August - September news

30 September, 2009 Charles Houston, a pioneering American climber and altitude researcher, died at his home in Vermont on September 27. He was 96. Houston was part of the Anglo-American team that made the first ascent of 25,643-foot Nanda Devi in 1936, and he attempted K2 in 1938 and 1953.

Houston’s research and writing on high altitude (notably the 1980 book Going High and the 2005 work Going Higher) were instrumental in helping climbers understand the process of acclimatization and the dangers of high altitude pulmonary edema and other mountain ailments. Charlie said: “We entered the mountains as strangers, but we left as brothers.” (www.climbing.com)

22 September, 2009 Elbrus Race top results 2005-2009. Statistics by Rodrigo Granzotto Peron

22 September, 2009 Alexey Kosjakov and Pavel Vorobjev have completed Snow Leopards program this summer.

15 September, 2009 V International ELBRUS RACE results. New record on Classic route.

2 September, 2009 SNOW LEOPARD Program: International statistics.

1 September, 2009 Siberian mountaineers Gleb Sokolov and Vitaly Gorelic have completed the new route on Pobeda peak. Pobeda is very serious 7000-er. Gleb has just called from the glacier, they descended successfully, but coudn't talk well, very tired.

1 September, 2009 XXIII Rock Master will take place in Arco, Italy from 4-6 September 2009.

1 September, 2009 Ukrainian young lady Maria Khitrikova, Italian Colli Tibaldi Luca, Czech Marhan Milan, Russian Roman Gubanov and others will try to win V International ELBRUS RACE...

19 August, 2009 "Balyberdin" Elbrus races (1989-90). The story by American climber Kevin Cooney about the competition in 1990

18 August, 2009 Latok II. August, 16 the rescue attempt being made for Oscar Perez on Latok II has been called off. Sebastian Alvaro in Skardu. Seb confirmed that the team, reportedly consisting of 6 Spaniards, 3 North Americans, and 16 local high altitude/low altitude porters has been unable to locate Oscar.
For 10 days, Pakistani Army Air Corps helicopters and mountain climbers of diverse nationalities tried a desperate attempt to rescue alive a climber from the unclimbed and unfixed wall of Latok 2, a massive peak of 7,125 meters in the heart of the Karakorum.

Spanish mountain climber Oscar Perez was at approximately 6,200 m of altitude with a broken leg and an arm immobilized after suffering an accident when he tried to scale it in alpine style with his companion Alvaro Novellon.

The rescue became a fight against the clock for Oscar, trapped on the wall with no tent, only a small sleeping bag to sleep in, a gas canister for making water and some basic food. The rescue went on with the uncertainty of knowing if Oscar Perez remained alive, since he did not have means to communicate with the outside world.

The attempt was finally called off today, due to the time elapsed, the failure to locate Oscar, and the difficulty of the route in combination with bad weather posing danger to the rescuers. (www.mounteverest.net)

18 August, 2009 K2. American Dave Watson skied down K2's bottleneck on Aug 4. He started skiing at 8350m and continued to camp3 at 7300. He downclimbed the Black Pyramid to camp2 at 6600m and skied from camp2 to ABC at 5200m.

This was the first descent of the bottleneck and the longest ski run on K2.

Watson has also skied from 7600m on Broad Peak and 7200m on Everest. He has summited Everest 2 times.

11 August, 2009 Riccardo Cassin died at age 100 Italian legend Riccardo Cassin died near Lecco on Thursday, August 6. Part of Ragni di Lecco (the Lecco Spiders), Cassin made many legendary climbs in the Dolomites and around the world, fought in WWII and set up shop with his own climbing gear. In 1961 at age 52, Riccardo became the first to summit Denali via the Cassin Ridge, and he continued to climb well into his 80s. (www.mounteverest.net)

9 August, 2009 K2 Maxut's and Serguey's fouth attempt and Vassily's fifth attempt to topped out K2 hasn't been successful. Serguey Bogomolov wrote: THe weather's bad. Snow and mist is in BC. Out team stay alone here. The forecast isn't optimistic. We decided to cansel the expedition and has called for porters already. Photo from www.kazpatriot.kz. From left to right: Vassily, Serguey, Maxut.

