Posted: Jul 13, 2008 11:43 pm EDT
A great traverse of the Gasherbrums? A new line on Broad Peak? Summit controversy on G2, K2 west face climbers' hardcore acclimatization climb, a nasty skiing accident, Hiro's great come-back, interview with Pustelnik - and finally a China and the Olympics must-read story - last week was busy enough.

Hamor & Morawski summit Gasherbrum II Peter Hamor and Piotr Morawski reached the summit of Gasherbrum II, in alpine style, on July 6th, 2008 at 9.15 am local time. If they didn't descend to BC in between, the two did only the second ever traverse of the two 8000ers, after Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander. The very difficult conquest had remained unrepeated for 24 years, according to Rodrigo Granzotto Peron.

Broad Peak: Babanov's push on a new route “Me and Viktor are setting off tomorrow in the morning, hoping to open a new route up the West Face buttress,” Valeri Babanov reported mid-week. “If the weather remains good, we may reach the summit in 5-6 days time."

More G2 summits Spaniard Jorge Egocheaga reached the summit of GII last Sunday. One of Iñaki Ochoa's best friends and regular climbing partner, Jorge was frostbitten last year while descending from Dhaulagiri's summit - together with Ochoa and in very bad conditions.

Summit controversy on G2 Alex Gavan reported that Amical and Kobler climbers may have stopped before the main summit. ExplorersWeb have emailed the outfitters to confirm.

G2 summit push Field Touring Alpine, Alex Gavan, Daniela and Paulo (who have changed plans and are now going for G2 instead of GI) are some of the climbers on a summit push on G2 this weekend.

K2 - and Broad Peak! “We saw headlamps late last night high on Broad Peak,” Nick Rice reported from K2's BC. “We wonder who these people were and whether they reached the summit, as they were quite close to the couloir at around 11:00pm." The climbers were French Yannick, Patrick, and Christian who first went to K2 to have a look at the climbing route, roughly up to 5500m. Then, they went to Broad Peak and climbed to the central summit to acclimatize before their attempt of K2's west face in Alpine style. The French climbers are now at the foot of K2, recovering and waiting for a weather window long enough to climb a new route on the peak’s west face – the team estimates they will need about eight days of good weather.

On K2's Cesen route, Wilco, Jelle, Gerard and Pemba aborted their summit push after leaving a cache close to C4. The climbers were too exhausted to continue up after overcoming some difficult sections and running out of rope to fix on K2’s upper slopes. Gerard McDonnell posted a big dispatch detailing the push, including the gas accident. The Norit climbers are now hoping for a weather break around the 18th (full moon).

K2 other news Marco Confortola and Roberto reached C2 and invited their Korean neighbors to a genuine Italian dinner. “There were nine of them, including a girl who intends to climb all 14 8000ers,” Marco reported. Nick Rice, Hugues, Peter Guggemos, Qudrat and Karim plan to join forces with the Serbian expedition, whose members are climbing up the Abruzzi Spur. Mike Farris team has set up C1. Norwegian lady climber Cecilie Skog and a Singaporean team are also in place.

Broad Peak wrap-up After summiting Nanga Parbat, Mario Panzeri and Daniele Nardi are establishing high camps on Broad. Portuguese climber Joao Garcia and Mogens Jensen are in place as well. Should Joao succeed on BP, it would become his 11th 8000er. Pavel Chochia, Valery Shamalo and Elisabet hoped to push for the top on July 10th, weather permitting. Mexican Badia and Mauricio reached C3. An Iranian team with 50 members is in the house, and so is Serge Civera.

Broad Peak emergency evacuations: American climber/skier Dan McCann was reportedly carrying skis and only using his trekking poles (no ice axe) when he took a long fall and broke quite a number of bones. Dan's three buddies including expedition leader Chuck Boyd performed a very difficult high altitude rescue of their mate. The climbers planned to climb and ski down K2, and were on BP to acclimatize. Antoine, a French climber who was intending to paraglide off Gasherbrum I, II and Broad Peak, came down with appendicitis – he was airlifted to a military hospital in Skardu. After recovering a few days, he hopes to return to attempt Broad Peak, GII and GI. Spanish Rafa Merchan was airlifted after falling in a river and injuring his head.

Distaghil Sar “Nine years later, the Yazghil glacier is a maze of ice towers and water hewn crevasses from its source to it’s snout near Shimshal,” Bruce Normand reported. “Above it lurks a full blown ice cascade, half white and half black, and the tranquil basin is now teemed with slots all the way to a new 55 degree headwall: our first ten days of the expedition were spent finding a completely new approach to bypass all of this. As July begins, we hope for some of the stable June weather which has yet to materialized to push to C2 and on to terra incognita along the north base to Distaghil Sar.”

