Ueli Steck, Simon Anthamatten To The Rescue–Racing Up Annapurna For Inaki Ochoa

A commenter here at The Adventurist just gave me some breaking news on the continued efforts to rescue Inaki Ochoa from Annapurna. Jo commented:

Ueli Steck and Simon Anthamatten are on the way. Have reached 6900m and now resting. True mountaineering spirit. Thoughts and prayers to them all.

After a brief word with Jo, I can now confirm this information with a bit of an update. Yesterday I posted about Inaki Ochoa getting into trouble on Annapurna. No climbers were said to be in the area. That has changed–

A MAJOR high-altitude rescue is in the works. This is the real deal for one of mountaineering’s best. Inaki Ochoa, at last word, was almost in a comatose state after recently attempting a summit on Annapurna. He was helped back to Camp V. I am going to skip the details of this event, but I did make a post here yesterday concerning all of this (sorry, have to get this update up). You may read it HERE.

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Ueli Steck and Simon Anthamatten To the Rescue!

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From Barrabes.com and translated through the Google Translator:

Inaki Ochoa is still alive. Ueli Steck and Simon Anthamatten are heading up to assist in the rescue of Inaki on Annapurna. As mentioned in the comment by Jo, the swiss climbers are currently sitting at Camp 3 and resting up and planning to go higher. Russian climber in Kathmandu as going to be heading up as well. These include Horia Bolotov and his partner Bogomolov (will have to get a first name in a bit, I am going on the source for this info)

he place where there are 3 mountaineers is the south wall of Annapurna. They need someone who moves fast and fluently wall, not just a Himalayan height, but someone very technical accustomed to the style and self-Alpine routes in high difficulty. It is not a normal route to an eight-thousander, kicked and fixed ropes. And remember, for example, that in February Uli Steck single-handedly beat the record of the northern wall of the Eiger: climbed the 1,800 meter winter route Heckmair (ED2) in 2 hours, 47 minutes and 33 seconds. We may also recall his solo climb on the wall north of Cholatse, which almost validates the Piolet d’Or.

There is hope that Inaki Ochoa can be brought off the face of Annapurna.  We will all have to keep our fingers crossed and kep an eye on this developing situation.  I will update with more when I hear it.