On an especially hot and dusty day in 2020, Alan Rousseau and I were working construction, building a deck together in Utah. Voicing the thoughts in my daydreaming brain, I threw out the idea of joining forces for a Himalayan expedition. At that moment, I’m sure the high peaks and frigid north faces of the Himalaya sounded extremely pleasant.

Living in Utah, Alan and I both were drawn to steep ice and mixed climbing in the hills near our homes. Our very first expedition together, in the spring of 2019, resulted in a new line up the east face of Mt. Dickey in the central Alaska Range. Our shared interest in such routes had sent both of us searching the globe for steep alpine walls, and our research soon led us to Jannu.

At 7,710 meters, Jannu (known in Nepal as Kumbhakarna) stands just ten kilometers west of Kangchenjunga (8,586m), the third-highest peak in the world. These days, many mountaineers who travel to this region are chasing only the 8,000-meter summits, and they’d look past Jannu with barely a second glance. However, the altitude was never a factor in our desire to stand below this peak and, hopefully, have the opportunity to climb it. The north face of Jannu is the stuff of alpinists’ dreams: about 2,000 meters of challenging alpine terrain leading to a stunning 700-meter headwall that is spiderwebbed with crack systems and plastered with sheets of ice, so steep that a hanging rope rarely touches it. We had to go there and see it for ourselves.

Jannu was first climbed from the north by a Japanese team in 1976, following a route on the far left side of the face that had been pioneered to 7,300 meters by New Zealanders the year before. The Kiwis dubbed the face the Wall of Shadows. In 2004, after an attempt the previous year, a large and powerful team of Russian climbers claimed the first ascent of the direct north face, straight up that steep headwall. That expedition, led by Alexander Odintsov, climbed in a classic siege style, fixing thousands of meters of rope leading nearly to the summit. They spent more than 50 days working on the route. Our dream was to climb the north face headwall in alpine style.

The Wall of Shadows route was first climbed in partial alpine style in 1987 by a Dutch team (using some fixed ropes low on the route) and has been repeated in this style a couple of times. Tomo Cesen from Yugoslavia claimed to have soloed a very steep new route to the left of the Russian line in 1989, but this ascent has been widely disputed. In 2007, Valery Babanov and Sergey Kofanov started up the far right side of the north face and climbed alpine style to the summit by the northwest ridge (a.k.a. West Pillar). “Perhaps someday,” Kofanov wrote in Alpinist, “a pair will climb a direct route on the north face in alpine style, but they’ll need to accept the likelihood that they’re buying themselves a one-way ticket.”

In preparation for our first expedition to Jannu in the fall of 2021, Alan and I planned a trip to Alaska where we hoped to climb several routes in continuous-push style. The routes we had earmarked were the Bibler-Klewin (Moonflower Buttress) on Mt. Hunter, the Infinite Spur on Mt. Foraker, and the Slovak Direct on Denali. The aim for this trip (besides having a great time hanging around on a cold, snowy glacier) was to use these climbs as
a litmus test for our plans on Jannu. We figured if we could climb three of Alaska’s biggest testpieces in non-stop pushes in a single season, then our hopes of climbing the direct north face of Jannu in alpine style might not be ridiculous.

We ended up climbing the Bibler-Klewin to the top of the buttress and back in 25 hours, and we climbed the Infinite Spur, round-trip from Kahiltna base camp, in a 65-hour push. Poor weather foiled our plans for the Slovak Direct, but we did summit Denali via the West Buttress route in 21 hours round-trip from Kahiltna base, while retrieving a cache we’d left at the 14,000-foot camp.

Alan and I departed for Nepal early in September, feeling excited and nervous. From Kathmandu, we drove for two days to the town of Taplejung, then transferred to a jeep for 18 hours of bumpy, wet driving. The road ended at a comfortable little guesthouse next to the Ghunsa River. Getting out of the jeep and feeling the cool night air was a great relief after three days of driving through the steaming lowlands.

For five days we trekked along the Ghunsa River. The canyon walls towered above us on both sides, and it wasn’t until the last day of walking that we started to catch glimpses of snow-covered mountains. When at last we turned a corner and lay eyes on Jannu, I remember the distinct impression of never having felt so small.

