원정 개요

The team had an an acclimatization trip in Na valley, then had to wait in a long period of bad weather from the 1st of October until the 19th of October. Fortunately, the valley accumulated not too much snow, so the team could start its proper ascent from the 20th of October, where it reached ABC (the approach to the BC and to the ABC are just not at all looking like on the Finn Map's drawing: the lowest part below 3750m (French BC this season) has to be secured in case of hiring porters, and there are steep rock barriers around 4000m, then grass slopes before reaching the ABC).

From the 21st October, the route started first by conturning from right to left a pillar located on the left side of the kind of main central gully of the whole South Face, then coming back from left to right to join the central gully, climbing it before escaping at the highest part of the face by a right-sided ramp system, with a hook at the end to eventually reach the summit plateau. The team stopped near the extreme South Summit (around 6800m) of this southern plateau. It was the 23rd October at 4 pm. Then the team abseiled down all the night, reaching its ABC at 4 am on the 24th October, then the ABC at 12 am.

The team roughly estimates the overall grade of the route as extremly difficult (ED grade).

There were 5 previous attempts of the South Face:

3 intended to climb directly up by the proper South Face (last in 2011 by David
Goettler and Stefan Glowacz, who couldn't climb properly due to the moutain
conditions; Japanese and Polish before that in the 1980's, the first who
abandoned at 6000m due to a fall),

2 used partly it whether by the left (South Face to the SW Ridge, first ascent
by a Yugoslavian team in 1983) or the right (South Face to the SE Ridge, British
in 1995, with no success) side of the face.

This ascent can be considered as the "proper" first one of the South Face.