Ganesh II, South Face. Rick Allen and I reached Base Camp at 4300 meters below the 2500-meter-high (8000-foot-high) south face of Ganesh II on September 28. We were not alone as a large Swiss party was already established and making an attempt on the extreme left of the face to gain the west ridge. Our proposed route was the south face, a variation of the tragic Polish attempt of 1983. On the 30th we crossed the glacier beneath the face to place Advance Base at 4100 meters, actually lower than Base Camp. We planned to climb alpine-style, but with limited time and no suitable acclimatization peak, we were forced to acclimatize on the route. We climbed on October 2 and 3 to the site of Polish Camp II at 5400 meters to leave a cache of food and equipment before descending to Base Camp for a rest. We left on October 7, going straight onto the face. Taking seven days of food, we continued to the previous high point to bivouac. From there we kept to the Polish line for a short bit to find a rock traverse which gave access to the upper part of the face. In two days we got to 6200 meters, where we took a rest day because of a poor bivouac and consequently a bad night. We had some difficult mixed climbing on October 13, climbing through a rock band at 6400 meters. The weather deteriorated, but deciding that the west ridge would offer an easy descent, we pushed on, reaching the summit (7111 meters, 23,330 feet) on the afternoon of October 15. The weather that day was particularly bad. We bivouacked at 7050 meters in a snow cave on the west ridge. Unstable dangerous snow and strong winds forced us off the ridge to rappel blindly down the south face. We eventually regained the ascent line after a further two days of descent and we reached Advance Base on the 18th and Base Camp on the 19th. The ascent took nine days and the descent three. The later days were particularly difficult because of bad weather and the lack of food.

Nikola Kekus, Alpine Climbing Group