Base camp was in an idyllic meadow hanging above a rock glacier. Whenever Jannu wasn’t shrouded in clouds, we had a direct view from the doors of our tents. This did nothing to help with the feelings of trepidation we both had been carrying the entire trip.

As we saw it, the north face consisted of three sections. The first was a 300-meter rock buttress capped by a 300-meter icefall; the second was a ramp feature that gained about 1,100 meters, mostly on steep névé, and the third was the headwall. The first piece of the puzzle to unlock was the route up the rock buttress, and the day after we arrived in base camp, we made that our mission.

After several hours of wandering around the hanging meadow, we found a way to descend through the moraine wall to the rock glacier: a steep, sketchy gully with vertical dirt at the bottom. We traveled this section countless times, and it always had us on our toes. After climbing up the moraine wall on the far side of the rock glacier, we tied in and started piecing together a route through vertical, blocky terrain. As we meandered up the rock, artifacts from prior ascents served as occasional guideposts. At the exit from the buttress, we took our first good look at the icefall and then went down to base camp.

Poor weather descended on us, and we used this time to scramble around on nearby Mera Peak. By the time the weather cleared, we had completed a couple of rounds of acclimatization to 5,500 meters. We packed the bags and headed back up, with the aim of figuring out our route through the icefall and bivying in the bergschrund below the ramp.

Back on top of the rock section, we donned our double boots for the first time of the trip and began plodding up the seam between the main icefall and the side of the upper rock buttress. This section was a bit intimidating—the sun was shining and enormous gendarmes of ice hung out over our heads. When we stood on the glacial plateau above the icefall, about 2,100 meters of the north face of Jannu still rose above us. We sat on our packs and gawked at what finally felt like our very real future.

Once in the ’schrund below the ramp, we set about experimenting with our new bivy system. Alan and I had brought the newly released G7 Pods, but neither of us had used them, outside of setting them up in our homes. Our hope was that these inflatable hanging sleeping pads—like one- person portaledges—would be the key to successfully climbing the headwall, with its limited bivy sites, in alpine style. We built an anchor out of ice screws, inflated the Pods, hung the fly over both of them, and crawled in to sleep.

That night was spooky, with so much terrain still above us and the ramp feature acting as a funnel for constant spindrift. After a fitful night of sleep, we packed our bags and descended to base camp, feeling good about the progress but knowing we had a long way to go.

With more bad weather on the way, Alan and I took the opportunity to descend to the village of Ghunsa for some recovery. Sitting in a teahouse drinking tongba next to a woodburning stove seemed to be what the doctor had ordered. After a few days of this, and with good weather inbound, we walked the ten miles back to base camp with thoughts of the headwall rattling around our brains.

We speculated that we would need a forecast for at least seven days of good weather to make an all-in attempt, however this forecast called for five good days. With this in mind, we packed for what we expected to be an exploratory mission up the ramp to the base of the headwall, where we would hopefully be able to gauge its seriousness.

We had come to Jannu with the intention of repeating the 2004 Russian route in alpine style, but while studying their line through a spotting scope, we’d noticed another system branching to the right and slashing up the headwall to reach the west ridge at a little over 7,500 meters. We had decided to put our efforts toward climbing this new line, in part because we would’ve run into large amounts of old fixed rope and hardware on the Russian route, which not only would have been unpleasant but also would have added a significant asterisk to our ascent.

Back at the ’schrund below the ramp, we spent a more comfortable night on a chopped ledge away from all the spindrift. We woke at 4 a.m., broke camp, and began moving up. The first 600 meters of the ramp consisted of nice névé with occasional vertical steps. With the weather window not being as open as we would have liked, we put the hammer down and moved as quickly as we could.

After the initial ramp, we started up a block of technical, steep mixed climbing. This section was wonderful, with thin runnels of ice and short rock sections. After about 300 meters, we found ourselves climbing steep snow flutings on the edge of the lowest of the hanging seracs guarding the upper ramp. With daylight starting to disappear and no visible spots to bivy, we kept climbing, hoping to reach the top of the serac. At times, the flutings were very insecure, including one spot where we had to jump across a void and stick the landing to a near vertical snow wall. In the ’schrund on top of the serac, we chopped a small, uncomfortable ledge to set up the Pods.

