Nanga Parbat, Schell Route, Rupal Face. Our expedition was composed of Germans Peter Mezger, Volker Stallbohm, Jens Holthusen, Karl Wolfner and me as leader, French Etienne Robein, Alain Cokkinos and Isabelle Leclerc, and Czechs Dr. Volker and Renata Zimmermann. We got to our 3600-meter Base Camp on July 12. During the second half of the month, we established Camps I and II at 5100 and 5850 meters. We had to fix ropes above Camp I, which were sometimes carried away by rockfall. On July 27, Robein and a member of the neighboring Yugoslavian expedition were badly injured by rockfall in the couloir above Camp I. Robein suffered broken ribs and shoulder and lung damage. He was carried down difficult scree to Base Camp whence a Pakistani army helicopter flew him to Gilgit. He was flown by way of Islamabad directly to the hospital in Paris by a rescue jet. After Robein was evacuated, Camp III in the Mazeno Col at 6700 meters and Camp IV at 7100 meters were established despite poor weather. We fixed rope on snow tongues and rock above Camp III along the southwest ridge to the col and then crossed into the Diamir Face. We tried to make the crossing on August 7 and 8 but were turned back by deep snow. Stallbohm descended, thinking he could not make it. On August 9, Mezger and I crossed on a lower rock band, as the Yugoslavs had done. We bivouacked on rock at 7100 meters on the other side. On the next day we climbed the narrow snow slope up this prominent cliff, often post-holing, to the main Diamir-Rupal divide. We bivouacked in high winds at 7550 meters. On the 11th, we made a futile attempt to climb an ice couloir in the summit cone. On August 12, we ascended the rock to the south shoulder in order to climb the adjoining snow ridge to the summit, which we reached at three P.M. We spent a third night in the 7550-meter bivouac. On the 13th, we spent the eighth night above 7000 meters at Camp IV, which we reached after having to climb 150 meters up over the ridge. On the day and night of August 14, we descended to Camp I and the day after to Base Camp.

Reinmar Joswig, Deutscher Alpenverein