On the 31st of October I was sitting on the beach near Massouri,Kalymnos. Happy and tired after just succeed on my this year sport climbing project, Randez with Platon (8b). Suddenly I realized that it is exactlly 10 years after I summited Gyachung Kang (7952 m), my biggest personal epic. Almost nobody remembers that trip anymore so let me have a short flashback.
Gyachung kang is the 15th highest mountain in the world, the highest 7000er. First ascended in 1964 by Japanese team. After that maybe just two or three succesfull expeditions folowed. All by Nepali side. The 2000 m high north face was scooped for the first time by Andrej and Marija Stremfelj after their aclimatization climb around Cho Oyu. 1999 a Slovenian expedition went there with many goals, the main being the first ascent of a beautiful north face. Leader: Andrej Stremfelj, members: Marko Prezelj, Matic Jost, Marko Car, Janko Meglic, Blaz Navrsnik, Peter Meznar, dr. Zare Guzej and myself.
- Below the summit of Siguang Ri (7309 m), Zero Peak (6700 m) behind
We had a good aclimatization period. The team climbed two new routes on Zero Peak, two new routes on Siguang Ri Shar (6998 m) and three new routes on Siguang Ri (7309 m). We were happy.
But in the second half of October bad weather arrived. It was dumping for three days and we got more then one meter of fresh snow in the BC. All expeditions in Tibet went home, except us. Andrej said: “We’ll wait!”, and we were waiting for the snow to settle down. On the 28 of October we started with our climb. It was super cold and windy but we couldn’t wait any longer, our yaks were due to come on Nov 3rd. Me and Peter summited sfter four days on October 31st and Andrej, two Marko’s and Matic summited on the next day. You can see an old report here.
The route was repeated in 2002 by very strong Japanese couple Yasushi and Taeko Yamanoi. There was an article about their ascent in Alpinist.
Živjo!
Res je dobro prebrat tako “preprost” in nepristranski opis dogodkov. Sam sem bil takrat še mulc in se spominjam odprave iz Petrovega pripovedovanja in njegovih diasov. Že takrat je bil v zraku zame še ne povsem razumljiv občutek, da to je bilo pa res precej posebno in intenzivno doživetje, tako na osebnostnem kot na športno-merljivem nivoju. V današnjem času neselektivnega internetnega bombardiranja z raznimi uspehi in “uspehi” (recimo kar zadnji primer “smeri” Ramri Keti na Hama Jomjumo) je tak flešbek res prava poslastica. Dejansko vidiš, da samo kvalitetna dejanja zares pridobijo na vrednosti, ko jih gledaš skozi kritično prizmo časovne distance.
Uživaj in lp!
Matic