Polish International Winter Nanga Parbat Expedition: starting to fix...

HiMountain Nanga Parbat Winter Expedition 2006/2007

Update: According to the information sent to us by Artur Hajzer (Himountain Team), all participants are feeling well and the weather continues to be beautiful. The expedition hired three additional porters, who have supplied Camp 1 with the maximum store of ropes and equipment. A team of climbers will go up to Camp 1 in order to fix ropes on higher parts of the route. They have 1200m ropes to use. Porters will continue to equip Camp 1....

Earlier: Today Przemek Łoziński, Robert Szymczak, Tommy Heinrich, Ghulam Rasool and Hassan Sadpara joined the climbing action. Artur Hajzer (Himountain Team), Darek Załuski  and Jacek Jawień left the deposit at 4700m in order to set up  Camp 1.

In the morning, the weather was promising, yet later it became cloudy but without snowfall. After 2 hours of climbing in couloirs, our climbers triggered a plank, which hit Hassan Sadpara and slightly injured him. Robert, who is our doctor, left the base camp together with Przemek. They reached the injured climber, treated him and decided that the whole group of climbers should return to the base. Robert, Przemek and Tommy decided to spend the night in the deposit at 4700m.  

Meanwhile, the three leading climbers were straggling to reach the ridge. Their aim was to set up Camp 1. In couloirs there is a lot of snow (which fell a week ago), which forced climbers to be very cautious and slowed down their progress. After spending lots of time looking for a proper place for a tent, the group set up a tent at the altitude of 5100-5200m. It is not the final location of Camp 1 – most probably it will be relocated somewhere nearby. Putting up the tent was a big success as for the second day of climbing action. Nevertheless such a fast progress is quite stressful for me as the leader of the expedition. Jacek Berbeka remains in the base camp and is slowly recovering from his illness, still he is too weak to join in the climbing action.

In the afternoon came a surprise! A helicopter visited our camp and, after long hovering, the pilot decided to put it down although it was not equipped with skis. The chopper brought to us Mark Jenkins, who was delegated by National Geographic. Mark is a climber and a journalist and he is going to prepare a feature about our expedition. He instantly made friends with everybody by means of two bottles of whisky – for which we were very grateful as the stress level needs some release. The situation for today’s evening looks like this: Artur, Jacek, Darek are sleeping in Camp 1, Przemek, Robert and Tommy are sleeping in the deposit, the rest in the base. Jan Szulc and Krzysztof Tarasewicz are supposed to land in Islamabad on Thursday. Most probably, they will join us on Sunday.

Greetings, Krzysztof Wielicki (Himountain Team

Altitude pre-
   acclimatization

   Ascenders

   Atlas snowshoes

   Black Diamond

   Botas

   Brunton

   Carabiners

   CaVa Climbing Shoes
   Clearance

   Clif Bar

   Cloudveil

   CMI

   Crampons

   Edelweiss ropes
   Eureka Tents

   Featured

   FoxRiver

   Garmin

   Granite Gear

   Harnesses
   Headlamps
   Helmets

   HighGear
   Ice Axes

   Kavu Eyewear

   Katadyn

   Kelty

   Kong

   Lekisport

   Lowepro

   Motorola

   Mountain Hardwear

   Mountainsmith

   MSR

   Nalgene

   New England Ropes

   Nikwax

   Omega

   Patagonia

   Pelican

   Petzl

   PowerBar

   Princeton Tec

   Prescription Glacier

   Glasses

   Primus

   Rope Bags

   Seattle Sports

   Serius
   Sleeping Bags

   Stubai

   Suunto

   Tents

   Thermarest

   Trango

   Tool Logic

   Trekking Poles
   Yaktrax
   and more here