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Try Again Expedition to Makalu, Ralf Dujmovits only member - 4 June 2008

Dujmovits flew by helicopter from Lukla to Hillary BC on 18 April. Unluckily the helicopter made a hard landing on the 19th and could not operate, so it could not bring his baggage, as it was scheduled to do on the 20th. He went to his BC on the 19th where he pitched his tent.

On the 23rd he decided to climb without his equipment, and "this was my big mistake." He went up without a sleeping bag and with only a bivy bag for a tent. He camped at C1 at 6200m that night and the next night camped at C2 at 6650m. On the 25th he went down to BC. He now had a head cold, so he took some antibiotics to recover.

When he returned to his bivy bag at C2 on the 30th, he discovered it wasn't there: birds had stolen it. He had left it in a bag which birds had managed to open, and they had carried off the bivy bag. He rested at C2 on 1 May, and the next day an Italian climber, Carlos Soria, offered to share his tent with Dujmovits, and he accepted the offer. On the 3rd he climbed to 7400m to acclimatize and descended to BC.

Dujmovits moved up again on the 8th from BC to C2 with Soria, on the 9th they went to C3 (7400m at the Makalu La), and on the 10th went to Soria's C4 at 7650m. That night at 11:00 pm they left C4 for the top, but by 5:00 hours the next morning, Dujmovits was hypothermic and stopped to wait for the sun to come up and warm him. At 6:30 am, he continued up alone and reached the summit on 11 May at 12:15 pm (just after noon).

He left the summit after 15 minutes, and in his descent he met the Ecuadorian climber Santiago Quintero, who was stricken by altitude sickness; Dujmovits moved down slowly to show Quintero what to do going down the tricky rock section. When they reached the snow, he went on down by himself to sleep in C4, where he arrived at 5:30 pm. On the 12th and and Soria went together to C3, then Dujmovits continued descending alone and got to BC at 8:30 pm.

When he woke up on the 13th, he found that he couldn't see (this lasted for five days). He called for a helicopter and made his way to Hillary BC, and on the 14th he flew to Deboche, Khumbu, to rendezvous with his wife Gerlinda Kaltenbrunner and her teammate, David Goettler, for their climb together on Lhotse.