Valandre Blog

Nanga Parbat Winter Expedtion 2015

Nanga Parbat 8125m (26.657ft) was climbed July 3th 1953 by Herman Buhl (Austria). This mountain situated in Pakistan is one of the harder peaks. The normal route is not extremely technical, but Nanga is famous for bad weather. Together with K2, it remains the last 8000 peak that has never been climbed in winter.

During the winter 2014, Daniele Nardi (Italy) and Elisabeth Revol (France) made an impressing attempt to open a new direct route, in a pure alpine style without the help of porters, oxygen and fixed ropes. Despite passing the technically most difficult parts of the climb, Daniele and Elisabeth “burned out” at their bivi, basically due to the extreme cold. But they showed that they know how to tackle a direct line on a Nanga Winter.

A couple of weeks ago, Elisabeth contacted Valandré to inform, that they will return in January 2015 for a new attempt. The lessons from Nanga 2014 in mind, we decided to give them a full backing so they can recover and resist the extreme cold. Obviously if they can’t resist the freezing conditions during the day and night time, they can’t make it.

So we at Valandre have one month to get an optimized down solution, ready for Daniele and Elisabeth. And we will do it, Nanga winter in a straight line, non ox and in alpin style rings a bell: Time to get out of your lazy bed boy!

 

Elisabeth Revol
Daniele Nardi