Nun, northwest face, attempt. In September Jean-Marc Challandes, Sebastien Gerber, Andreas Hutter, Berhard Spack, and we established an advance base camp at 5,400m on the big plateau that lies at the foot of the l,700m-high northwest face of Nun. In three days we equipped the first part of the face with fixed ropes. We planned to install a small bivouac in a crevasse at about 6,100m. The plan was to continue from there in alpine style and descend the northwest ridge to an altitude camp (C1) that had been previously set up at 6,680m.

However, on September 18, when Jean-Marc was climbing above Josep and Andreas at 6,000m, he heard a loud noise underneath his crampons, and the big ice slab they were on dropped a few centimeters. At this point, considering the bad ice conditions, they gave up the northwest face attempt.

At the same time, the other three climbers were acclimating at C1 on the northwest ridge. On September 19, in good weather conditions, Simon, followed by Bernhard, reached the summit (7,135m), while Sebastien stayed at C1 (6,680m) because of altitude sickness. Then early winter and heavy snowfall prevented the rest of the climbers from reaching the summit by the northwest ridge. For more information, see www.nun007.ch

Simon Perritaz and Josep Sola i Caros, Team NUNzero7, Swiss Alpine Club