Xtreme Peaks: The Meaning of Winter in High Altitude Climbing

Simone Moro and Denis Urubko have scheduled to pursue a winter climb on Makalu.  Makalu represents the only 8,000 meter peak in the Himalayas to not have allowed a successful winter summit.   Their assault on Makalu this winter brings their climbing partnership back together after taking a couple of years off to climb on their own.  In that time, Simone Moro attempted a few winter assaults on peaks in the Karakorum, while Denis Urubko attempted a winter summit on Makalu last season without success.

The 2008-2009 Himalayan-Karakorum climbing season is building up to be one of the better winter climbing seasons in recent memory.  Moro and Urubko will attempt to make the first winter summit of Makalu. Pavel Krupieka, Jan Krabec, and Milan Wlasak will try to get to the top of  Manaslu, and all of this coming on the heals of the Field Touring Alpine Team capturing an Ama Dablam summit on November 22, 2008.

With all of the winter climbing action starting to line up in the Himalayas and the Karakorum, ExplorersWeb has started republishing a nice series of articles on 8,000 meter peaks and winter climbing.  These articles go into detail about the history of climbing the world’s tallest peaks in winter and also give some vital stats on when the winter season actually begins.  It seems over the past years that many teams have claimed winter ascents on some peaks that did not fall into the ‘Winter Calendar” of such a climb.  This spreads confusion amongst climbers and gives credit to others that should not be geting it.  Check out these three articles to learn what I mean:

1. K2 Series:  Karakorum and Ultimate Winter Challenges
2. The Meaning of Winter in 8,000 meter+ climbing
3. The Meaning of Winter in 8,000 meter+ climbing Part II

Each of these ExplorersWeb articles offer up some great information on climbing statistics in the winter and are highly recommended for their depth and scope of coverage.  If you really want to learn something about these monster mountains, you couldn’t start at a better place than here.