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BC at Lobuche village
ABC at Changri Nup Glacier.

Parkin and Saunders trekked from Lukla via Pangboche and Pheriche to Dughla village, where they arrived at 22 December. They intended to climb the SW Face of the North Summit of Cholatse (pt 5939 on the Schneider map). But when they looked at the face from Dughla, they saw that it was entiredly bare rock, whereas they had planned to climb on ice. They abandoned the idea of climbing Cholatse, for which they had a permit.

They turned their attention to the North Face of Lobuche West, a so-called trekking peak, for which they did not have a permit. They believed that they were the first climbers to attempt this face.

They trekked north from Dughla to Lobuche village, where they made their base in a lodge on 25 December, and continued nearly as far as Gorak Shep to turn west on the Changri Nup Glacier for access to their face. They made a camp there at 5250m; they ferried loads to the camp site and finally occupied the camp on 1 January. While he was carrying a load, Parkin slipped on the moraine, hurt the base of his spine, and his spine was painful all the way up to his neck.

Nevertheless Parkin carried on. They climbed the right side of the North Face up a steep (80 degrees) frozen waterfall onto the plateau of a hanging glacier and bivouacked here at 5500m on 3 January. Above the icefall, the face was mixed bare rock and snow at an average steepness of 55-60 degrees to a bergschrund at 5100m.

The next day they planned to go to the summit and returned to the bivouac, so they left their bivy gear and went for the top. They left the bivouac at 8:00 am, but turned around at 9:30 am, when they reached about 5600m. Because of his injury, Parkin was moving too slowly to get to the summit and back.

They abandoned the climb. On the same day, 4 January, they rappelled down to their tent on the glacier and went all the way to Lobuche village.

They believe they could have summited via their route if Parkin had been fit.