Four attempts, four times without summit success – Nepal’s eight-thousanders have once again shown their teeth this winter. After the winter expeditions on Mount Everest, Manaslu and Annapurna I had already come to an early end, the team from the commercial operator Makalu Adventure has now also abandoned its attempts to reach the summit of Makalu at 8,485 meters. The climbers are on their way back to Kathmandu, the company confirmed to me.
Gale-force winds expected
According to their own information, expedition leader Sanu Sherpa, Phurba Onggel Sherpa and Pastemba Sherpa and their Iranian client Abolfazl Gozali reached an altitude of around 7,800 meters – with bottled oxygen. Gusts of wind with speeds of around 80 kilometers per hour and icy temperatures had made a further ascent impossible, Gozali announced on Instagram. As gale-force winds are even expected on Makalu by the end of next week, the team abandoned the expedition.
This means that the first winter ascent of the fifth highest mountain on earth on 2 February 2011 by Italian Simone Moro and Denis Urubko, who was born in the Russian North Caucasus, – without bottled oxygen – remains the only summit success on Makalu in the cold season.
