Jannu, North Face, Attempt. We (Fyodorov, Grekov, Mariev, Chabaline, Tukhvatulin, Slepnyov and Raljabov) arrived in Kathmandu September 2 with the goal of climbing the north face of Jannu. By September 11, the first team members arrived at Base Camp (4500m). The 13th marked the official opening of the event as we reconnaissanced the one-and-a-half hours’ approach, cached gear at the base of the route and started to fix ropes through the ice- fall. Bad weather and heavy snowfall characterized the next month as we continued to work higher on the route. On October 11th, Chabaline, Tukhvatulin, Slepnyov and Radjabov fixed rope to 6700 meters, where they put a tent and spent a night. The next day, Tukhvatulin and Slepnyov fixed three more pitches. It snowed for the next three days. On October 16, when the team of Grekov, Fyodorov and Mariev went up to 6700 meters, they found the tent tom by snow and decided to go down. The general worsening of weather, permit deadlines and winter closing in forced the expedition to wind up.

Despite our failure to get to the summit, we consider the overall results to be good. We made a test of our climbing and team skills, made an active reconnaissance of the route up to 6800 meters, gathered information about route conditions in different weather, tested our equipment and worked out route tactics. We hope to return next spring and go on.

Ilyas Tukhvatulin, Russia