Already Treacherous, Climb Just Got More Difficult
Thursday, Jan 7, 2010 | Updated 2:48 PM PST
NickRice.us
Gale-force winds and freezing temperatures are enough to keep some people inside the house.
In the Tibetan Himalayas, a 24-year-old alpinist who grew up in Hermosa Beach faced such conditions as he prepared for a push to the summit of the world's 14th-tallest mountain.
"It looks like we're going to have to do it alpine-style, carry everything on our backs," Nick Rice told City News Service via satellite phone early Saturday. "The winds have wiped out at least two of our high camps."
Rice spoke from his advanced base camp, more than 18,000 feet high on Shishapangma, where he and three other climbers -- from Italy, Poland and Romania -- plan to start for the summit on Sunday.
"Definitely not ideal conditions, but this is our last decent shot," Rice said. "It looks like we're the only ones left on the mountain right now. Everybody else has gone down."
Rice said he and his party will attempt to climb a potentially treacherous route to the main summit of Shishapangma, which rises to more than 26,280 feet above sea level.
"It's a steep enough wall we'll be climbing, 45 to 60 degrees slope," Rice said. "The good thing is the winds have cleaned a lot of snow off the mountain. We'll be on ice instead of deep snow, so we'll be able to move faster."
If things go as planned, the four climbers will summit on Wednesday, Rice said. Winds up to 55 mph are expected to return by Thursday, Rice said.
High-altitude climbers covet Shishapangma's summit because it is one of the world's few 8,000-meter peaks. Only 14 mountains on Earth rise to such heights, and they are all in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges of Asia. Rice told City News Service earlier this week his goal is to climb them all. He and 45-year-old Mario Panzeri are more than 40 days into their current expedition and have already climbed Shishapangma's central summit, which is just over 8,000 meters high, or 26,246 feet.
Joining them for their main summit attempt are Kinga Baranowska, 33, of Poland, and Horia Colibasanu, 32, of Romania.
"We did the central summit on the 27th (of September) but the route to the main summit was too corniced," Rice said earlier this week. "The crust on the main summit ridge was up to five feet across. You can break through that any time and you're stepping into air. You can't trust it."
To date, Rice says he has reached the peaks of four of the world's 8,000-meter peaks -- including Cho Oyu in Tibet in 2004, Gasherbrum II in Pakistan in 2006, and Manaslu in Nepal in May this year.
In August last year, Rice survived a deadly episode on K2 in Pakistan, when 11 other climbers died high on the so-called Savage Mountain.
K2 is the world's second-highest peak but widely considered more dangerous than Mount Everest. The high-altitude realm above 8,000 meters known as the "death zone" -- for its lack of oxygen, jet-stream winds and freezing temperatures -- has a particularly bad reputation on the steep upper reaches of K2.
An accident delayed Rice's summit bid on the Savage Mountain when he spilled snow-melt water on his socks. The delay may have saved his life.
Others who left on schedule in pre-dawn darkness that day met with tragedy. Some fell in the steep Bottleneck below the summit. Others were killed or stranded by ice falling off a wind-sculpted serac that towers above the Bottleneck.
The 11 fatalities and ensuing search-and-rescue efforts unfolded over several days and made international headlines.
Shishapangma is in southwest China. Also known as Shisha Pangma, its name in some translations means ``crest above the grassy plains,'' according to mountain historians.
