Beatrice, Southeast Face, New Routes. It was reported that from the end of August to mid-September, a British team put up two separate new routes on Beatrice (ca.5800m) by its 750-meter-plus southeast face on the north side of the Charakusa Valley in Hushe. Mike “Twid” Turner, Steve Myers and Grant Farquar, and Louise Thomas, Kath Pyke and Glenda Huxter operated as two separate teams on the face, with the men putting up the 20-pitch The Excellent Adventure (VIE3 6a A3+) and the women establishing an unnamed line to the right of roughly the same grade. The two teams shared a base camp, then worked on a common approach to a snow terrace 100 meters above the glacier where they established different portaledge camps some distance apart. The men fixed 300 meters of line through a large bulge over four days before the good weather broke, forcing them back to base camp for ten days. One aborted start later, they jugged to their high point, fixed their remaining rope, retreated to the portaledge bivy, then reascended the fixed lines and freed the rest of the route in one push at HVS to E2. They opted not to continue on to the summit, which they estimated at some two days’ climbing away, and stripped all their ropes on the descent. They placed 20 bolts on the route, all of them at belays.

The women moved out from the snow terrace portaledge some 200 meters right of the men’s line, free climbing five or six pitches at up to E3 6a before they were forced to aid their way up the next four pitches (A3+). They then continued up a series of cracks and corners (E2-E3). They returned to their portaledges, then reascended the fixed lines one day after the men had topped out and completed their route in bad weather, reaching the top of the wall after another few free pitches. They stripped their route of lines in bad weather as well. (High Mountain Sports 183)