6 August, 2009 "Balyberdin" Elbrus races (1989-90). The story how the idea of mountain speed ascent contest had occurred in USSR.

6 August, 2009 Spantik. Iranian lady climbers Leila Ebrahimi, Parastou Abrishami, Shiva Farsi, Fereshteh Khademi-talab, Masoumeh Maleki and Mahsa Moti-ei summited Spantik yesterday, along with Mahmoud Hashemi, Hadi Saberi and Abbaas Ranjbari. The team topped-out at 2,30pm after climbing for 12 hours from C3. (www.k2climb.net)

5 August, 2009 K2: Maxut SMS 7-20 а.m. Almaty time: (www.kazpatriot.kz)" We won't go up today. Our trio hoped to repeat summit bid attempt tonight with Japanese team, but the situation has changed. Their members went down to C3 yesterday. Japanese leader told us the weather forecast: the wind speed 100 km/h, so their team had refused from the summit bid. All other teams are leaving K2, heading home. We're tired, it's too hard for only three of us to break trail in meter-deep snow! Now we're descending to BC. Then we'll decide who and where will go, and what'll be the weather in August. The situation is very close to our K2 expedition in 2005. But there were 4 Kazakhs in the team...." Photo: Gerfried Goschl (www.gerfriedgoeschl.at) - bottleneck traverse - the most dangerous part of the normal route on K2.

4 August, 2009 K2: Maxut SMS 5p.m. Almaty time: (www.mountain.kz) Summid bid wasn't successful. All descended to C4 (7800). There're a lot of snow and very few climbers who wanted to break the trail. We fixed ropes on two key parts: bottle neck and the traverse above it. We didn't climb only 100 m till the summit ridge. Gerlinde is descending from C4, but Maxut, Vaso and Serguey are staying in C4 for a tomorrow attempt of the summit bid again.

14-00 Moscow time: On 3 p.m. local ime Gerfried Goschl called that the group is at 8300, but due to very deep snow they go too slowly. So, he decided to turn back. Only Maxut, Vaso, Serguey and Gerlinde are on the route yet.

11-32 Moscow time: 9 climbers are in the end of bottle neck on traverse (8250 m), Gerlinde is among them too. Sepp and Chris are going down. (message from Gerfried Goschl blog)

4 August, 2009 K2: Waiting news... Serguey Bogomolov, Maxut Zhumayev, Vassily PIvtsov, Gerlinde Kaltebrunner, Fabricio Zangrili, Ron, Santjago with Sherpa, Dave Watson, George Dijmaresku, Korean climber with his Sherpa were going to start up from C4 tonight, Gerfried Goschl group ( Sepp, Luis, Christian) spent night in C3.

3 August, 2009 K2: Maxut Zhumayev, Vassily Pivtsov and Serguey Bogomolov are in C4. Today morning they started up from C3 in 9 a.m. Maxut and Vassily broke trail from C3, then Serguey and Sherpas helped them on the past part of the way. Strong wind, but the weather is affordable.

3 August, 2009 Gasherbrum II. Bulgarian Boyan Petrov summited
August 01 in a lonely push. He descended to Base camp today. Some days ago, July, 26 Nikolay Petkov, Doychin Boyanov, Nikolay Valkov and Boyan Petrov
summited Gasherbrum I.

3 August, 2009 Korean climber miss Oh Eun-Sun summited Gasherbrum I today on 1-16 local time - it became her 13th 8000-er! She climbed without supplementary oxygen. Miss Oh has now just Annapurna left to complete the 14x8000ers list. (www.mounteverest.net) Photo: Black Yak

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