원정 개요

French Langtang Lirung & Naya Kang (Autumn 2006) - 27 Nov 2006

The team had a permit for Langtang Lirung. They were just two members, Mikael Dubois-Bedin and Ludovic Jacquet. They wanted to climb in "pure" alpine style, so they fixed no ropes, took no oxygen with them and had no Sherpas.

They followed the Langtang Khola eastward to Kyangjin Kharka. First they went for an acclimatization climb on Gangchempo and climbed it to only 5000m, then they went to Naya Kanga to acclimatize some more.

They made their Naya Kanga base camp on 27 Oct at 4900m east of the mountain before the glacier. They left camp at 5:00 am on the 28th, climbed the East Ridge through snow that was knee-deep in some places, thigh deep in others, and reached the 5846m high summit at 12:00 noon. A Spanish team, whom the French did not meet and knew nothing more about, had broken trail two or three days earlier to an altitude of 5400m and then retreated exhausted by their efforts, according to local people. If the Spaniards had not made a track, the French said they themselves probably would not bave succeeded. The French descended to base camp at 3:00 pm and left it on the 29th to move north to Langtang Lirung.

It took them three days to ferry their loads from Kyangjin Kharka to Langtang Lirung base camp, which they finally occupied on 6 Nov. It was 4850m, above the west side of the Ledrub Lirung Glacier. On the 7th, they made C1 at 5300m below the SE Ridge. From here they launched their attempt to scale the mountain on the 13th and bivouacked at 5800m, just 40 meters below the ridge. They got onto the ridge on the next day, the 14th, and climbed along this difficult ridge to 6100m, where they again bivouacked. On the 15th they resumed their climb at 6:00 am, but stopped two hours later at 6200m steep, corniced and overhanging in places. They did not have enough gear to surmount it, and it was impossible to go around it. They were back in base camp at 6:00 pm, and the climb was finished. They abandoned it because of the difficulty presented by the snow wall. They left base camp on 17 Nov to do some trekking and return to Kathmandu, where they arrived on the 26th. They leave Nepal on the 30th.