Climbers Just Tried the Insane Rupal Face
At over four kilometres tall, it's considered one of the biggest mountain walls in the world
In May, David Goettler and Benjamin Vedrines left for an alpine-style attempt at the famous Rupal Face on Nanga Parbat. Few details are known, but they’ve since returned without climbing the face to the summit. Rising nearly five kilometres from its base to the top, the Rupal Face is a rarely-tried objective considered to be the biggest wall in the Himalayas. At 4,600 metres, it’s never been climbed in winter.
The first ascent was in 1970 by Reinhold Messner and his brother Gunter, who tragically died during the descent. In 1976, Hans Schell and team climbed a long route from the Rupal side which avoids the face. It’s been repeated several times. In 1985, a Polish-Mexican team established a new route up the right side of the face. And in September 2005, Steve House and Vince Anderson climbed a new line directly up the face at VII 5.9 M5 WI4 over eight days.
One of the most epic stories to come from the Rupal Face was in 1988 when Barry Blanchard, Mark Twight, Ward Robinson, and Kevin Doyle made an attempt. An electrical storm forced them to retreat down the Merkyl Gully. After clipping into one ice screw, the four climbers withstood 30 minutes of avalanches before continuing down. Under heavy snow they switched from rappelling to down-climbing. They accidentally dropped their ropes, which led to the scary realization they had to downclimb. After 300 metres, Robinson found a bag left by a Japanese rescue party which was filled with pitons, ropes and food. It saved their lives.
An excerpt from Blanchard’s book The Calling, reads: “I saw fear, and resolve, in his eyes. The four of us stood anchored to one tubular drive-in ice screw. It was hitched with a purple bar-tacked sling the width of my ring finger, which, if it were loaded with 1,000 pounds, would sever. When the four of us had snapped tight to it we must have hit it with over eight hundred pounds. We stood at 25,300 feet on the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain in the world. We were 1,300 feet below the summit and we had nearly 14,000 feet of the face to descend. I twisted in another screw.”
Check out the latest buyer's guide:
