Frenchmen Claim New Climbing Route Up Nuptse’s South Face

November 17, 2008

There is plenty of action still going on in the Himalayas. I know that many of my loyal readers have been following all the action on The Adventure Blog and ExplorersWeb, but now some interesting information is coming to us from UKClimbing.com, the UK’s biggest climbing network.

It looks like there may have been a new route put up on Mt. Everest’s smaller cousin, Nuptse. This new route was climbed Alpine style by Frenchmen Stéphane Benoist and Patrice Glairon-Rappaz on the South Face of Nuptse. If this holds, it could be the first new South Face route put up on Nuptse since 1961. Since that time, there have only been two expeditions who made a successful South Face summit. That is pretty remarkable!

More Information from UKClimbing.com:

Nuptse (7,864m), which lies just south of Everest, was first climbed in 1961 by a British-Nepali expedition under Joe Walmsley. It was a classic siege, following a tricky rightward-slanting central ridge on the South Face to a large snowfield, then a long leftward traverse along these snow slopes and over a difficult rock barrier to reach a couloir breaking through the upper rock walls to the summit arête. After establishing eight camps, the first summit party, Dennis Davis and Tashi Sherpa, reached the top on the 16th May. A day later Chris Bonington, Les Brown, Jim Swallow and Pemba Sherpa followed in their footsteps. To date, no other party has reached the main top from the south, and the original route is considered one of the first technical ‘big walls’ climbed in the Himalaya.

Unfortunately, I made the comment a few minutes ago “if this stands.” It seems that the two climbers were turned back before the summit do to bad weather setting in. I am not sure how this will play out. On one hand, the new route is there and now available. On the other, it is usually customary to reach the summit from your new route. Since this wasn’t meant, how do we know that this new route can actually take us to the top? Those are just a couple of questions I am throwing out there to all of you. Should the new route stand, or should a summit be the deciding factor? I am interested in your thoughts. Please comment below.

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