Breaking down the Pods in the early hours was cold and difficult—trying to roll them tight enough to fit in a pack took time. But by 7 a.m. we were moving again, every step bringing us closer to our planned exit onto the headwall. The feeling of excitement was tangible. To this point, Alan and I had been simul-climbing, using Micro Traxions between us to protect the leader.

As the headwall reared up, we climbed three pitches into the steepness, then found ourselves dead-ended, with daylight quickly slipping away. We rappelled a rope length and set up the Pods for our first full hanging bivy of the climb. We were somewhere near 7,200 meters, and it felt like the summit might only be one long day of climbing away. But we also reminded ourselves that this had been planned as another exploratory and acclimatization mission. We decided to sleep on it. When morning came, we quickly made the decision to descend and wait for a more appropriate window.

Back at camp, we spent the next seven days in a nuclear snowstorm. Four feet of snow piled up in the lush green meadow. When the storm subsided, the jet stream was over the summit of Jannu and we decided to throw in the towel for this season. With all the pieces of the puzzle we had put in place, we were eager to come back.

Even before decompressing at home, we were already scheming for our return in 2022. We had previously talked about enlisting a third climber to lighten the pack loads and create a bigger safety net. With our first season in the rearview, it seemed like a good call to bring someone else on.

I had been climbing with Matt Cornell as one of my main partners since 2019 and thought he would be a perfect fit. Alan agreed but wanted to test our systems for climbing as a team of three before committing. We decided to go back to Alaska and try to finish our business on the Slovak Direct.

On the 2,750-meter route up Denali’s south face, we refined two climbing systems we’d later use on Jannu. When the terrain was such that that simul-climbing would be more efficient than pitching out single rope lengths, we climbed with two followers at the end of the rope, about three meters apart, with the leader placing Micro Traxions along the way as protection. When the climbing became too technical for simul-climbing, we used the fix-and-follow method, where the leader would climb around half a rope length, pull in all the slack, and fix the rope to an anchor. As the second climbed to the belay, protected by Micro Traxions, the leader would rest and haul the packs. When the second arrived at the anchor, the leader would start up again, belayed with the remaining rope, while the third continued to follow the pitch below.

These techniques helped Alan, Matt, and me climb the Slovak in less than 24 hours in May 2022. Once out of the Alaska Range, all three of us booked tickets to Kathmandu.

On September 4, we arrived back in Kathmandu, excited but once again all feeling a sense of trepidation. At the Hotel Shanker, we were sitting down for dinner one hour after arriving when I got a phone call from my girlfriend’s co-workers. Brenna had been in a serious climbing accident in the Alps and was being life- flighted to a hospital. I booked a ticket to Switzerland that would leave Nepal in three hours. Alan, Matt, and I sorted our group gear, and I left them with my best wishes for a successful climb and headed out into an uncertain future.

Matt and Alan had poor weather throughout their trip that season, with high winds and brutally cold temperatures. They made several attempts on the face but were only able to get to around 6,500 meters.

Two months later, while they were traveling home and I was sitting in a hospital in Chicago with Brenna (who has experienced a long but very positive recovery), we again started talking about our return to Jannu.

The three of us did one more big climb together in the spring of 2023: a new route up the east face of Mt. Dickey in Alaska (see p.34). Apart from using the fix-and- follow technique more often, we didn’t make any major updates to our systems. But climbing a 5,000-foot first ascent as a team bolstered our confidence.

On September 4, 2023, we once again returned to Kathmandu, this time with Matt’s and Alan’s partners, Whitney and Emily, who both would accompany us to base camp. We also were joined by Michael Gardner and Sam Hennessey, who planned to share camp with us and tackle their own objective in the area. [These two climbers were unsuccessful with their attempt but plan to return.] The journey to the base camp meadow we had called home for the last two autumns was incredible, with lots of laughter and hardly any feelings of trepidation or fear.

After two rounds of acclimatizing up to 6,000 meters on Mera Peak, we got the news that the window we had all been awaiting was approaching: seven days of splitter weather. We started packing bags and fine-tuning our gear choices. In addition to food and hardware, we packed a single 60-meter, 9mm lead rope and a 60-meter, 6mm hyperstatic tagline. We did not pack a bolt kit.

