After six weeks in the Khumbu, having been shut down on various peaks due to heavy snowfall, Erik Gomez and I set our sights on the southeast face of Pharilapcha (6,017m, 27°55’46.66”N, 86°40’49.24”E). This face can be seen during the entire trek from the village of Phortse to Machermo in the Gokyo (Dudh Kosi) Valley.

From Machermo village, we first broke a trail halfway to the southeast face, then rested a day, and at 1:30 a.m. on November 11, we left our teahouse for the climb, planning a one-day push.

We reached the base at 8 a.m. and began simultaneously soloing moderate snow slopes with occasional mixed steps, becoming steeper as we progressed. Loose snow over frozen rock and ice made the climb very engaging. We followed a rightward-slanting couloir, and as we got closer to the top, the route became steeper and the snow more unstable. The last 200 to 300 meters were mentally engaging.

We dug through a cornice on the summit ridge to reach the east top and saw the main summit to the west. Up to this point we had climbed entirely unroped, but we tied in to make the short traverse to the highest point, due to cornices overhanging the north face.

From the top, we continued northwest down the ridge, then descended the first gully dropping southeast toward the Machermo Glacier. After three rappels, the sun set. Seven more rappels took us to the glacier, where we made our way back to our approach track. We arrived in our Machermo lodge at 1 a.m. on the 12th and fell asleep exhausted but proud of our effort.

We named our route Stone(d) Yeti (750m, M3 AI2+ steep snow). The route is entirely new until it joins the last section of the 2006 route The Oracle Night (750m, TD-, Bremond-Constant-Degonon-Thomas). This climbs the north face of the 5,650-meter col between Pharilapcha and Machermo (5,766m), then the east face and east ridge of Pharilapcha to the summit.

—Patrick Perry Johnson, USA

The First Ascent of Pharilapcha: Despite the first official ascent of this peak officially and widely being attributed to a large team that climbed the northwest ridge in 2003, Pharilapcha was first climbed in 1955 by Americans Fred Beckey, George Bell, and Richard McGowan, via a steep gully (60°), mixed ground, and icefields on the south face. Beckey's story in the 1956 AAJ described the ascent of this peak, which local people told them was called Langcha, along with several other climbs, following their attempt on Lhotse as part of an international expedition. The American trio started the post-Lhotse segment of their expedition by climbing a lower top of Lobuche, but Pharilapcha was their first true summit and may have been the first summit in Nepal reached by Americans.