10:48 am CST Nov 04, 2009
(MountEverest.net) At ExWeb, Simon Anthamatten, 26, shot up from nowhere as climbing partner to Ueli Steck in relation to Ochoa’s rescue attempt on Annapurna.
Last Thursday, Simon, his brother and a friend - all in their twenties - bagged a summit near Nangpa-la, in one of the year’s coolest 7000er climbs: a first ascent in pure alpine style on the 2,200 m south face of Jasemba.
"We asked ourselves what this had to do with climbing"
“We set off from BC on October 25th,” Simon wrote in his expedition debrief. “After a 5-hours trek across broken Somna Glacier we reached the wall’s base at 5800 meters. The following day we moved fast, ice climbing and then snow trudgeing up to a snow mushroom at 6,500m where we pitched our tent. We slept belayed to the wall.”
Difficulties piled up the following day: “Snow mushrooms as big as cars (or trucks) alternated with steep ice walls. While on ice we could at least belay on ice-screws, but on the bottomless snow sections there was no way to secure our progress."
"We asked ourselves what this had to do with climbing. Our nerves were on the edge, moving one step forward and two steps back. We only managed 400 vertical meters that day, before the three of us fell exhausted in our 2-pax tent for a, you may imagine, rather uncomfortable night.”
Summit's only half-way there
“The height and the efforts of the past three days did not increase our morale for a summit attempt. A 150 meter-tall rock barrier with vertical passages and another 300 meters of snow trudgeing demanded everything from us. Thanks to our great team spirit and our motivation we made it to the summit though.”
“Thursday, October 29 at 2.30 pm Michi, Samuel and I were standing on the summit of Jasemba (7,350m). Somehow though, joy doesn't really came up. Jasemba has no easy side to descend by. Similar to the Matterhorn, the top is only half way through.”
25 very hard rappels later, the Swiss team made it back to 6,900m by nightfall, and further down to BC on the following day.
Together with fellow-swiss Ueli Steck, Simon Anthamatten (26) was awarded the latest Piolet d’Or for technical difficulty after a first ascent to 6500m Tengkampoche’s north face, in Nepal, plus a number of honorary prizes as a tribute to his altruist commitment on Iñaki Ochoa’s rescue attempt on Annapurna south face last year.
Overall Ice climbing World-cup champion last year, Simon climbed all Fitz Roy’s massif spires in tandem, the Eiger north face’s “Japanese Diretissima” (together with Robert Jasper), Bhagirathi III’s west Pillar, etc.
Simon often climbs up together with brother Samuel (23) – the two have climbed Cerro Torre, Mt. Hunter’s ‘Moonflower’, El Cap’s “Free Rider” – and a new route on Matterhorn.
Mount Jasemba (7,350m) rises on the Nepal-Tibet border, near Nangpa-la. First climbed by a Japanese team in 1986, the peak’s latest ascent was performed two years ago by Hans Kammerlander and the late Karl Unterkircher – in their third attempt up the SW face.
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