원정 개요

C1 was set up at two altitudes: the Russian members pitched theirs at 4900m on 29 September, and the others made theirs at 5000m the following day. They had one C2 at 5800m.

They fixed a total of 500m of rope: 300m from BC to C1 and 200m between C1 and C2.

The expedition headed for C2 on the North Face in three groups:

On 4 October, five Russians went to C2: Lutokhin, Manuylov, Ryzhenko, Sinev and Sokolov. They returned to BC on the 5th.

On 6 October, three Uzbekistanis, Ilyasov, Kutsiy and Yudin, went up to C2.

On 7 October, the three other Uzbekistanis headed for C2, and one of them, Bikov, arrived there at 2:43 pm.

Then a fatal avalanche struck. The two remaining Uzbekistanis, Lobanov and Tukhvatullin, were still on their way to C2, just below it, at 2:53 pm when they were hit by big and little blocks of ice raining down from the Dutch Rib, the German Rib and the coulour in between the ribs.

The two climbers were completely buried by the avalanche. Their fellow members tried for two days to find them, on the surface horizontally via a crevasse and from the air by a helicopter, but they found nothing. The bodies were deep in an ice cave and by the second day the ice had compressed.

The attempt to climb the mountain was abandoned on 7 October and the survivors left BC on the 13th.