Nathan Kukathas of Grade VII Climbing Equipment, maker of the G7 Pods, had made the journey from Squamish, arriving in base camp a week before the weather window. He hand- delivered some custom equipment for us that he’d been building while we were walking in and acclimatizing. The three- man sleeping system we took up the route weighed around 11 pounds (5kg), including two G7 Pods, a burly custom tent that enveloped the Pods, and a custom elephant’s foot sleeping bag that the three of us would share. We also had figured out a way to lash together the two Pods, making it easier to set them up and to pack them for climbing.

On October 7, after two days of waiting for the face to shed new snow, we woke early and started following the now familiar terrain across the rock glacier and up the lower buttress. We made fast time and soon found ourselves building a nice, flat bivouac site in the ’schrund at about 5,800 meters. We thought we’d chosen a spot that would be protected from the nightly deluge of spindrift, but at midnight the walls of the bivy started to collapse inward. We put on our boots and tried to divert the stream of snow that was pouring onto us.

After a few more hours, we woke at 4 a.m. to start brewing water for coffee. The plan was to climb the ramp feature and hopefully bivy on the first serac, where Alan and I had slept in 2021. We crossed the ’schrund at around 7 a.m. and found good névé and snow throughout much of the day. When we reached the start of the steeper mixed climbing, about 300 meters below the serac, we decided to cut hard left and see if we could skirt some of the difficult terrain. This ended up being a mistake: About 60 meters below the lip of the serac, it became too dangerous to continue. Fortunately, this mistake provided an excellent bivy, as we discovered an ice cave beneath the serac at 6,800 meters.

In the morning we rappelled two rope lengths diagonally to the right to regain the point where Alan and I had climbed two years earlier. Matt then led us through all this terrain in a long block and landed us at the bottom of the headwall at 7,000 meters.

Here, I took the sharp end and started up broken granite, aiming for our 2021 high point. I ended my block on a sharp fin of snow about 60 meters below the hanging bivy we’d used in 2021. We spent several hours chopping a stance as wide as possible before bottoming out on rock. When we set up the Pods, both edges hung over the abyss by six to eight inches.

This day was super memorable, as the energy of our group really started to blend into a feeling of group flow. We had continued to get weather updates every morning and evening, and no major changes were on the horizon. It was starting to feel like the moment we had all dreamt about
for years. That night was stressful, though, as falling ice shelled the bivy and tore open the fly over our Pods. We clamped the fabric together with two screw-gate carabiners and hoped for the best.

From our high point of 2021, we moved right into a system we had scoped the first year. The next two pitches were phenomenal, with perfect cracks for gear and tool placements, and steeper than anything we had climbed so far. I ended my block and started handing the rack to Alan, and as Matt climbed toward the two of us, a large snow mushroom far above gave way. Alan and I took a direct hit from the snow; Matt was traversing in from the left and escaped most of the carnage. The impact split the hood of my belay parka in half, but other than losing some insulation and having clouds of feathers floating around us for the next few days, we came away unscathed.

Several more mushrooms loomed directly above us, so we opted to follow a more wandering line to the right to get out from under them. Alan’s block had two difficult leads back to back—at one point, Matt and I watched him throw an overhead heel hook. The move was stylely, but back at the belay, we commented that this probably wasn’t the best beta, just Alan being Alan. His block finished in the dark and led us to the hole left by the mushroom that had hit us earlier in the day, now a well-protected bivy site at 7,300 meters.

This was our first fully hanging bivy in the Pods. Matt and Alan sat on the wall-side ledge, with their legs draped over me as I lay on the outside ledge. We had tested this configuration in base camp and had higher hopes for it than we actually experienced on the wall. It was an uncomfortable and sleepless night.

After another early alarm, we spent a good bit of time drinking hot coffee, trying to warm up before packing up in the bitter cold. During our time on the wall, the face only got sun for about ten minutes each evening. Eventually we crawled out of the ledge to face another day of hard climbing. We were hoping to finish the headwall that day and bivy on the shoulder of the mountain.

