Nun. Our original objective was the unclimbed 5000-foot-high west face of Nun (7135 meters, 23,410 feet). After a two-day bus trip from Srinagar to Tangol in the upper Suru valley, on September 4 we started with 20 porters and arrived the next day at our Base Camp at 15,900 feet below the icefall. From then on we climbed without porters. We fixed 650 feet of rope in the icefall. After crossing the three-mile-wide snow plateau, we placed Camp I at 17,400 feet at the foot of the west face. The ascent seemed impossible because of very difficult ice conditions. We moved our camp to the foot of the southwest ridge at the same altitude on September 14. On the 15th we fixed rope on the Black Needle and established Camp II at 19,700 feet. On September 17 we reached the foot of the south face and placed Camp III on the side of a steep sérac at 20,850 feet. On September 18 Hermann Pausch, Roland Ossovsky, Klaus Stark and I got to the summit at seven A.M. after a night climb. We climbed the first 1300 feet on the 45° south face and finished the climb on the exposed southwest crest. We descended the same day to Camp I through mist and snow.

Norbert Menzel, Deutscher Alpenverein