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BC at South Annapurna Glacier.

The two Frenchmen, Stefane Benoist and Yannick Graziani, climbed their mountains with no Sherpas and no fixed camps above BC, no fixed ropes, no bottled oxygen. From the same BC for both mountains, they first summited Annapurna South, but they acclimatized on the Bonington route Annapurna I's South Face to 6100m on 28 September.

With all their gears on their backs, they left BC on 1 October and moved higher up the South Annapurna Glacier to 5500m. On the 3rd, they climbed to the ridge running east from Annapurna South to Hiunchuli and bivouacked there 6060m. They moved along the ridge, bivouacked on the ridge for two nights, the 4th and 5th, at 6500m. On the 6th they moved higher on the ridge to bivouac at 6800m.

On 7 October, they left their last bivouac at 8:00 am in good weather, summited Annapurna South at 11:00 am and descended to 5500m, where they had bivouacked on the 1st. They returned to BC on the 8th.

Next they turned their attention to Annapurna I. But the weather had changed and it started to snow. They finally left BC on 20 October and bivouacked that night at 5100m at the bottom of glacier below the South Face.

They made their next bivouac on the 22nd at 6000m on the face. On the 23rd they moved up the face and bivouacked at 6300m near the Japanese route. The next day they made a bivouac at 6700m and on 25 October they reached their high point of 6850m and bivouacked there.

Snow kept falling, snow conditions were not good, they were processing too slowly, the route was growing more difficult technically and it would be hard to find a site for their next bivouac. They abandoned the climb and went down to bivouac at 5100m. From there on the next day they left the area and trekked to Sinuwa village on the Modi Khola and down river on their way back to Kathmandu, where they arrived very early on the 28th in time for their flights out.