Garrett Bradley, Marcos Costa, Kyle Dempster, and I headed to the Minya Konka Range for our final mountaineering quest of the winter season: one of the unclimbed peaks to the south of 7,556m Minya Konka. In 2014, Marcos, Garrett, and I had found the southern approach to these peaks and climbed Peak ca 6,460m, the western sub-peak of Peak 6,468m. In February we retraced this approach, climbing to the top of the basin west of Long Shan (6,684m) and digging a solid campsite to withstand the extreme winds. As Marcos went down with a stomach bug, Garrett, Kyle, and I made a reconnaissance of Long Shan by climbing the summit to the west of our camp, denoted on the accepted maps of the range as Peak 6,124m. Despite clouds and high winds, we were given views of the south and west faces of the imposing Minya Konka, its approach glacier system, and the summit of Nyambo Konka (6,114m) to the southwest, climbed later in the year by a Korean team (see report here).

The next day dawned clear, so Kyle and I made a bid on Long Shan, climbing a hanging glacier system with two vertical bergschrunds. Above, long ice slopes brought us to a shoulder on the south ridge at ca 6,500m. However, the ridge to the summit, still several hundred meters distant, turned into soft, corniced snow, steeply fluted down the eastern (Hailuoguo) side, and with vertical rock on the western side. With night approaching, the cloud deck falling, and the ever-present winter winds rising, we were forced to retreat.

Bruce Normand, China