Ama Dablam, South Face

Nepal, Mahalangur Himal, Khumbu Section
Climb Year: 1986. Publication Year: 1987.

The members of the expedition were Edin Alikalfic, Mario Bago, Janez Benkovic, Željko Gobec, Branko Pusak and I as leader. We established Base Camp and Advance Base at 4620 and 5240 meters on October 6 and 10. In spite of bad weather in the next four days, we climbed up the face to 5740 meters on the 14th and up to the crest of the southwest ridge at 6250 meters on the 15th. On October 16 Benkovic climbed to the summit and the same day returned to Advance Base. Two days later Alikalfic reached the top followed the next day by Pusak. Pusak and Bago cleaned the face the next day and Base Camp was evacuated on October 21. The route is to the left of the 1979 Jeff Lowe route and in the last part follows the southwest ridge. A tent was pitched at 6100 meters. We fixed 450 meters of rope. The lower part of the slope averages 45° and the upper part 50° to 60° with places up to 80°.

Darko Berljak, Mountaineering Association of Zagreb, Yugoslavia

Editor's note: This report was erroneously titled in AAJ 1987, suggesting the climbers were on the south face of Pumori. In fact, as corrected in AAJ 1988, they were climbing on Ama Dablam.