The story about Annapurna south

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Annapurna South

The word Annapurna is actually derived from Sanskrit meaning the provider of food and nourishment. Anna means "food" or "grains" and Purna means "full, complete and perfect". Annapurna is also the name of a very popular Hindu goddess; the goddess of nourishment.
(MISSING)In Nepal, Annapurna is a group of mountains in the Himalayas which connected to each other and form a mountain range independent of other mountain range. In geographical term, we call the Annapurna mountain range as Annapurna massif. The Annapurna massif is 55 km (34 miles) long with the highest point being Annapurna I. It contains six major peaks over 7,200 m namely Annapurna I (8,091 m, 10^th highest mountain in the world), Annapurna II (7,937 m), Annapurna III (7,555 m), Annapurna IV (7,525 m), Gangapurna (7,455 m) and Annapurna South (7,219 m). You will have plenty of opportunities to see these gigantic mountains if your trek on Poon Hill trek, Annapurna Base Camp trek and Annapurna Circuit trek(MISSING)
(MISSING)Annapurna caught the world attention in 1950 as Annapurna I was the first 8,000m (26,200 ft) peak to be climbed. It was first summited by a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal on 3 June 1950 and it remained as highest summit being climbed for 3 years until Mount Everest was conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 29 May 1953. But if you visited the Annapurna Base Camp, Annapurna South Peak (also named Ganesh or Moditse) might caught your first attention instead of the Annapurna I. While it is nearly 800m lower than the Annapurna I, it is very prominent from the base camp. (MISSING)
(MISSING)Annapurna South Peak was first reconnoitred in 1957 by British climber Wilfrid Noyce who nearly summited the Fish Tail Mountain. Noyce reported that the peak seems climbable from the east side. However, there wasn’t any well-known summit attempt until it was successfully summited by an interesting Japanese expedition in 1964. The climbers were actually a group of undergraduate students, a graduate student and a professor representing Kyoto University Alpine Club. Initially, they wanted to climb the Dhaulagiri IV (7,640 m.). But after being informed by the Government of Nepal that the permission to climb the mountain had been granted to a British expedition, the Japanese decided to turn their attention to Annapurna South Peak. Despite their young age (the youngest of the undergraduate students was 20 years old while the eldest was 22 years old) and relatively lack of experience they successfully submitted the highest point of the peak on 15 October 1964. Of course like many mountaineering expedition, this was not without any incidence. As the Annapurna was famous for its tendency to avalanche, twice the Japanese group had narrowly being buried by fallen rocks, snows and seracs (large ice tower). There was one scary moment where 3 members was just in time form being buried near camp 1.(MISSING)
(MISSING)From ABC, you can easily see the entire climbing route of the Japanese right up to the central peak, which seemed to be the highest point from the Base Camp. But the true summit is actually hidden behind on the South but still visible from the base camp. (MISSING)
(MISSING)After the first ascent, it seems like there wasn’t much interest in climbing the mountain. Then, in mid-1980’s there was a 3-men Japanese team who make a bold unauthorised attempt on the east face’s central pillar of Annapurna South. If you have a binocular which allow you to have a close look at the pillar from ABC, you will notice that the pillar is extremely difficult to climb. The terrain is very steep with plenty of bulging rocks icy sections along the way, and when the sun rises, the ice and snow might be melted and making some of the rock surface almost unclimbable. Unfortunately, the 3 Japanese men did not pass the test and all three disappeared. Sometime later, local people found their tent below the east face but their bodies were never found. (MISSING)
(MISSING)During the spring season of 1989, a British team consists of 6 climbers launched an attempt on the central pillar. This was only the 2^nd attempt recorded but they were out of luck. The weather was very poor making the climbing condition unfavourable and some of the expedition members were ill. The group just managed to reach about half the height of the face (total 1700m from the bottom to the highest point) before they decided that the upper part of the pillar was too dangerous to climb and therefore turned around. However, to their surprise, they found a Japanese bolt around the height of 6000m. The particular point where the British men found the bolt was one of the difficult sections to deal with where the climbers have to rely on ice axe and crampon to climb the face. This is a technique called dry tooling where it is commonly performed on the surface that is vertical or almost