Three climbers have become the first to conquer Pakistan’s “killer mountain” during the winter months.
They reached the 26,656ft (8,125m) peak of Nanga Parbat last Friday. K2 on the China-Pakistan border is the only one of the world’s great “eight-thousanders” yet to be climbed in winter.
From the peak of Nanga Parbat, the climbers could clearly see the curve of the Earth and feast their eyes on the Hindu Kush. The peak of K2, the world’s second highest peak, was visible in the distance.
“You feel small because you are like a mosquito in an entire globe. And at the same time even though you feel small you feel also great and powerful,” Simone Moro said after the team reached Islamabad yesterday. Moro, from Italy, climbed the mountain with two other men, Ali Sadpara from Pakistan and Alex Txikon from Spain.
Climbing without oxygen, ropes or harnesses, the three braved wind chill temperatures at minus 50C and sharp gusts of wind with ice axes in their hands. It took them more than eight hours to climb the last mile and a half.
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Moro said the team had little time to acclimatise themselves — they spent only one night at above 6,000 metres before going for the summit.
He tried and failed to conquer Nanga Parbat three times before succeeding. He said that luck smiled on him this year with a spell of good weather and the right team to meet the challenge. “It doesn’t exist, the word impossible — only in the dictionary,” he said. “So any evolution or any limits that have been pushed in the sport have been pushed by people who don’t believe in the word impossible.”
Another member of the team, Tamara Lunger from Italy, had to abandon her climb 560ft from the summit after realising she would not otherwise return. “I had to puke my breakfast and then everything I drank or everything I ate came out again. So I lost a lot of energy and then in addition there was the strong wind,” Lunger said.
The mountain has one of the highest death rates in the world. More than 30 climbers died trying to reach its summit before the first successful climb in 1953, hence its nickname.
The team climbed the mountain via what is known as the Kinshofer route, named after a German climber who reached the peak in 1962 — but lost a climbing partner to a fatal fall. In 2013 Taliban militants stormed Nanga Parbat base camp in 2013 and killed ten foreign tourists.