원정 개요

From Alpinist (posted November 20, 2015):

On November 14 at approximately 1:30 pm, Justin Griffin slipped and fell 100 meters to his death while descending from the summit plateau of Taboche (6541m; also called Tawoche) in Nepal's Khumbu Himal region. Griffin and Skiy DeTray, a former para-rescueman with the US Air Force, had just completed a new route up the demanding peak's North Buttress over five days.


Note by DeTray:

At 6 am on November 14 we crested the North Buttress onto the summit plateau. The sun shined, the sky was blue and there was no wind. After topping the technical difficulties, we failed to realize the true summit of Taboche was another twelve-hour slog up crevasse-riddled avalanche slopes. Justin and I looked at each other and knew our climb was over.

We descended unroped most of the way down the peak's East Face gully.

We were both tired and our ice axes were worn to a nub from all the dry tooling. Then, less than 100 meters from taking our harnesses off, I saw Justin turn around to downclimb an easy Grade 2, bullet-hard, slippery ice step. He lost his footing and was gone.