morning. On October 20, Bazon, Jacob, and Girot set off toward the summit, while Moni waited for them at the base.
“Before long, the climbing turned vertical, and the ridge became razor-sharp and exposed,” Bazon wrote. The climb took three days on the ridge, bivvies included, and led Bazon, Sophie Jacob, and Pierre Girot to the west summit of ChekiGo (6,128m). It took another full day and one more bivouac to reach base camp.
Cheki Go’s main summit was first climbed in 2005 by Bruce Normand of the UK and Oliver Von Rotz of Switzerland via the west face. A Spanish team led by Mikel Zabalza first reached the west summit via a direct route up the west face in 2017. The team had just returned from bagging the first ascent of Jugal II.
“It was quite an intense experience for a ‘secondary’ project: one that combined rock climbing on mediocre granite, improvised protection, and steep snow ridges, all while hauling our ropes on our backs,” said Bazon.
The ridge was technical enough to be a good start: 5c on rock and M4 on mixed terrain. In Alpine grades, the team assessed it as TD (very difficult).
The ridge on ChekiGo. Photo: Eric Bazon
Chukyima Go
Since the weather forecast looked good for another four days, the team decided to continue climbing. They split into two teams: Bazon and Girot headed for a peak previously climbed by elite American alpinists Domen Kastelic and Sam Hennessey in 2014: Chukyima Go (6,259m). Like their predecessors, the French team approached the west face from the Naa Valley in Rolwaling.
“There was this direct, narrow, and obvious couloir that simply begged to be climbed,” Bazon reported.
The climbers at an open bivy. Photo: Eric Bazon
The next morning, they found the west face in great condition, which allowed them to climb a direct route to the summit along rock cracks, steep ice, and varied mixed terrain.
It took them two days (October 27-28), with one cold bivy on the face with their feet in their backpacks, to complete the route’s 23 pitches. Their West Face Direct route is 900m long, and the team assessed it as ED (extremely difficult), with M6 on mixed sections, and an Alpine ice grade of AI5.
The photo below shows that the new French route, TchikitaMa Go, runs to the right of the previous line opened by the two Americans.
Left: the new route opened by the French team, compared, right, to the 2014 line by Domen Kastelic and Sam Hennessey. Photo: Eric Bazon/PlanetMountain
Janjmu Peak
Meanwhile, Sophie Jacob and Kilian Moni went for an unclimbed peak that also rose right in front of their base camp: 5,205m Janjmu. The pair completed the first ascent on an aesthetic 600m line up the north face. They called the route The Eternal Stars (“Les etoiles eternelles”) after some friends who had recently perished.
“It felt just like being at home in the Alps, with the added challenge of high altitude,” the climbers reported. “We pushed ourselves to the limit, both physically and mentally, across demanding yet incredibly logical pitches.”
But this was still not enough for the pair. They squeezed in a final climb of Yalung Ri in what they called “a contemplative, active recovery” day. They then finished the trip by paragliding from the summit.
Kilian Moni flies from the top of Yalung Ri. Photo: Kilian Moni