Nanga Parbat - spotlight on Pakistan's own Working as HAP with Amical, with this Nanga Parbat summit late June Nisar Hussain completed all 8000 meter peaks in Pakistan. From the Sadpara Village near Skardu, Nisar Hussain was the first Baltistani to summit K2 in 2004. He is now the third Pakistani and second Baltistani mountaineer to have summited all the 8000+ peaks in Pakistan.

Nanga Parbat On June 21, the German DAV Summit Club put on top of Nanga Parbat Josef Lunger, Jurgen Greher, Florian Hubschenberger, Luis Stitzinger, and lady climbers Alix von Melle and Helga Söll.

G2: First Japanese Hero to summit 10 different 8000ers "When I reached the summit there was no joy or a word, I just stood in silence to recall the memory of every one who help me and the member who died last year. Continuing climbing is the only way to express my gratitude to them. I would like to say thank you to everyone." On July 18, 2007 members of Amical's expedition were hit by an avalanche on GII. Hirotaka survived; while one climber died of his injuries and another was never recovered. One of Hiro's vertebrae (No.3 lumbar spine) and five ribs were broken, and one of his lungs was collapsed. Hiro said he would come back to the mountains, and 8th of July he summited the mountain that nearly took his life. With him was Kazuya (Japan) and also Veikka Gustafsson (Finland) who reached his summit number 12 of the 14, 8000ers. With G2 his tenth 8,000er, Hiro Takeuchi has now stepped up to the top of the Japanese rankings of 8,000ers (living) summiteers.

Chicago Climber dies on the summit of Denali on 4th of July James Nasti, 51, perished on the very top of MountMcKinley on Independence day. James, a client with Alpine Ascents, reportedly collapsed unexpectedly leaning on his ice axe, without previous signs of AMS or heart trouble.

ExWeb Broad Peak special: Interview with Piotr Pustelnik, "be very careful and stick together!" "I was brought up by the old climbing school so, for me, climbing is always linked with good partnership… Overall, I don’t believe in a separate code of ethics in the mountains. One should follow the same principles as in everyday life but even more rigorously." ExWeb caught up with Piotr to get his take on Broad Peak, and also the latest about the "Tres Pedros" climbs.

Showtime! Yuichiro Miura, Fredrik Ericsson, Alberto Peruffo: sky skiing videos and more High altitude ski mountaineering is the next big thing in Himalaya. On Everest, some human records still fascinate. And then there is another burning issue - Tibet. Last week videos from all three topics were featured.

Greenland: Ronny and team kiting at night and wishing for more wind On the Greenland South-North route Ronny, Tom, Eirik and Helge experience too many calm days to their liking. Unfortunately they had an evacuation after Eirik had a hard fall on a windy day.

Greenland: The Petes about teamwork Daytime temperatures above zero degrees and a 100-200 meter drop in altitude per day means that Pete Mäkelä and Pete Vuorenmaa are into the last days of their 90 day expedition on Greenland. Makela writes about tension between teammates. “We have been able to avoid those this far, mostly because we have been traveling together so much. Usually we keep ourselves quite if will not agree with another. Moreover, if things would get that bad, we still have the shot-gun that was meant for polar bears.”

Greenland: Alex and George beyond 100 days and 1000 miles When the Alex Hibbert and George Bullard started their return journey to their first depot they were sodden wet, cold, sledging in deep snow and short of food, eating into their emergency food, but they kept going and crossed their 1000 mile (1853 km) mark unsupported as well as their 100th day on the ice last week.

Mars Ocean Odyssey update: about keeping dispatches interesting "One of my best old friends wrote and told me I'm boring and need to spice up my updates so that there is continued interest,” wrote Reid. Well, how do you do that on day 443 out of 1000, at open sea without ever touching land? Writing interesting dispatches is a common headache among explorers around the world. Places such as Everest and K2 usually offer enough content; it becomes trickier on monotonous expeditions such as when skiing to the earth poles or crossing the oceans.

Dutch Ocean rower Ralph Tuijn closes in on final destination The Zeeman Ocean Challenge is coming to an end for Dutchman Ralph Tuijn. Now on the Solomon sea, he hopes to make landfall on Papua New Guinea during this weekend. Tuijn is heading for the port of Rabaul and hopes to be assisted by a motor vessel for the last couple of miles to shore.

Beyond Everest: Mammon feeding Lucifer - ExWeb's China Olympics update Pictures of people shot dead in Amdo Ngapa on March 16, Nike slogans, young Tibetans mysteriously gone from Lhasa, trading brains for toys, the Chinese stock bubble and who's anti-Chinese, exactly - last week's China special story is a must read.

Read these stories - and more! - at ExplorersWeb.com

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