원정 개요

Two members, Riggs and Clement, went first to Annapurna IV and made BC at 4573m on 16 September. They were confined to BC by one week of snowfall and occupied C1 only on the 23rd.

On 1 October, Riggs and Clement established C3 at 6555m on the southeast side of the Dome. From there they saw ahead of them a small face and walked over to it, gaining no altitude but discovered the impossibility of their surmounting it. They were only two climbers; their two Sherpas did not go above C2, which had already meant that they had taken a long time to move up the mountain. There was no way around this face: its south side was a vertical drop of blue ice, and its north side was heavily corniced.

They went back to C3 and decded their climb of Annapurna IV was over. On the 4th they returned to C2, on the 5th were in BC, and on the 7th left BC for their bid to scale Annapurna I.

It took them ten days to make their way through a difficult gorge to their Annapurna I North Face BC, which they pitched at 4176m, lower than most teams' BC site. Here they were joined by the team's third member, Graves, and two days later, on 19 October, the three Americans started up. They established ABC at 4500m, but they were unable to go higher because they discovered that there had been a massive landslide which blocked the route between BC and C1. Furthermore big rocks were still falling from avalanche debris. They searched for an alternative but found none and went back to BC on the 20th.

A small team of two Czechs and a Slovak led by Martin Minarik, after failing to scale the NW Face, asked to join forces with the Americans on the North Face. The American responded by visiting Minarik's BC; they explained the problem of finding a route, and returned to their own BC.

On the 21st the Americans returned to ABC, but they still could not find an alternative route above it. They were back next day in BC, from where they saw a wind plume of snow blowing off the summit. The weather forecast they received said that the strong winds would last for five more days. From ABC they had seen a small avalanches come down from the the Sickle. They decided they should abandon this attempt also.

On the 23rd Minarik's team arrived at the Americans' BC. At 11:30 am huge avalanche came off the Sickle and wiped out the route to about 4900m. That convinced everyone to leave. The Americans had to stay in BC until the 28th waiting for their porter to arrive.

Fixed rope: 400m (BC->C1)