원정 개요

The team approached the mountain by bus to Besisahar, trekked around Manaslu via its west side and Larkya Pass to Samagaon.

Grobel's policy is to progress up a mountain slowly without descending to lower camps until the end of the climb. To do this, his teams establish more camps than others do. When bad weather strikes, his teams stay in whatever camp they happen to be in at the time. Hence this expedition had seven high camps.

The expedition made one big for the summit. Damilano, Dupuy, Grobel, Mahou, Odier, Rudolf and Vulin, plus Birkram Sing, Chhotemba Sherpa and Thami Kubir Rai, left C7 at 5:00 am on 20 May and reached 7600m at about 6:00 am. Now bad weather, wind, clouds and snow, was coming, and Grobel decided that they must go down, thus abandoning the climb.

They had no time to wait for better weather. Rudolf paraglided from C7 to Samagaon, to where their BC had been moved, in half an hour. The other members and Sherpas took two days to get to Samagaon: they descended to C4 that day, and were in Samagaon on 21 May. They left on the 23rd to return to Kathmandu.

Non-summit team members:

Bizet reached C3 on 8 May; he had a bad headache, left C3 on the 10th and the expedition on the 14th.

Valleise went to C2 on the 7th, but an old neck injury was causing him pain; he returned to BC the same day and left the expedition on the 10th.

Nepalese climbers:
Bikram Sing, 28/5/81, Gangaparaspur-6, Dang, no 8000ers
Chhotemba Sherpa,
29/9/84 he says; 5/10/84 according to Himalayan Database,
Densichhungbu he says, Grobel thinks Walung, Database says Nurbugaon,
all agree Makalu-9, no 8000ers
Thami Kubir Rai, 23/8/75 (7/5/2032), Bung-7, Solu, no 8000ers