Slovenians Climb Big New Kishtwar Himalaya Lines

Slovenian climbers Ales Cesen, Marko Prezelj and Urban Novak climbed a few big new routes up 6,000-metre+ mountains in Kishtwar Himalaya in alpine style. They were based in the remote Kijaj Nullah Valley.

Novak told Planetmountain.com in an interview, “The Kishtwar region offers some interesting climbing objectives. The Kijaj Nullah valley is not an exception. This whole area has exceptional playground for the modern style of climbing..” Full article here.

Still smiling after being home for a week. Since the weather in Indian Himalaya was quite shitty this year, we were not sure if we will be able to even try the climb we were inspired by for quite some time now. But at the end we got a weather window we were hoping for. We grabbed the opportunity with both hands and were rewarded with a rich experience. This is life. Sometimes you get lucky and some other time not. How you use your "lucky moments" is an art. Everyone needs to figure out his own way:)

A post shared by Urban Novak (@urban_novak) on Jul 7, 2017 at 10:20am PDT

Up the west face of the 6,250-metre Arjuna they made the first ascent of All or Nothing, a 1,400-metre M7+ WI5+ A0 which was the second ascent of the peak; the first was in 1983.

Up the 6,038-metre P6013, they climbed made the first ascent of the North Ridge for the second ascent of the mountain after the 1979 first ascent by a number of Polish climbers.

Prezelj had visited the area before with Novak, Manu Pellissier and Hayden Kennedy and made first ascents of other big lines.

/ The power of smile. / We shared lots of them. They were the catalyst of joyful friendship. / “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” dr. Seuss / #MarkoPTakeover

A post shared by Marko Prezelj (@markoprezelj) on Jul 11, 2017 at 8:08am PDT

On Cerro Kishtwar, they called their new 1,200-metre route Light Before Wisdom 5.11 WI6 M6 A2. Novak noted after here, “After a successful descent from the summit, the view on the wall from below revealed very different conditions.

“We caught the perfect time for climbing, because after we descended, the bottom part of the face had no more ice which had enabled us – in spite of its questionable quality – a successful ascent.”

After spending some intense days guiding in French and Slovenian mountains it seems like our recent climb in Arjuna was already a long time ago. Nevertheless, memories on it keep me smiling. #kishtwar #himalayas #india #arjuna @kailasofficial

A post shared by Ales Cesen (@alescesen) on Jul 18, 2017 at 3:28pm PDT