Lindsay Griffin reports on triumph and tragedy on

by Lindsay Griffin
Lindsay Griffin reports on triumph and tragedy on the first winter ascent of Gasherbrum I
F
ollowing the February 2011 ascent of
Gasherbrum II (8,035m) by Simone Moro,
Cory Richards and Denis Urubko - the
first of the Karakoram 8,000ers to be climbed in
winter - 2012 saw the more demanding first winter
ascent of neighbouring Gasherbrum I (8,080m).
Unsurprisingly, it fell to that great nation of
Himalayan winter climbers, the Poles.
Until 2011 no one had made an attempt to climb
Gasherbrum I in winter; in fact no one had ever
approached this mountain in winter on foot, the
Gasherbrum II team having been helicoptered to
base camp. Austrian climber Gerfried Goeschl had
studied a new line on the south side of the mountain
for eight years, convinced it was the shortest way
from base camp to summit. Its orientation also made
it far more appealing in winter than the normal
route, which points northwest, and would receive
little sun. With Louis Rousseau from Canada and
Alex Txikon from Spain, Goeschl attempted it in
February-March 2011, the team having walked
seven days to the mountains from Askole (as this
would be impractical for porters, all equipment had
been carried to base camp the previous autumn).
Their partial new route followed the couloir and
ridge close to the right edge of the triangular rock
face that forms the left side of the west-southwest
face of Gasherbrum South (7,069m). A route based
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around the left (west) ridge of this triangle had been
climbed in 1983 by a Spanish team, while further
to the right a prominent spur on the south face,
leading directly to the top of Gasherbrum South,
was climbed by the French in 1980. The Spanish
and French descended into, and then crossed, a high
glacier basin (Upper Zbwa Glacier) before making
a gentle ascent to join the 1958 American route at
ca 7,500m below the southeast ridge, which they
followed to the main summit.
For all of February Goeschl’s team experienced
poor weather, but managed to climb rotten rock
and concrete ice to 6,300m on the crest of a rock
spur, where they set up camp. On the 9th March
they reached 6,650m, having climbed 1,500m of
new ground, but the final, marble-like 200m of ice
proved impossible. Polished by winter winds and
bitterly cold temperatures, it was so hard they were
unable to place ice screws. A last ditch attempt on
the Normal Route up the Japanese Couloir, finished
in high winds at the couloir exit (7,050m).
Goeschl came back in the summer of 2011
and climbed the Normal Route. In January 2012
he was again below the mountain to complete
his unclimbed line and make the first winter
ascent. Txikon was also there, but Rousseau was
replaced by Swiss aspirant guide Cedric Hahlen.
Accompanying them was the accomplished
Nisar Hussain Sadpara, one of three professional
Pakistani mountaineers who have climbed all five
of the Karakoram’s 8,000ers. However, this time
Goeschl was also sharing base camp with a Polish
expedition. The leader, Artur Hazjer, was a partner
of the legendary Jerzy Kukuczka, making new routes
on Annapurna East, Manaslu, and Xixabangma,
the first winter ascent of Annapurna, and more
recently three other 8,000m peaks by standard
routes, all without oxygen. The 28-year-old Adam
Bielecki had climbed more than 100 routes in the
Tatras and Alps during summer and winter, and
in 2011 summited Makalu without oxygen, his
only high altitude ascent. With him as base camp
manager was his elder sister Agnieszka. The fourth
member was arguably the stand-out Polish alpinist
from the 1990s: Janusz Golab (44) made the first
winter ascent of Manitua and the second ascent of
Extreme Dream, both on the Grandes Jorasses,
a new route on the west face of the Petit Dru, the
first winter ascent of Arch Wall (on Norway’s Troll
Wall), new routes on Nalumasortoq (Greenland)
and Bear’s Tooth (Alaska) and a major new line on
the huge face of India’s Kedar Dome. However, he
had never previously climbed on an 8,000er.
The Poles, with the help of Ali Sadpara and
Shaheen Baig, both 8,000m summiters who had
been on previous winter expeditions, also trekked
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to base camp from Askole, arriving on the 21st
January. By the 9th February, they had established
Camp 3 at 7,040m at the exit to the Japanese
Couloir. In mid February they were hit by a violent
storm at base camp, losing four tents. At one point,
Golab, inside his tent, was lifted four metres into the
air. Later, when another violent storm struck at base
camp, Golab would be forced to spend the night
in his harness, belayed to ice screws. One summit
attempt at the end of February was abandoned
before reaching Camp 3, due to high winds.
On March 7th, Baig and the three Polish climbers
reached Camp 2 at 6,600m, and the next day all but
Hajzer went to Camp 3. Here, Bielecki and Golab
made a crucial tactical decision, albeit abnormal
in winter climbing. With the satellite forecast
continually shrinking the weather window, the two
decided to leave at midnight in a temperature of
-35°C and climb through the dark. They reached
the summit at 8:30am in clear skies and little wind,
and were back in Camp 2 by 5pm; but only just
in time, as by now a full scale deterioration of the
weather - high wind and cloud - had set in. All team
members were in base camp by mid-morning next
day, Bielecki and Golab only slightly frostbitten.
Meanwhile Goeschl’s team had experienced better
conditions than the previous year and completed
their line to the Upper Zbwa Glacier, where
they installed a camp at ca7,000m. At 10:30am
on the 9th, as the two Poles were descending,
Goeschl is alleged to have made a satellite call to
say he, Hahlen and Sadpara were ca450m below
the summit. They were never seen again. When
fears mounted, a rescue helicopter was called,
but continuing poor weather meant flights were
repeatedly cancelled until the 15th, when a weather
window allowed Askari Aviation fly to 7,000m on
the mountain, studying the line of ascent, and later
the Normal Route. There was no trace of the three,
and after discussions with Wolfgang Goeschl, the
brother of Gerfreid, who had arrived in Skardu
that day, further searches were abandoned. The
helicopter landed at base camp and evacuated the
two frostbitten Polish climbers.
Commenting on the expedition, Golab reported
his surprise that the winds were so fierce: they
were, he recalled, ‘as strong as in Patagonia, but far
more persistent’. He felt the expedition succeeded
because no energy was wasted on useless attempts;
they waited for a weather window, adding ‘we made
it on our last chance, but sadly our friends from the
Goeschl expedition most likely just ran out of time’.
Gasherbrum I was the last of the Karakoram
8,000ers to be climbed, and also the only one
of those 14 high peaks to be first climbed by
Americans. It was named ‘Hidden Peak’ by Martin
Conway during his 1892 expedition - the first to
reach the base of K2 - as it only came into view
as he ascended the upper Baltoro towards Baltoro
Kangri. The name stuck for many years, the peak
still being referred to as such in the 1970s. Gunther
Dyhrenfurths’ International Himalayan Expedition
was the first to reconnoitre potential routes to the
summit. During that era, the northern and western
flanks would have seemed technically too daunting,
so the team decided on a lengthy route from the
Abruzzi Glacier to the south, climbing a moderately
steep southwest facing spur to reach a glacier plateau
- the upper Zbwa Glacier - below Urdok I, then
following this northwest towards Gasherbrum I.
Top climbers Hans Ertl and André Roch were forced
down from 6,200m by a bad storm. Two years later
a strong French expedition tried to short cut the
process by climbing a south facing spur to the left,
leading to a subsidiary top the French chose to call
Hidden Sud (now Gasherbrum South). Two of the
strongest alpinists of the time, Pierre Allain and Jean
Leininger, reached ca 6,800m (the previous year
Allain had made the first ascent of the North Face of
the Dru with Leininger’s brother, Raymond).
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The mountain was left alone until 1958, when the
American Alpine Club, realising that they’d better
get their act together if they were going to make
the first ascent of one of the world’s highest peaks,
sponsored Nick Clinch’s eight-member expedition.
The Americans chose the 1934 line, dubbed the IHE
Spur, fixed ropes to the plateau, and established a
remarkably low summit camp, reported by the first
ascensionists to be at ca 7,150m. From there, on
the 5th July, Andy Kauffman and Pete Schoening
(who had held the big fall on K2 in 1953), reached
the top using oxygen. Embracing cutting edge
communication equipment of the time, they signalled
their success to team members below by reflecting
sunlight off a tin lid. The route was not repeated
again until the third ascent of the mountain in 1975.
Since the first ascent, a relatively large number of
new routes and variants has been added: in addition
there have been a number of achievements that have
gone down in the annuals of mountaineering history,
including the second ascent, which became one
of the most famous benchmarks in 20th Century
mountaineering.
For most of the 60s and early 70s border
discussions between Pakistan and its neighbours
China and India caused the government to close the
Karakoram to foreign climbers. When it reopened,
a certain Italian alpinist from the Tyrol made an
audacious plan. Having already climbed new
routes on two 8,000m peaks in conventional style,
Reinhold Messner wanted to see if it was possible
to ascend another as climbers would in the Alps; a
two-man team, with neither oxygen, fixed ropes,
nor having carried out any preparation of the route,
leave base camp with all the necessary gear and
make a rapid ascent and descent of the mountain.
He convinced the Austrian Peter Habeler it was
possible, and using their high levels of technical
ability on a shorter, steeper route to the summit, the
two made history by climbing the northwest face in
what would become known as alpine-style. On day
one they ascended the South Gasherbrum Glacier to
a bivouac at 5,900m, day two they climbed the steep
lower section of the face to a bivouac at 7,100m,
comparing it in parts to the North Face of the
Matterhorn, and on day three, carrying more or less
nothing, they took a quite astonishingly fast time of
only four and a half hours to climb the remaining
FACING PAGE: Adam Bielecki on the summit of Gasherbrum I: frostbite is already visible on his nose. THIS PAGE TOP LEFT: Looking southeast from a very cold summit of Gasherbrum I, 9th March 2012. (A) Urdok Glacier.
(B) East Siachen Glacier. (C) Southeast Gasherbrum La (ca 6,960m). (D) Urdok I (7,250m). (E) Urdok II (7,137m). (F) Urdok III (6,954m). (G) Sia Kangri (7,424m). (H) Mt Hardinge (7,093m). (ZG) Upper Zbwa Glacier. (I)
Spur Peak (6,597m). Route line shows top of IHE Spur and 1958 American Route. BOTH ADAM BIELECKI SUPPLIED BY AGNIESZKA BIELECKI TOP RIGHT: Looking east-southeast from the summit of Gasherbrum II. (A)
Gasherbrum II East (7,772m: the 1983 Kukuczka-Kurtyka Route follows the ridge facing the camera to the summit of Gasherbrum II). (B) Urdok Glacier (smaller peaks to the left are part of the Staghar Singhi Group). (C)
Gasherbrum La (6,511m). (D) Teram Kangri Massif. (E) Rimo Group. (F) Gasherbrum I. (1) Japanese Couloir - Normal Route (Shimizu-Wakutsu, 1986; standard campsites 2 and 3 are marked). (2) 1984 KammerlanderMessner Route. (3) Northwest Ridge - German Route (Dacher-Haupfauer-Sturm, 1982). (4) Swiss Route (Loretan-Ruedi, 1983). (5) Northwest Face (Habeler-Messner, 1975). (6) Northwest Face Italian Route (CamozziDa Polenza, 1985). (7) West Ridge-Slovenian Route (Stremfelj-Zaplotnik, 1977). ELISABETH REVOL CENTRE: Shaheen Baig in the Japanese Couloir. ADAM BIELECKI SUPPLIED BY AGNIESZKA BIELECKI
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Photo: LaFouche - Petzl
NOMIC
by Lindsay Griffin
Dry-tooling and
ice climbing tool
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1,000m of more moderate ground to the summit. They returned to their tiny
bivouac tent that night and the following day down-climbed their route to the
glacier. The ascent opened a new era in Himalayan climbing and, other than
the popular fascination of collecting 8,000m peaks, may be Messner’s greatest
legacy.
In 1982 a French expedition made the fourth ascent of the American route
and one member, the great skier Sylvain Saudan, skied from the summit
to base camp. This was the first time an 8,000er had been skied from top
to bottom, and fittingly by the pioneer of modern extreme skiing. (Saudan
trained, incidentally, by skiing gravel pits and rocky moraine slopes).
In 1984 Messner was back again, this time with Hans Kammerlander, to
make another landmark ascent. The pair were the first to link two 8,000m
peaks without returning to base camp. They climbed the Normal Route on
Gasherbrum II (8,035m, previously climbed by Messner in 1982), descended a
partially new and dangerous line on the south-southwest face, moved straight
across to the northwest face of Gasherbrum I where they made a variation
start to the 1982 German Route on the northwest ridge, slanted left to the
North Shoulder, and then climbed new ground to the summit. They descended
by a variant to the 1977 Slovenian Route, having climbed in a very lightweight
style with no pre-positioned gear stashes.
At around this time, politics would begin to interfere with climbing on
the mountain. The 1972 Shimla agreement demarcated boundaries between
India and Pakistan but was totally ambiguous in designating a clear border in
the high and uninhabited wilderness surrounding the Siachen Glacier, which
lies a little east of the Gasherbrums. From around 1974, Pakistan began
to encourage western mountaineering expeditions to visit this area, testing
the waters in what India would later refer to as ‘mountaineering poaching’.
India retaliated, sending a large Army expedition to the region in 1978. To
cut a complex story short, all out conflict began in 1984, and Pakistan later
established a military presence on the Abruzzi Glacier and Conway Saddle,
prohibiting all climbing expeditions from attempting Gasherbrum I from the
south. A new Normal Route had to be found, and this was done in August
1986 by Osamu Shimizu and Kiyoshi Wakutsu. The two popped left around
the corner from the base of the northwest face and climbed a steep (ca 60°)
couloir to the top of the 1982 German Ridge, and a point (ca 7,100m) where
most lines on the northwest face converge. The Japanese Couloir rapidly
became the route of choice, though Gasherbrum I still has fewer ascents than
GII, Broad Peak and Nanga Parbat, and only fractionally more than K2. n
Thanks to Agnieszka Bielecki, Artur Hazjer and Artur Paszczak for help
with this report.
THIS PAGE: A) Gasherbrum I and (B) Gasherbrum South from base camp on the South Gasherbrum Glacier,
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taken on the day of the successful summit attempt. (1) Slovenian West Ridge (Stremfelj-Zaplotnik, 1977). (2)
Southwest Face and West Ridge (Afanasiev-Babanov, 2008). (3) Southwest Face (Kukuczka-Kurtyka, 1983).
(4) Original Route (Kauffman-Schoening, 1958). (5) Spanish (Aragon) Route (Arnal-Cinto-Escartin-LopezOrtas-Ubieto, 1983). (6) South Face of Gasherbrum South (possibly as far as junction with Spanish/American
route: Goeschl-Hahlen-Sadpara, 2012). (7) Southwest ridge attempted in 1936 by Allain and Leininger. (8)
French Route via first ascent of Gasherbrum South (Barrard-Narbaud, 1980). AGNIESZKA BIELECKI