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  Nanga Parbat

  But back to the action. To the changing face of lady luck. The “expedition weather sage”, Charly Gabl from Innsbruck, forecast a brief window of clear weather. Short enough to need to climb up and down in bad weather, but long enough to stand on the summit in fine weather. We knew that in our condition, weakened by illness, we would be able undertake only one attempt at the summit. We also knew that we would have to prepare the entire route through the deep fresh snow again. We knew that the risk of avalanche would be greater than 4 weeks previously. We knew that our chance would be small. Simply stated, our luck had run out. But we wanted to push our luck and so we set off. Progress up to camp 2 was fairly swift. It was a never-ending grind, but we were prepared for that. The technical difficulties of the route are behind you from camp 3. By this point, exhaustion forced four of us to turn back (fortunately), using our last reserves to tackle the difficult descent to the safe base camp. The remaining two spent two hard nights in camp 3 and made two failed attempts to dig their way through heaps of new snow before dejectedly giving up. This was not a matter of being reasonable or having the “courage to turn back”. We just didn’t have the opportunity. At the decisive moment, we were unlucky. But during this expedition, we had incredible fortune a couple of times. The fortune to have escaped with our lives on several occasions by a hair’s breadth.

  We knew what we were taking on. We also knew that the chances of success on a mountain like this are small. We were therefore not disheartened when we terminated the expedition. A little disappointed, yes, but the predominant mood was one of joy that we had all come down from the mountain in one piece.