20/04/2010Volcano Disrupts Annapurna III Attempt

The British Annapurna III Expedition 2010 is facing an unexpected first big hurdle in trying to get all its team members out to Nepal.

Although Nick Bullock and Matt Helliker made it to Kathmandu shortly before the Icelandic volcano blew it's top, fellow climbing team member Pete Benson who planned to arrive a couple of days later has been grounded in the UK. Laura Benson and Ian Burton who plan to trek into base camp along with the climbers are also waiting to fly-out. They plan on staying at base camp for a few days getting video footage for a short film that Posing Productions are going to put together.

This clearly isn't the smoothest start you'd want for such a major undertaking and Nick and Matt have now gone on to Pokhara and yesterday began walking-in with the porters to try and establish base camp. 'Try' because two of the five expeditions that have attempted Annapurna III's (7555m) southeast ridge didn't even make it to base camp.

The best effort to date was by Nick Colton and Tim Leach in 1981, reaching 6500 metres. Nick recalls: "I went there in post monsoon 1981 with Tim Leach and Steve Bell (shit, that’s almost 30 years ago!). Tim and I did about 2/3 of the pillar in an alpine style attempt. We reckon we had done the technical part of the climbing but were insufficiently acclimatised and still had a long way to go. If we’d had more time and could have had another attempt, then, with the acclimatisation experience achieved on the attempt just described we might have fared better – but who knows."

Battle_Plan Annapurna III's 2300 metre southeast ridge featured in an Alpiniste 4 article titled Unclimbed - a 'to do list' of nine objectives in keeping with the spirit of exploratory alpinism. Conrad Anker writing about his attempt to climb the south-east ridge, said: "Every mountain has a line that defines it; this line becomes the goal for climbers….This is the unclimbed 2300m southeast ridge of Annapurna III. So prominent is the line, it appears in postcards and the ubiquitous Elvis art for sale in the lowland curio shops.”

In the final paragraph, Conrad writes: "My hope for this amazing route is that it will be climbed by fair means. If climbing were about finding a solution to an engineering problem it would cease to be an art."

Nick, Matt and Pete are planning to play fair and "attempt this objective in the purest ‘alpine style’ with an integral minimal impact ethic."

Nick only returned from Nepal last November after making the successful first ascent of another Unclimbed challenge on the North Face of Chang Himal (ED+/M6, 1800 m) with Andy Houseman and this trip will be his sixth expedition out there. Both Nick Bullock and Matt Helliker are part of the DMM Climbing Team.

The expedition has a candid blog where you can follow its progress and read about the build up to the trip. One particular posting by Nick, called Thoughts…, gives a fascinating insight into, "Why Annapurna III and why the southeast ridge? Why alpine style? Why live this mountaineering life that provides discomfort, uncertainty, apprehension, on occasion sadness and at times terror?"