vertical and covered with ice. As one cannot climb by just holding onto ice, the climber has to hammer the ice axe into the ice and further support the weight of their body by kicking the crampon into the ice as well. By doing so, the climber hope that the tip of the ice axe and the spikes of the crampons would be embedded deep enough to support them. Many times, to provide additional safety, the climber will fixed a bolt (a bolt is a metal shaft driven into a hole drilled by the climber, and has a hanger to attach a carabiner then tie a rope which would stop the climber from falling more than the length of the rope.) but at time the bolt might break under the climber body weight. This could be what happened to the Japanese climbers and if that was the case, they would have plummeted nearly 1000m before they hit the ground. (MISSING)
(MISSING)Finally, in the spring of 2009, a very strong climber from Slovakia by the name of Jozef “Dodo” Kopold successfully summited Annapurna South Peak via the central pillar of east face. Dodo went to Annapurna with 2 other climbers (Martin Minarik from Czech Republic and Elisabeth Revol from France) to climb the Annapurna I via the south face. Their idea was to climb the mountain in just 7 days but the weather changed dramatically on the third day which forced them to retreat or face death. But, as they retreated all the way back to ABC, it seems like the mountain was toying with them. Suddenly the new weather forecast shows that the weather would be cleared in few more days and give the climbers the window of opportunity to reach the summit. But to Dodo disappointment, he don’t have the additional days to wait as he need to fly back to Europe attending the prestiges mountaineering award, Piolet d'Or. Unwillingly, he left the climbing group and hope that his 2 partners would able to summit Annapurna I and back down safely.(MISSING)
(MISSING)While killing time in base camp, Dodo realised that no one actually summited Annapurna South via the central pillar (but he knew nothing about the history of the peak and absolutely no idea how to come down from the peak if he would able to summit it). His plan was to summit the mountain in a single push from base camp to summit and back down (in contrast the Japanese mens who climbed in expedition style took 31days from base camp to summit and back to base camp). Carrying just a 40 meter 6mm rope, eight pitons, eight ice screws, three energy bars and some dried meat, Dodo set off at 7pm, he climbed in complete darkness other than the small light from his headlamp for 10 hours before the sun shine on him, and it took him more than 20 hours to reach the top of the east face! The climb was so difficult that many time he had to make his moves without gloves. For those who have experienced trekking during the cold season, you would have know that during the night the temperature can easily reach -10 to -25˚C. If your hand get wet after brushing teeth, even simple task like changing clothes might make you suffering excrutiating pain on your fingers. Can you imagine how difficult it must be for Dodo to climb by hlding onto rocks and ice with bare hand?(MISSING)
(MISSING)He reach the summit (7219m) at 6.18pm. Nearly 24 hours after leaving base camp. But now the question is how to go down? Lacking of tools, he can’t belay of the route the went up. Finally, he decided to descent from the east side of the mountain where the original 1964 japanese route was. The route was very dangerous. Gigantic seracs, deep snow, and hidden crevasses (split in a Glacier's ice often covered by thin layers of snow) were everywhere. Without warning, Dodo suddenly found himself fell 5 meter into a crevasses. Luckily, inside the crevasses there was a snow bridge that stopped him from falling deeper and with the tools he had, he managed to climbed up from the crevasses unhurt. By, then it was already late night and over the past 1 day he had very little food. Comtemplating of taking a rest waiting for the sun, he had a strange feeling that he need to move on. 2 hours from base camp, suddenly a loud bang came from behind. An enoumous avalanche just swepted through the route he had descended. Dodo cried, knowing that if he took a rest there, he would ha After 40 hours, finally, he reach the Annapurna Base Camp. Dodo was very glad that he had successfully made a bold first ascent, solo effort, of the central pillar on the east face of Annapurna South and most mportantly, he still alive. During the Piolets d’Or, Dodo received a shocking news. His climbing partner, Martin Minarik, the great czech mountain climbers who had summited seven 8000m peaks, perished on the descent of Annapurna I. The other climbing partner, Elisabeth Revol had to leave Minarik on the mountain at 7100m after he collapsed due to exhaustion and frostbite. A helicopter rescue was called later but Martin’s body was never found.

By Lee Chyn Hwa from Malaysia

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