Down safe, but no summit

The last five days have been a roller coaster of emotions as we have battled with heavy snows and high winds on our summit bid. Ultimately being defeated at ~7200m just below C4.

After leaving BC we were marooned in C1 for 24hrs as unexpectedly heavy snows (about 1m) fell throughout the mountain making movement upwards to C2 through the icefall exceptionally hazardous.  The Sherpas were marooned at C2 and were very lucky when an avalanche sweeping down the main face of Manaslu missed their tents by only 5m. 

After waiting 24hrs for the mountain to settle, we teamed up with another group to try and open the route to C2.  After a long and rather frightening day (MID for Rob for an epic  traverse through the seracs, breaking trail through waist deep snow in places) we eventually met with the sherpas at C2 and spent a night.  Unfortunately the route to C3 was under heavy snow and a collapsed serac barred the original route.  With 200m of fixed rope the route around the serac was found and the route cleared to C3 where the team spent a very windy night.

On the morning of the 9th the team were hanging on the weather forecast hoping the winds would lessen to allow movement on the mountain.  Marc the weather man came up trumps again, predicting decreasing winds throughout the day.  Armed with this we set out at 1000 in strong winds and almost immediately a number of individuals from another team had to turn around due to the extreme cold and windchill.  Whilst movement was difficult we made steady progress until at ~7200m the route entered the icefall of the upper seracs and the fixed line was buried under ice and despite our best efforts was unable to be dug out.  Proceeding into the icefall without a rope for protection in the high winds was not a safe option and the extremely hard decision to abandon our attempt was made.



We spent a few minutes gazing across the panorama of peaks N into Tibet and East to Everest and taking photographs before heading down to the relative calm of C3.  After packing tents and oxygen we headed down to C2, the Sherpas making a heroic carry down to BC to enable us to clear the mountain the following day.

We are all at BC now, and with no frostbite or other ailments except extreme tiredness.  With the mountain stripped we are packing up and heading for Sama Goan later today.

We're back and we're off up

Apologies for the absence on the blog.

With a four day block of bad weather forecast the team headed down to Samagoan for two nights rest at a lower altitude. This by coincidence was the same day the development team arrived at Samagoan, they are in great sprits and are all very well. That evening a small number of continental lagers where had as we joined in with the Altitude Junkies Sherpa’s who celebrated a job well done on the Manaslu.

 The following day (3^rd) both teams made the journey up to Base Camp. This being the highest the Development team had been on the trek so far, they all arrived feeling good and with high sprits.

Both teams at a snowy Base Camp

With the conditions not the best at Base Camp the Development team decided to spend only one  night before carrying on with their trek around to the Larkya Base Camp. We wish them the best of luck with their summits and look forward to seeing them again in Kathmandu.

Summit Attempt

The weather forecast is predicting a stable period between the 8^th – 12^th, with the jet stream arriving over Nepal around the 13^th. The arrival of the jet stream will cause high winds across the summit and most likely end our summit attempt on the mountain.  With this in mind the team have decided to head up the mountain and get into a position to summit early morning on the 9^th with the option to delay at a camp and summit on the 10^th. Chris is keen to point out that the planned summit on the 9th has no correlation with his birthday!

All being well we will be hopefully blogging our success on the 10^th or 11^th.

Wish us luck.