원정 개요

The two climbers flew to Lukla on 5 April and went to Namche that day. They went to Chhukung Peak and climbed to 5800m on the 9th, stayed there in a tent for two nights, then trekked in the area with two trekkers.

On 14 April, they established their BC at 5010m on moraine on west side of Ngozumba Glacier on the shore of Ngozumba Tsho (lake). on the 20th, they went to 7100m to acclimatize on the South Face of the Ngozumba massif; they took four days climbing up to just below the massif's east West Ridge (near the night of the 20th there, and next day were back in BC.

On the 25th, they went up from BC to make a recce of their proposed route on the South Face of Cho Oyu, made a deposit of gear at 5300m on the Lungsampa Glacier (at the "g" of Lungsampa on the Schneider map) and spent the night there; this became their advance base camp. They returned to BC on the 26th.

Urubko developed a chest problem with difficulty breathing and frequent coughing, so on the 28th he trekked down to Namche to breathe air with a higher oxygen content and returned to BC on the 4th of May.

The two men started their assault on Cho Oyu in the afternoon of 6 May by returning to their camp at 5300m and having leaving it at midnight to move to the base of the SE Face at 5600m they climbed difficult rocks on a slope averaging 50 degrees of steepness to 5800m, where the grade became 90 degrees and sometimes overhanging. There were many snow avalanches and falling rocks which fell two or three meters on either side of the climbers. They stopped at 3:30-4:00 pm of 7 May at 6000m to bivouac on a ledge the size of the seats of two straight-backed chairs. They slept here sitting up inside their small tent while blasts of wind from snow and ice shook the tent.

The weather pattern had been good weather in the morning, clouds coming over them and some snow falling from about 2:00 pm. But climbed to 6600m up a wall and from there up an ice slope which was mostly at 45-50 degrees, but sometimes 70 degrees. At about 45-50 degrees they bivouacked on the slope under the protection of a stable serac.

On the 9th, bad weather set in at 7:00 am as they resumed their ascent up the ice slope. Now for five days, with low clouds and snow falling, they had no direct sunshine despite the fact that they were on the south side of the mountain. They bivouacked at 4:00 pm at 7100m at a bergschrund and discussed their situation.

They decided to continue their ascent. For them to go down to BC now would mean that piling-up snow would seriously delay their resuming the climb to the summit. So up they went on the 10th. They encountered a rock band at 7300m to 7500m, then climbed on rock, ice and a mixture. They stopped at 5:00 pm to bivouac at 7600m in another bergschrund.

They had planned to make one more bivouac before reaching the top, but now they wanted to complete their ascent in one day; they had also thought of descending the north side or the SE Face by the line east of theirs followed by Austrians in the autumn of 1978, but they instead chose to come down the line they had gone up.

They set out for the summit at 4:30 am of the 11th, went up through deep snow in a small couloir where snow avalanching was frequent, onto the slope covered in deep snow to the summit, where they arrived at 8:00 pm. Urubko had now summited all the 8000m mountains. They were back in the bergschrund at 7600m at midnight. Throughout the night they had to remove newly falling snow which threatened to collapse their tent if allowed to accumulate.

They left the 7600m bivouac at 8:00 am on the 12th and descended to their 7100m bivouac site, the only suitable place to stop. On the 13th they went down to 6600m, the 14th to ABC/deposit camp, and on the 15th to BC.

Urubko and Dedesko climbed roped together throughout the expedition; they never separated. They fixed a total of 1200m of rope but they removed the rope from each section they fixed and used the same rope over and over again. They left none on the mountain.

Urubko said this was the most dangerous climb of his extensive career. Big avalanches were coming down throughout the last three days, but Urubko and Dedesko were not carried down with this snow "because we are strong" and could hang on at the spots where the snow came avalanching down over them.

They had brought food for seven days; they ate nothing on the final two days. They had no bottled oxygen with them.

Both of them have slightly frostbitten fingers and toes which initially were numb but on the 21st are starting to hurt.