원정 개요

The North Ridge of Ama Dablam is technically difficult and exposed to avalanching, as this team discovered. It was very different from the North Ridge route Brice had scaled in autumn of 1980. He found it was now not suitable for commercial expeditions: he said that it is "too hard and too dangerous to go on that route for commercial climbs," he said.

Before he realized the hazards for commercial teams, Brice organized this climb of the North Ridge. First, they went to Island Peak in two groups for acclimatization, and all summited it before occupying their Ama Dablam BC on 13 October.

C1 at 6100m was not occupied until nine days later, on 22 October, because of the route's technical difficulty. No C2 was established because there was "no space to put it." The ridge was too narrow for a thousand feet. Therefore climbers would have to go for the top from C1, too far away.

The climb was called off when they came to a place where the snow cover was waist-deep on a slope that had become 40-degrees steep, and just beyond that they would have to traverse an area of a 50-degree slope below a hanging glacier falling off the East Face, plus there were many crevasses which forced one to go over onto the West Face.

The team's highest point was reached by four Sherpas at 6500m on 2 November; the two assistant leaders, Tamura and Woodward, got as high as 6300m on 30 October, but none of the clients reached that height (the two assistant leaders had been working with the Sherpas fixing the route).

The climb was abandoned on 2 November: the overriding reason was the danger posed by avalanching. The team returned to Kathmandu by helicopter from Phortse on the 5th.

Sherpas:
Ngawang Tenzing, 20/11/69, Phortse
Nima Tenzing, 20/4/91, Phortse
Phurba Tashi, 24/5/71, Khumjung
Urken Lendup, 10/2/93, Phortse