©Spencer Gray/AAJ
FFirst ascent of the southwest arête (1,670m, 5.10 A0 M7 WI5) of Kaqur Kangri (a.k.a. Kanti Himal), Kanti Himal, October 15–21. Traversed the mountain and descended by the previously unclimbed northwest ridge.
The Kanti Himal, in remote West Nepal, straddles the border with China/Tibet and its highest summit has the Tibetan name, Kaqur Kangri. In 1998, a small Japanese expedition made a reconnaissance of the southern or Nepalese side and were appalled by what they saw, deciding that, for them, there was no feasible route to the summit. It was left to another Japanese expedition to make the first ascent. In 2002, an eight-member team approached through Tibet and successfully reached the top after fixing ropes on the north flank and east ridge. The mountain remained unvisited for the next 22 years.
The only photos of the south face discovered by Americans Spencer Gray, Ryan Griffiths, and Matt Zia showed the top section, leaving the lower half to their imagination. However, the southwest ridge appeared to have the best rock and was sheltered from active serac fall elsewhere on the face. The three walked eight days from the roadhead to a base camp at 4,700m. After acclimatizing on a nearby 6,200m peak, they made a first attempt on the southwest ridge in mid-October, climbing to 5,800m in a day before their stove failed. This forced a descent to the base of the arête to retrieve another stove, after which Zia, deeply affected by recent news of a friend's death, decided not to continue.
Gray and Griffiths returned to the ridge and ascended good granitic gneiss (they shared one pair of rock shoes), ice, and mixed terrain to reach the spectacular crux headwall. This gave eight sustained mixed pitches, climbed over two days through the only appreciable precipitation during the expedition. From a camp on the summit snow field, they reached the top after one hour's walk on October 31, then descended the previously unvisited northwest ridge, and a west- facing slope below, mostly downclimbing with a dozen rappels. They reached the base of the mountain the same day, having completed one of the hardest routes ever ascended in West Nepal.
Jury members agreed this was a technically difficult ascent of an elegant line, carried out in good style, and with a traverse of the mountain. It featured a high level of exploration and provides a pointer to other alpinists that many challenging unclimbed objectives still exist in little visited regions of the Himalaya.
