Kangshung wall
The Kangshung Wall is the 3350 m high east face of Mount Everest . The base of the wall is on the Kangshung Glacier . The other large mountain faces of the mountain are the north face , which is also in Tibet , and the south-west face in Nepal.
The Kangshung wall is crowned on its right side by the upper northeast ridge and on the left by the southeast ridge with the south col, which leads to the Lhotse , another eight-thousander . Most of the upper wall consists of hanging glaciers with overhanging cornices .
history
The east side of the mountain was relatively unknown to the west until the 1920s due to the complex and inaccessible terrain of Tibet. In 1921, George Mallory and Guy Bullock were the first western people to come closer than 100 kilometers to the mountain and also to visit the Kangshung flank, as part of the exploration expedition to look for the easiest access for a possible ascent. This 1921 expedition was the first ever that the Dalai Lama of Tibet gave permission to travel around Everest.
While exploring and mapping this side of the Himalayas in the 1920s, the later famous mountaineer George Mallory read that this east face of Everest, because of its steepness and avalanches, does not allow any way to get to the top of the mountain. The expedition of 1921, which, on behalf of the English Alpine Club and the Royal Geographic Society , looked for ways to climb the highest mountain on earth, consequently moved on in an effort to discover an easier way of climbing; and she found on the North Col, the so-called North Col .
Mallory and Bullock were escorted to the east side of the mountain by local yak drivers . They crossed the high pass Langma La and the rhododendron forests of the Kama Chu or Kharta valley. At that time in August there were meadows of flowers and rich vegetation in the valleys in front of the Kangshung Wall. In 1980 Andy Harvard, a young American mountaineer, explored the east side of Everest using modern means.
Mountaineering requirements
The lower part of the wall consists of steep rock sections and wall pillars or piers, with couloirs between them. The wall is believed to be far more dangerous than the standard climbs from Nepal via the South Col or from Tibet via the North Col. It is the most remote face of the mountain, with a correspondingly long and difficult journey, without any logistics.
The first successful ascent of the Kangshung Wall happened in 1983 by an American expedition led by James D. Morrissay, with the participation of Louis Reichardt , after Reichardt carried out an exploration in 1981. In 1988 an expedition climbed a new route over the south pillar to reach the south saddle. (From there, the route runs over the classic southeast ridge). The only member of the expedition to reach the summit was Stephen Venables , who also became the first Briton to reach the summit without supplemental oxygen.
Direct paths (so-called Direttissima ) have already been climbed in two walls, in the north wall and the south-west wall - in the Kangshung wall this has neither been successful nor attempted at all. The northernmost of the four pillars in the Kangshung wall comes closest to the direttissima of the east wall, which was previously considered impossible. A line from Mallory has come down to us, which gave it its name: “Only in the imagination can an ascent take place over this pillar.” Since then this ridge has been called Phantasy Ridge - and this ridge is still today (as of autumn 2008), more than 85 years later his sighting, still unmounted.
Climbing the Kangshung Wall
Upper normal route south from Nepal Western Qwm from south saddle
Normal route north from the East Rongpu Valley
(12) northeast ridge
(7a) Stephen Venables et al. 1988
(7b) American expedition 1983 (C.Buhler et al.)
(7c) "Phantasy Ridge" (unclimbed)
George Mallory noted in his expedition book: "Other men, less wise, might attempt this way if they would, but, emphatically, it was not for us." (Other men, less wise, may try this route if they wish. But, emphatically, it is nothing for us.)
To climb the wall, you have to approach the 3-kilometer-wide wall either by climbing through deep, avalanche-prone cuttings, or by climbing into the wall on steep, sometimes overhanging rock ridges, which are full of potentially deadly ice needles and treacherous with unstable snow cover is. Because the real difficulties lie in the upper part of the wall, retreating from the wall is also highly problematic, which makes the ascent even more challenging and difficult. Add to this the loneliness, i. H. the absence of other climbers, which makes the possibilities of a rescue operation very difficult. Expeditions consistently reported that they were the only people in the upper valley for weeks.
