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Italians on Makalu led by Romano Benet - 13 February 2007

The team was plagued by strong winds -- there were only two days, the 16th and 27th of January, when there was no wind.

The three Italians did all their climbing together. On 16th January, they moved from BC to the for their C1 at 6500m meters, about 100m above the Kazakhstani's C1, and deposited gear there but did not erect their tent. Then back to BC again.

On 27 January they succeeded in reaching C1, pitched their tent and slept that night there. On the 28th, they climbed to 7000m meters to a couloir in the rock band. It was so cold this day that Meroi's eyelashes were freezing together, and she constantly had to rub them open; her left thumb became numb from the cold. They descended to BC that day.

This turned out to be their high point. They waited at BC for better weather to enable them to resume climbing, but it did not materialize. On 9 February the wind decided for them about abandoning their climb: it blew their BC tents from their ropes; tore them to pieces and scattered and broke their sleeping bags, food and gear. They spent all day searching the area to recover what they could; even a crampon had been broken when the wind lifted a stone and smashed it against the crampon.

They left BC on 11 February to retreat their camp near Barun Pokhari. Between the two camps, the wind at her back pushed Meroi between two large rocks and caused her to fall against one of them, breaking her right ankle; Benet and Vuerich had to carry her on their backs over difficult moraine the rest of the way. They were evacuated by helicopter to Kathmandu on the 12th, and Meroi was taken directly to hospital. She expected to stay till about the 16th, when she hoped to fly back to Italy for an operation on her ankle.

The team fixed no rope. The Kazakhstanis did, and they also used 200 meters of rope that Benet and Meroi had left there in their attempt on Makalu last autumn.