원정 개요

BC on moraine north of mountain
ABC on glacier
Biv on rocks near bottom of NW Face of Annapurna IV
Biv on NW Face
C1 on NW Face.

First German Winter Annapurna II Expedition - 20 Feb 2008

The team had originally planned to pitch six camps above BC, but that was not possible because of lack of places to put camps. Instead they made an advance base camp, two bivouacs and one high camp.

They arrived at BC on 16 January at 5000m on moraine north of the mountain, but strong wind and heavy snowfall prevented them from climbing higher for days. However the three climbing Sherpas did manage to make a route that didn't get obliterated by bad weather, and after they had fixed rope to ABC, Kunz occupied it with them on 28 January at 5800m on the glacier at the foot of Annapurna IV, which abuts Annapurna II.

Above ABC they made two bivouacs at 6600m and on the 6th were back in BC. Their only other fixed camp was pitched on 3 February at 7600m on the NW Face, and from here Kunz and the three Sherpas climbed to the NW Ridge and summited the next morning. They left the camp at 5:00 am on the 4th, were on the top very tired at 10:20 am and descended to the site of their second bivouac at 7400m at 5:30 pm.

On the 5th they went down to 6000m and on the 6th were back in BC.

The route was not easy: the most difficult part was over mixed rock and ice that was 55 degrees steep in places above 7100m. They used 20 ice screws, and also a number of snow bars just below the summit.

Because of the very cold weather, fixing any rope was a hard work, but the Sherpas managed to fix 2500m of it in the areas where they had their two bivouacs, which were at 6600m and 7400m. Kunz said that it would have been [easier] if there had been more Sherpas to share the job of fixing rope so that the three men would not have become so very tired. The team had no bottled oxygen with them.

Summit Sherpas:
Lhakpa Wangel, 19/8/66 (3/5/2023), Nurbugaon, Makalu-5, Makalu 13/5/01,
Manaslu 10/5/02, Everest 29/5/04
Lhakpa Thinduk, 17/4/63 (4/1/2020), Upper Walung, Makalu-9,
summited trekking peaks only
Temba Nuru, 27/4/80 (15/1/2037), Tashigaon, Makalu-5, no previous summits