Yerupajá, Northeast Face and East Spur, Cordillera Huayhuash. The members of the Tyrolean Andean Expedition of the Austrian Alpine Club (Ö.A.V.), Innsbruck branch, were Helmuth Wagner, Egon Wurm, Sepp Majerl, Reinhold Messner, Peter Habeler, Dr. Raimund Margreiter and myself as leader. We left Lima for Chiquián on June 3 and were in Base Camp on the 6th. We unsuccessfully on the 13th tried the northeast face. (First ascent, July 27 to 31, 1968 by Paul Dix, Chris Jones. See A.A.J., 1969, 16:2, pp. 271-4. — Editor.) On June 18 Messner and Habeler set out for the same objective at 2:30 a.m At 10:45 they left the face and climbed to the crest of the east spur. They climbed up the spur in the direction of the top but had to turn back 65 feet below the 21,759-foot summit because of the rotten rock of the final pyramid. They began the descent at three p.m. and reached the northeast-face camp at 6:30. On June 22 Wurm and Majerl left Camp III at 18,700 feet to climb the difficult east spur that lies left of the face. (This was attempted twice by Scots, in 1964 and 1966. See A.A.J., 1965, 14:2, p. 447 and A.A.J., 1967, 15:2, pp. 393-4. — Editor.) After two bivouacs they reached the summit at two P.M. on the 24th. They descended the northeast face, bivouacked on the face and reached the foot of the wall at nine a.m. on the 25th. On June 23 Habeler and Messner made the first ascent of the south-southwest face of Yerupajá Chico (20,082 feet). Because of frozen toes we had to give up the expedition then before all our objectives were reached.

Otto Wiedmann, Österreichischer Alpenverein