원정 개요

BC on a moraine of receded glacier southeast of point 4669m Shangrila map
C1 in snowhole dug by team on East Ridge
High piont on East Ridge.

The distances from BC and C1 to the summit were considerable: BC to top was 7.5 km and C1 to the top 6 km.

The three climbing members, Benson, Bullock and Helliker, began acclimatizing on 12 October by climbing to the site for their C1 and returning to BC. Then a period of bad weather set in, and it was a week before they set out again from BC, but now, on the 19th, they got only 5560m, where there was too much snow, so they went back from there to BC.

Now more bad weather. On the 25th they managed to return to C1 site at 5960m and dug a snow hole to crawl into. The next day they enlarged the snowhole, but was too windy to move up. On the 27th they did move up the long ridge while gaining little altitude as they climbed along it. They got to 6100m in strong wind and returned to BC the same day. They were, in any case, still acclimatizing.

Again there was a period of bad weather with alternating snow, rain, hail and wind.

On 5 November they went back to C1 and stayed there two nights. But back to BC on the 7th. The weather was still unsettled, it was too windy, and the forecast was for the strong winds to get stronger. They gave up. They left BC on November to return to Kathmandu.