The tattered stays of an orange tent flap within the wind. A single rope dangles from a 300-foot wall of rock. The sound of crampons squeaking on snow and ice breaks the silence. Only one backpack seems, and it belongs to Jost Kobusch, a German who proper now may greatest be described because the loneliest Alpine climber on the earth.
Kobusch is on Mount Everest, within the useless of winter, making an attempt to climb the world’s tallest mountain throughout a season when virtually no one dares to scale it.
There is nobody else to be seen for miles, simply Kobusch and a 29,031-foot problem: to change into the primary particular person to climb Everest solo in winter, with out supplemental oxygen.
In a WhatsApp telephone name from Nepal, Kobusch described the surreal solitude of the panorama. “You have to picture this: There’s only one tent in the base camp,” he mentioned. It’s his, in fact. He coughed into the telephone; the frigid air — which might plummet to minus 80 levels Fahrenheit on the summit in winter — has been powerful on his lungs, he mentioned.
If he succeeds, Kobusch, 29, will etch his identify into the historical past of climbing on Everest in a serious means. Even he acknowledges it’s a large “if,” however his try displays the push to go away a mark on essentially the most well-known mountain on the earth.
Since Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay grew to become the primary to achieve the summit, in 1953, greater than 6,000 folks have been acknowledged for reaching the highest.
There is nobody else to be seen for miles, simply Kobusch and a 29,031-foot problem: to change into the primary particular person to climb Everest solo in winter, with out supplemental oxygen. (Instagram/(@jostkobusch)
These days, it has change into modern to affix some type of first to the mountain — the oldest NFL participant to achieve the highest, the world’s highest ceremonial dinner — leaving really notable feats on Everest uncommon.
“It’s getting harder and harder on the 8,000-meter peaks to do something outstanding because so much has been done, particularly on Everest,” mentioned Billi Bierling, managing director of the Himalayan Database.
Yet reaching the summit of any of the world’s 14 8,000-meter (26,246 ft) peaks within the inhospitable chilly and hurricane-force winds of winter stays a monumental feat. K2, the world’s second-tallest peak, had but to have anybody attain the summit in winter, till it lastly succumbed final 12 months to a Nepali staff, led by Nirmal Purja, who is called Nims, and Mingma G.
K2 may be colder than Everest in winter, however Purja mentioned in an e-mail from Antarctica, the place he was guiding an expedition, “In terms of the winter perspective, if you remove all the manpower and if you just go there with a small team, Everest would be much harder and more dangerous because it’s almost 9,000 meters.”
Krzysztof Wielicki, 72, made the primary winter ascent of Everest on Feb. 17, 1980, with a fellow Polish climber, Leszek Cichy, after a staff of 16 climbers toiled away on the mountain for 2 months.
Climbing Everest by himself shouldn’t be a departure for Kobusch, however a continuation of his trademark model. In 2016, after he climbed Annapurna I (26,545 ft) solo, he determined he was seeking an expertise much more monastic and distant. ((Instagram/(@jostkobusch)
“You have to be able to suffer. It’s the art of suffering,” he mentioned in a telephone name from his dwelling in southern Poland.
Including Wielicki and Cichy, solely 15 folks have stood atop Everest in meteorological winter (which begins Dec. 1), when winds can attain 200 mph. All climbed with companions, and just one, Ang Rita Sherpa, in 1987, climbed with out supplemental oxygen.
Kobusch, together with his penchant for lengthy, lonely, daring climbs, is attempting to up the ante even additional. Not solely is he climbing in winter and alone with out supplemental oxygen, he’s attempting to achieve the highest of Everest through the West Ridge, a much more formidable path than the 2 most typical routes, which almost 98% of summit seekers use. Kobusch should take care of sheer partitions, bullet-hard blue ice pitched as steep as a church spire and a remaining gully of ice, rock and snow — referred to as the Hornbein Couloir — by which only some folks have ever set foot.
“Doing a route that hasn’t been done before in winter is another way to do something for the first time,” Bierling mentioned. “What Jost is doing, it’s very technically challenging, and he’s doing it completely alone. If he makes it up, he will be standing on the same summit that everyone stands on. But the way he gets there — you can’t actually compare it, it’s so different.”
Climbing Everest by himself shouldn’t be a departure for Kobusch, however a continuation of his trademark model. In 2016, after he climbed Annapurna I (26,545 ft) solo, he determined he was seeking an expertise much more monastic and distant.
“Other people were climbing the mountain on the same day,” he mentioned of Annapurna. “I was looking for true wilderness.”
In 2017, he discovered it. Kobusch climbed Nangpai Gosum I (24,019 ft), which was then the fourth-highest unclimbed peak on the earth, alone. “Next I went looking for that raw space on 8,000-meter peaks, for the hardest and biggest project I could possibly imagine,’’ he said. “And it was pretty obvious. It was Everest.”
This is his second time attempting to climb the West Ridge of Everest solo in winter, after an preliminary try within the 2019-20 season, when he reached an elevation of 24,167 ft earlier than turning round. Those solitary experiences have been as completely different as conceivable from the mainstream Everest.
In springtime, Everest Base Camp turns into a bustling village, stretching for 1.2 miles alongside the Khumbu Glacier. In 2021, its inhabitants exceeded 1,000 folks. The mountain itself is extra of the identical. In 2019, the final climbing season unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic, greater than 1,240 folks had been above base camp, in keeping with the Himalayan Database.
Kobusch’s highest level up to now this 12 months is 21,184 ft, which he reached Jan. 4. (A dwell GPS tracker on his web site exhibits his progress.) If he makes it as much as 8,000 meters (26,247 ft), he’ll come to the Hornbein Couloir, which may show essentially the most tough a part of the climb. The couloir is a steep and slim 1,600-foot tongue of snow splitting the rocky north face of the mountain. Americans Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld made the primary ascent of the Hornbein Couloir in May 1963. Since then, solely 5 expeditions have climbed up it.
Kobusch acknowledges that his odds of success are slim and {that a} third expedition subsequent winter could also be obligatory.
“If I can go higher I would like to, but I would be happy to reach 8,000 meters,” he mentioned. “Nobody has even had a look at the couloir in winter. Maybe it will be impossible to climb it. It’s a journey into the unknown.”
Kobusch insists he doesn’t take into consideration the historic nature of his enterprise or what it will imply to affix the ranks of trailblazers like Hornbein, Wielicki and Purja.
“I’m just there to do my thing,” Kobusch mentioned. “But when I’m on the mountain, my mind is not wandering around much. There’s just a deep flow and deep focus.”
(This article initially appeared in The New York Times.)