Panzeri says Kangchenjunga is harder than K2

Mario Panzeri has recently climbed Kangchenjunga, his 12th 8000m mountain. He climbed it with an Iranian and Christian Stangl.

A climber who was with him on the expedition – and made the summit too – Anselm  Murphy, made some interesting comments about what Panzeri and Mingma Sherpa said about the difficulties of Kangchenjunga. Both of them said that Kangchenjunga was harder to climb that K2.

Panzeri said that he would be going to Gasherbrum 1 in the summer. If he completes this it will be his 13th 8000m mountain. He has previously climbed K2.

With him on the final climb to the summit was Christian Stangl. He said that he did not ask him about the faked K2 climb last year. But for this climb he has pictures to proves that Stangl made the top. He thinks Stangl might be going back to K2 this year.

Source: Anselm  Murphy

Source: Montagna

Gasherbrum 1 team will attempt K2 in alpine style

The core of the team will be the same that went to Gasherbrum 1 in the winter will be trying to scale K2 this summer. They want to climb it in true alpine fashion. Also they want to go up a new route.

Due to the difficult conditions they ended up not scaling Gasherbrum 1 during the winter. Had they done so they would have been the first to climb this mountain in winter. At this point it is still unclimbed in winter.

The core climbers are: Alex Txikon (Basque), Gerfried Göschl (Austrian), Louis Rousseau (Canada). All three will meet each other in Skardu.

They are going on the Pakistan side of K2 in contrast to Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner who is going to attempt it from the Chinese side.

Source: Barrabes( translated)

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner confirms she is leaving for K2 in June

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner has said on her website that she intends to make another attempt on K2 in 2011. All of her previous attempts have been made on the treks up the Pakistan side of the mountain.

This time she will attempt K2 from the North side. To get there she will have to goto China first. This is a more difficult trek than from the more familiar trek in Pakistan. There are rivers to cross on the way there which can be of an unpredictable height depending on the rain. Camels will be used to help transport all of the equipment across these rivers and get to the base camp.

In the last few months she has been lecturing. Also she and her husband have been training in Croatia to build up their strength.

Along with Kaltenbrunner will be her husband, Ralf Dujmovits, Tommy Heinrich from Argentina, a friend from Poland and possibly 2 Kazakh climbers.

A Russian 1996 K2 expedition followed a similar path, once they were in China. They were lucky for the rivers were not very high. They went into the Shaksgam Valley which Kaltenbrunner mentions that she will be going to. Several of their expedition made it to the top of K2, but one died on the way down. Source: 1996 K2 Russian summit and tragedy. In 1982,  a Japanese expedition became the first one to climb K2 from the Chinese side.

She feels that she is over the disappointment and tragedy from 2010 when she lost her climbing partner, Fredrik Ericsson on the final attempt to climb to the summit. Kaltenbrunner only needs to climb K2 in order to have made the summit of all 14 8000m mountains without oxygen.

Source: Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner

A photo of the North Ridge can be seen on Summitpost