“It’s more challenging. âYou need to be clever, fast, strong enough, have respect for the mountain, the wild areas, and the local people. Each has lost partners on climbs.There is, too, the power that history exerts on the Poles.
Climbing the 8,000ers in winter has become something of a Polish national pastime; 10 of the 13 winter ascents of 8,000ers were claimed by Polish climbers.Kowalewski, who joined the expedition at the last minute, has since sustained the first injury of the season, when he was struck in the clavicle by a falling rock en route to Camp 1. Water and power gels freeze solid. He took solo trips (known in Polish as the lonely style) across the high Tatras in winter. Mountaineers have long relied on building snow caves for bivouacs during ascents, but the use of igloos in a winter basecamp is a novel approach. This winter there are two expeditions on the mountain. Of the planet's 14 8,000-meter mountains, it is the only one that has never been summited in winter.Photograph by Colin Monteath, Minden/National Geographic Txikon, with his tree-trunk thighs and burly frame, fits the physical paradigm of a hulking mountaineer, yet he is soft-spoken, with a goofy grin, and the first word most acquaintances use to describe him is âkind.â But his soft demeanor belies a fierce drive to get to the top of difficult summits, which has distinguished him as one of the world's most accomplished and ambitious alpinists. The Southwest Pillar (Magic Line) Route on K2 (C) The Southwest Pillar Route is a technically challenging route considered to be the second most demanding. “My God! Its greatest climber, Jerzy Kukuczka, fell to his death, and an avalanche on Everest swept away five other well-known Polish climbers.The Communist government collapsed. The route is very The Northwest Face Route of K2 was first ascended in 1990 by a Japanese team. Yesterday, a Japanese expedition reached the top via the South-Southeast Spur (the Cesen Route). He huddled inside a tiny tent and made tea for two: himself and his companion, whose presence was no less intense for being imaginary. Bielecki favors a bottom-of-the-world strategy to prepare: Send summit climbers to Chile, where it is summer, and climb a 22,000-foot Andean peak. The only other known successful attempt to climb this route was accomplished by Jordi Corominas of Spain in 2004.Legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner reportedly viewed this route and called it “suicidal” in 1979 and chose to ascend via the Abruzzi Spur instead. Winds at the summit reach hurricane strength, and temperatures can fall as low as minus 80 Fahrenheit.The climbers could wait two months in their tents, in hopes the gales relent for a few days. It connects with the Abruzzi Spur about two-thirds of the way up the mountain.After various failed attempts on the Abruzzi Spur, The West Face Route of K2 is a technically challenging route. “And, of course, he was not there.”K2 is a northern loner; it sits 800 miles northwest of Nepal’s grand Himalayan peaks, exposed to winds that gust from the Arctic Circle. Despite it being a far tougher mountain, perhaps they'd have better luck on K2, they reasoned.Also joining Txikonâs team is PaweÅ Dunaj, Marek Klonowski, and Waldemar Kowalewski, all from Poland. In search of money, they walked into factory offices in Katowice and pointed to towering industrial chimneys. At K2 base camp, the air has half the oxygen found at sea level. K2 sits 70 miles from the nearest village, at the end of a path that threads across the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers. Thereâs something really beautiful and stoic about that.âBielecki thinks of climbing in terms of joy and satisfaction, with the latter providing a stronger source of motivation. They are prisoners of their dreams.Janusz Golab is a long-limbed lion of a climber with curly hair that goes here and there like an ethereal nimbus. The team is building advanced camps like these at various altitudes along the route and stocking them with gear and food. Many dozens of climbers each night talked mountains, life, and more mountains, and sang songs and drank vodka. © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- The other team is a multinational group of elite mountaineers from Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. It requires a willingness to subsume ego in the collective. This was a too-harsh indictment. The others disagreed.Bielecki and his partner made it back to their tents, badly frostbitten. In July 1986, Jerzy Kukuczka and Tadeusz Piotrowskisummited on this route. Climbing became popular in Poland during the Cold War years as a way of slipping, at least temporarily, the grip of the regime’s control.Part of the Karakoram range, K2 is the second highest mountain on earth and is a more dangerous climb than Everest.
Having been shut down by Everest in winter twice, however, the team wanted to mix it up and try a new objective to keep the motivation high. Ten Polish climbers hope to make history by reaching the summit next winter.These men will hike through knee-deep snow to a base camp at 18,645 feet, surpassing all but one mountain in the United States. Janusz Golab is a force unto himself, climbing with precision and economy of motion, a strong-limbed cat.Marek Chmielarski, 40, is one of the Tatra climbers and will join the K2 team. Men and women scaled its granite walls in summer heat and in the belly of winter. Max the photographer is a skilled climber and accompanies them; I hike to an ice fall and wave goodbye.
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