What happened in GII’s summit push?

Kaveh Kashefi

Coming back in GII’s BC, Leader of Tehran’s GII expedition-2009, Kaveh Kashefi reported the diary of summit days as below:

«It was about 3:40 P.M. on Sunday, 19^th of July. Four members of the first group of our expedition composed of Mohammad Nasiri, mohammad Naderian, Mojtaba Rahman-Nezhad and Hamid Reza Sanjari, who had reposed in C3 started to reach C4. At the same time, I was at C2 along with doctor Behpour and three other members. According to weather forecast, it was going to be improved, but for a short time until tomorrow night. The first group passed a mix terrain between C3 and C4 in a windy weather, where the fixed ropes from last year were completely buried. Finally they pitched their tents at 9:00 P.M. in C4 (7500m).

Camp4 was cemetery of old tents and Tehran Mountaineers were the first ones to set up C4 this season.

Staying in C4 for a few hours, Mohammad Naderian and Mojtaba got out of tent toward the summit at 5:35 A.M. on July 20. After a while remaining two men took the way back to C3.

The summit team traversed a long way without any fix rope below rocky pyramid in the last section and got to three Sarabi climbers after attempting about 3 hours and a half. They were Reza Bahadorani, Iraj Ma’ali and Ali Reza Jalali, who had begun their summit push from C3 earlier last night. One of their team mates had turned back to C3 in the half way. The Iranians joined as a team to pass the rest of the summit way, which was heading up inside a couloir with inclination of approximately 40 to 50 degrees.

At 10:30A.M., they were at the very end of the couloir. A strong wind was raging from SW side. Also it was going to be foggy and fixing ropes seemed to be necessary. Putting 120 meters of fix ropes took 2 hours. It is worth saying that from couloir ’s end, there are two separate routes toward GII’s summit. Iranian chose the most direct one due to lack of time.

Eventually, at 1:45 P.M. on 20^th of July, two Tehrani along with three sarabi mountaineers reached beneath a big cornice, which was formed on the summit. No one has stepped on it recently and it was so dangerous. Therefore, they decided not to step on it and come down after taking some videos and photos.

About an hour below the summit, they came across two Spanish and Polish mountaineers, who were trying to reach the summit in last hours of good weather. Despite Iranians’ warning, they took the way up.

Arriving C4 at 4:00 P.M., Iran’s summiteers collect the camp and descent to C3, where they were welcomed with other members of Tehran’s expedition at 6:30P.M.

It was getting late and Polish and Spanish guys haven’t come back yet. So, we put a flashing light outside the tent to help them finding C3. Finally Polish Jacek Teler arrived at 10:00 P.M. without his Spanish teammate Louis Barbero.»

"I tried so much to prevent Louis from further attempt, but he climbed the cornice and disappeared." Jacek told us.

"Till now (July 24, 2009), just one time on Tuesday, Louis’ head lamp was seen around 7600m and no further news. After the event, Spanish expedition couldn ’t do any search and rescue operation, because of weather worsening." Kaveh finished his report.