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 Expedice HI-TEC V-LITE Nanga Parbat - K2 2005: climbed through a horrible thunderstorm | ||||||||
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Update: Radek and Petr climbed through a horrible thunderstorm, yesterday, on Friday. The thunders and lightning caught them right on the Kinsshoffer Wall and kept raging for hours. Before that, they faced an exceptionally big avalanche, which announced itself by the ground shaking even before the avalanche was in sight. But raging thunderstorm right on the Wall was a new experience that they would have happily skipped. Seeing absolutely no relatively safe shelter -- "safe" in the most minimalistic way, Radek and Petr kept climbing regardless of the pouring snow and the lightning crossing over their heads. Two mobile lightning rods on the rocks! The guys made it to their C2 safely, but this time, climbing the Wall took them twice as much time, compared to the previous two ascends. Once they cleared the tent cover under two feet of fresh snow, Petr wished to just leave their stuff there and to retreat to the BC. The C2 proved itself not to be a pleasant place in a storm. They made it down do BC safely by 9PM, after 16 hours of climbing up and descending. A large Japanese expedition arrived, ready to start fixing the face. (Radek and Petr have been carrying 15 meters of rope with them only.) Earlier Update: Radek Jaros and Petr Masek, aka the HI-TEC V-LITE Nanga Parbat-K2 2005 Czech Expedition, are back at the base camp, after the memorable night at C2 on the super-narrow ridge between kilometer deep vertical slopes on both sides just above the Kinsshofer Wall last weekend. In spite of his rather rich climbing career, Radek says he can think of only one worse storm that he had ever experienced on a slope; the other one caught him and Josef Nezerka on the summit of Mt. Blanc 11 years ago. But then, they were not stuck in a wind-challenged tent on a piece of land 4 inches off a kilometer deep vertical slope. At the base camp, Radek and Petr are enjoying little pleasures of life: less wind, less snow, more comfort, excellent coffee, dumplings, pork, and cabbage soup almost like at home. (Yeah, this is a very typical Czech cuisine – and you really need good Czech beer to enjoy it to the fullest!) Their humor is good and their spirits really high, regardless of the worse-than-expected weather and the taxing work that a lonely ascent of a team of 2 means in the current snow conditions. Hopefully, the little pleasures will recharge their strength for Friday, when they plan to return to their C2 and to attempt to build C3 afterwards. No one else have been above the lower part of the Kinsshofer Wall this year yet and other expeditions have not made much progress on that face of Nanga since last week, making it quite obvious that Radek and Petr will again be left alone when trying to make it up to C3, through the deep, unsettled snow.
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