원정 개요

The three-member team flew from Kathmandu to Pokhara on 16 October. They took no Sherpas to help them in their exploration of a previously unclimbed area northwest of Lo Manthang in Upper Mustang on the border with Tibet. They succeeded in summiting one of them in the first ascent of 6195-meter Mustang Himal and made a serious attempt on Mansail, 6242 meters high.

From Pokhara, they drove north-northeast to Jomsom, walked and drove north-northwest via Samura village and finally walked and skied to the last small village of Chung Chung (4270m) before their base camp. Chung Chung is above Lo Manthang and below the border crossing into Tibet. Their original plan was to climb three peaks clustered together: Mansail, Mansail South and Mustang Himal.

On 22 October they made BC at 4937m in the southeast drainage below Mustang Himal. Four days later, their first high camp for Mustang Himal was pitched at 5334m in the same drainage. And the following night was spent in C2 at 5672m among rocks on the edge of a glacier.

Now this attempt on Mustang Himal was aborted because of extremely deep snow, and the team moved east and north to the Nhubine Glacier to try to climb Mansail (6242m), a true border peak. On the 29th they got to 6125m, but here they were forced to turn back by the rock surface (below 6100m there was mixed rock and some snow, but above it was all exposed rock); they were not prepared for this technical rock climbing. Also by now it was after 4:00 pm, too late in the day to continue climbing upwards. They abandoned their attempt to scale Mansail and retreated to BC.

They turned their attention once again to Mustang Himal: on 1 November they were back in C2 (5672m) and without fixing any rope, they ascended the slope of the North Face to the West Ridge at about 30 vertical meters below the top. On 2 November the three members left C2 at 8:30 am, were on the summit at 2:00 pm and returned to C2 at 5:30 pm in the perfect weather they had enjoyed almost every day of their climbing period. They were back in BC on the 4th and left it on 6th for Lo Manthang and the return trip to Kathmandu, including a miserable ride by tractor to Jomsom.