Annapurna Attempt. Six Britons, American Richard Nowack and New Zealander Lester Gray, led by Mal Duff, plus two Sherpas, spent three weeks on the north face of Annapurna, making Camps I and II in snow caves and Camp III at 6500 meters at the top of the Dutch Rib on May 9. Camp III was stocked during the following few days, but it was never slept in. On May 14, when Duff, Ian Woodall, Nowack and Gray tried to move above Camp III, just a few meters above the camp they got into a sérac barrier that was extremely broken and dangerous. It would have been safe enough, Duff felt, for two people to go up and down once, but some of the team’s client members were not sufficiently experienced for a rapid ascent. It would have been necessary to fix the route to one more high camp, thus requiring 20 passages through the barrier. So the climb was abandoned.

Elizabeth Hawley