The hanging glaciers create a high risk of avalanches, especially when the weather conditions deteriorate, which greatly increases the objective dangers of this route. After preparing the route, you are on the wall for at least three consecutive days to climb it. Hardly any weather forecast on Everest extends reliably over such a long period of time.
Of the well over 4,000 ascents of the highest mountain on earth, only a few people have reached the summit via the Kangshung Wall. In a first expedition in 1983, the Americans succeeded in ascending the so-called American Buttress , a pillar in the central east wall, below the south summit and then continuing to reach the summit via the classic Hillary route.
In 1988, a second, mixed American-English expedition made plans to climb the South Col via the wall pillar that extends next south towards Lhotse and then take the classic southeast ridge route, across the south summit and the Hillary Step - this expedition was also successful, if even with only one summit climber, the Englishman Stephen Venables .
Nobody has seriously tried the east face since 1988; an attempt by Americans in 1995 failed at a rather low level. Sandy Hill Pittman, a society lady from New York who tried to climb the Seven Summits and only reached her destination in the following year 1996 during the disaster on Mount Everest described by Jon Krakauer , also took part in it.
weather
The Kangshung Wall is essentially the steepest and also most exposed to the rigors of the weather on Mount Everest.
The weather in the Kangshung Valley and in the wall is determined by the jet stream. Essentially, the wind comes from the west and descends over the southeast and northeast ridges to the east into the Kangshung Valley. In the few "window days" to climb Mount Everest you can tell from the wind vane, which is covered with ice crystals, how high the wind speed is in the upper regions of the mountain (and in the lower regions of the stratosphere ). With a horizontal flag, the wind blows at around 60 to 80 miles per hour (90–120 km / h), which is just borderline to dare to climb. If the flag rises higher from the summit ridge, the wind is more moderate, the weather friendlier - to then, under certain circumstances, turn into hell in the middle of the descent, when the wind then picks up in the afternoon from around 2 or 3 p.m. and storms , blizzards and whiteouts can turn relegation from the very highest regions into a game for life. If the wind vane slopes directly downwards behind a ridge, the wind speeds are higher than 80 mph - and what is known as " freak weather " may prevail : weather conditions that add the already low oxygen content of the air up on the mountain to a negative pressure or suction effect, which, with a dynamic effect due to the movement of air, causes even less filling of the lungs with life-giving oxygen; one of the circumstances that were blamed for the 1996 Mount Everest accident . The entire east or Kangshung wall is, so to speak, the "rubbish dump" for all the snow and the resulting avalanches, which are dumped on the east side with the prevailing westerly winds. In addition, the east face happens to be altogether steeper than the north and south-west faces of the mountain with an incline angle of between 60 and 80 degrees, both of which have already been climbed in several routes, even in a direct line.
Cathy O'Dowd and Ian Woodall , mountaineers from South Africa who have already climbed Everest twice over the two classic routes, failed in 2003 on the "Phantasy Ridge" - they did not even come halfway up the ridge to the junction with the northeast ridge below the Three Pinnacles , which mark another difficulty of a possible ascent from the east and (on an easier route along the entire northeast ridge) were only climbed by two expeditions.
literature
- Roberto Mantovani, Kurt Diemberger: "Mount Everest - Fight in icy heights", Moewig, ISBN 3-8118-1715-9
- Peter Gillman, "Everest - 80 Years of Triumphs and Tragedies" - 2001, Bruckmann-Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-7654-3758-1
- Ed Webster, Snow in the Kingdom (2000)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Mount Everest , map 1: 50,000, map 1: 25,000 map, and route plan. Prepared under the direction of Bradford Washburn for the National Geographic Society , the Boston Museum of Science and the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Studies, 1991.
- ↑ Stephen Venables, Everest: Alone at the Summit , p. 8th.