We had managed to descend without belays, and didn’t have to cope with the moral issue of leaving a man behind on the mountain." Image of Piotr on Annapurna back in 2004, courtesy of Klubzdobywcow.pl.
Loretan's route (in red) and the even longer Polish Kukuczka/Hajzer route, following the South Ridge (in blue). Topo courtesy of Artur Hajzer (click to enlarge).
Slovak Peter Hámor was reportedly the only one in the team who reached the main summit of Annapurna. Image of Peter courtesy of 8000.sk.
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Annapurna debrief - Piotr Pustelnik: Leave no man behind
Posted: May 29, 2006 06:26 am EDT
(MountEverest.net) Less than two weeks back, ExWeb published the special story "SMS to hell" (check feature stories) about an ongoing summit push far from the crowds of Mount Everest: On Annapurna - the most dangerous of all the 8000ers, with a summit/fatality rate exceeding 40%. Piotr, 53, was on the final push on his summit number 13 - following the descent line on a route opened by legendary Polish climbers Artur and Jerzy in 1988.
May 25, news came that after a long and difficult climb, the main summit was only reached by Peter Hamor (Slovakia). Pustelnik and Morawski reached the East Summit, but had to turn back to help one of the Tibetan climbers who became blind. Forced to decide between going for the summit or helping the injured Tibetan, Piotr didn't hesitate: The right thing was leaving no man behind.
Sat-phone debrief from BC
Piotr Pustelnik and the mBank Lotto Himlayan Trilogy team are now in BC, recovering from a scary descent of Annapurna without belay. Pustelnik reported the details over sat-phone yesterday.
“We are in BC at 4130 m. I would like to report some details about the last few days. As you know we chose the route following the East ridge. We had estimated the climb to take 6 days, and had supplies for 8.”
The long path-finding across the glacier
“To get to the ridge though, first we had to cross the glacier: Orientation was hard between the seracs and crevasses. It took us too long to cross the glacier and then to find the right place for a second cache, on the saddle between Roc Noir and Glacier Dom.”
“Originally, we had planned to do one more roundtrip to BC for supplies, but that would have taken too long so instead we took a risk and moved up. Only one of the Tibetan climbers. Lotse, joined us.”
A risky bet
“We started climbing along the edge of the ridge. By Roc Noir the route was steep and loaded with snow. Then came a very sharp snow ridge. It took us two days to climb it and we reached a plateau near the East summit May 21.”
“That day Piotr Morawski, Peter Hamor, me and Lotse set off for the East summit at about 6:00 am. Lotse used oxygen on that section. The weather was rather good, typical for Annapurna: Calm in the morning and windy with snowfalls in the afternoon.”
“It took us some time to reach the East summit and then to find the ridge leading towards the middle summit. Peter Hamor, the best alpinist in the group scouted the way. Meanwhile, Lotse hadn’t adjusted his glasses properly to the O2 mask, allowing the sun to hit his eyes the entire day. We were at about 8000m.”
Lotse blinded – the dream is over
“As Peter disappeared out of view, heading for the Middle summit, Lotse’s eye began to hurt. Since the pain didn’t recede, we started looking to do a bivouac between the East and Middle summit. We had no head lamps, so Lotse couldn’t go back to camp alone and we must descend before sunrise.”
“We reached Camp at 5:00 am. Peter spent the night in a bivouac between the Middle and the Main summit. By then Lotse had lost his sight completely. There was no food, nothing to drink and Lotse was blind. We had to self-rescue.”
“The next day, the three of us were sitting in the tent. Piotr Morawski and myself in pretty good shape, Lotse crying all the time. Peter arrived after his bivouac. I sent him down on his own, he was well and couldn’t help us anyway.”
Get down before it is too late
“All our food reserves were finished by that time. We had to descend – it was clear that Lotse wouldn’t recover his sight, and soon become too weak to go down. We had thought of returning to the East summit in order to retrieve our fixed roes there and use tem to help Lotse down – but we were too weak. It was an extremely difficult situation, we couldn’t count on anyone’s help in the middle of the ridge.”
“Don Bowie, who hadn’t taken part in the summit push due to heath problems, had gone down with one Sherpa to the second deposit. (It was very brave, thanks Don!) At least we knew that food and gas were waiting for us there. We decided to free climb down, I told Lotse we were leaving, and he asked “up or down?”. It was a tragicomical situation.”
Scary descent
"The first few meters were very hard - I was really scared, my legs were trembling. One wrong move could have ended critical. I watched Piotr, it was a very tough day for him too: His back and stomach were hurting, but he fought hard. Lotse could hardly see anything, but kept going down. I now knew that we would make it.
“It took us about 12 or 13 hours to get out of the mess, hours of watching every single step. By the evening, we finally saw Peter and Don by the deposit, preparing a place for us. "We are alive!" we shouted down to them. My legs trembling, I thought to myself: Jesus, we did it. We had managed to descend without belay, and didn’t have to cope with the moral issue of leaving a man behind on the mountain; to tell him that he was out and would have to stay. I hope I will never have to go through something like this again.”
On November 10, 1986 legendary climbers Jerzy Kukuzcka and Artur Hajzer made an early November first ascent of the Manaslu NE face. The two then headed straight for Annapurna - and summited its North Face in freezing winter - on February 3, 1987. Hajzer returned to the mountains with Kukuczka already in September that same year. That’s when they made a first ascent of the West Ridge on Shisha Pangma, on September 18 - right in the monsoon season. The next year, Jurek climbed Annapurna East, after first opening a new line there with Artur.
Slovak Peter Hámor has summited Everest (1998) and climbed "the Alpine Trilogy" the difficult north faces of Matterhorn, Grandes Jorasses and Eiger.
Piotr Pustelnik has 12 of the 14, 8000ers completed. Only Annapurna and Broad Peak remain on his quest to summit the world's tallest mountains. He has climbed Gasherbrum II twice (1990 and 1997), Nanga Parbat in 1992, Cho Oyu and Shisha Pangma Main in 1993, Dhaulagiri in 1994, Everest in 1995, K2 from the North in 1996, Gasherbrum I in 1997, Lhotse in 2000, Kangchenjunga in 2001, Makalu in 2002 and Manaslu in 2003. He has two secret dreams; go back to Makalu and climb the West Pillar and a winter expedition on the North side of Everest.
Piotr Morawski achieved the first winter climb on Shisha Pangma on January 14, 2005. Also on the summit was Italian Simone Moro, who describes Morawski as one of the best Polish climbers today.
American Don Bowie attempted Broad Peak in 2005. He also volunteered to help people living in isolated mountain areas of Indian Kashmir who were severely affected after the October 8 earthquake.
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