원정 개요

BC at roughly site of some ABC's beyond glacier's junction
West Face C1 at hanging glacier
West Pillar C1 at West Pillar
High point 1 at West Pillar
High point 2 at West Face.

From BC, Erick Decamp & Destivelle went to W Pillar, while Lowe went to W Face (to hanging glacier also went LO Prem Gurung & Sirdar). Lowe did not go to pillar. When Lowe arrived at Mtn, Italians already well established on face, so used their fixed ropes to hanging glacier after a couple of climbs without them, felt ridiculous doing this on lower part of mountain. I was quite demotivated "by this": didn't want to join Italians but doing his own line lower down seemed foolish. Then on 17th May Italians decided to abandon face so planned to solo line nearby then big snowstorm dumped enough snow to make face "completely out of condition" (avalanches brought so much that it piled up & buried his safe biv tent at 6500m+) so gave up on 25th. This was 1st of monsoon-type storms.

W Pillar: 25th May Decamp & Destiville gave up also because even on ridge too much snow. Progress slow between C2 & C3 because of lot of wind. High point reached in acclimatization foray; went up to C3 on 23rd but heavy snowfall of 24th stopped further progress. Fixed a total of 500m only.