Matt started off his first block by tension traversing ten meters out from the belay, then climbing what we later deemed to be the crux of the route. A vertical smear of ice was followed by cryptic mixed climbing, with perfect pick-sized and crystal-lined pockets leading him through an improbable slab. After two more pitches, we could see the top of the wall. I led three more pitches, often encountering dead-end terrain that required lateral movement to find another upward option. When the sun set, we were at 7,500 meters, just below the top.

Although we had fallen short of the shoulder, we were elated to be so close. We set up another hanging bivy and crawled in for another hard night. Once above 7,000 meters, we wore all of our layers every night, only adding down mittens and fresh socks. We didn’t sleep much in any of the hanging bivys, but none of us had expected to sleep well on Jannu’s headwall. This time we decided we’d all sit on the wall-side Pod, arranged tallest to shortest to match the taper of the Pods. This configuration was definitely better than our previous nights had been, but it’s possible it contributed to the cold injuries that Alan and I later suffered, as we were both sitting on the outside of the lineup and I eventually got frostbite on my right hand, Alan got it on his left, and Matt had none.

On the morning of October 12, we felt exhausted but excited to see where day six of the climb would take us. We had made the decision to go light to the summit, so we left the Pods, sleeping bag, and other gear at the bivy. Matt led us up the last pitch and then started breaking trail up the west ridge to the beginning of the technical climbing on the summit pyramid. We were in the sun for the first time in five days—the warmth from the galactic heater was a very welcome source of energy.

As Alan started a block of rambling mixed pitches, we were all feeling the effects of multiple days of hard climbing, a low-calorie diet, and lack of sleep—and the high altitude wasn’t helping. We moved much slower than we had hoped.

At the end of Alan’s block, I felt motivated to keep pushing the rope upward on the last bit of the southwest spur route, climbed in 1983. Below the final technical pitch of the route, I took off my gloves to reference a photo of the terrain above and noticed that the tip of one pinkie had turned purple. When Matt and Alan arrived at my stance, we took a moment to discuss the situation and made the decision to keep moving up. We were only 100 meters below the top and felt we would be able to get up and down without it making a significant difference in the outcome for my finger. After the final pitch—a roof with an offwidth that didn’t end up being as difficult as it had looked— Matt took over and broke trail to the top.

We arrived at the summit at 4:20 p.m. on the dot. We had worked three years for this moment, but at the moment it didn’t feel all that important. We spent less than five minutes on top—we took a group photo and a panoramic video, and that was it. We knew we needed to make tracks with it being so late in the day.

We downclimbed for a few hundred feet and then began a series of slow rappels. It was well into the night—probably 10 or 11 p.m.—before we made it back to our high bivy at 7,500 meters. The best option was to spend another night there and descend to base camp the next morning. We set
up the Pods once again and crawled in for what ended up being a brutal night. The Pods were deflating, and I had to wrap my right arm around one of the suspension straps to hold myself in. The night felt never-ending. In the morning, I discovered my frostbite had gotten significantly worse, and I was now struggling to use my right hand.

We spent the entire seventh day descending, mostly rappelling from clean threads on ice and occasionally leaving gear anchors. At midnight, we were finally back in base camp.

Once there, we discovered that Alan had frozen the tips of the fingers on his left hand. We warmed our fingers in water and discussed our next moves,
but quickly realized we needed to sleep before we could make good decisions. With clearer heads in the morning, we concluded that walking through the jungle for five days and then driving for three more days to reach Kathmandu would present a significant risk of infection to our frostbitten fingers. We also learned from friends back home that a clinic in Kathmandu could administer an intravenous treatment called iloprost, which, if administered within 72 hours, might reverse some of the damage to our fingers. We opted to call for a helicopter ride back to Kathmandu.

Alan and I spent five days in the hospital receiving the iloprost treatment. Matt often would spend time with us, bringing us ice cream to cheer us up during painful infusions. We’d each lost around 20 to 25 pounds during our seven-day round trip on Jannu. Months later, Alan would lose the tip of his left pinkie, and I may also lose a bit of my little finger. We learned a lot from the injuries on Jannu, and we don’t expect them to slow us down.

The three-year effort to climb Jannu’s north face taught us what might be possible with steady determination, through many ups and downs. The journey didn’t end up being about standing on the summit; instead, it proved to be about growing closer as a team and learning what we are capable of accomplishing together. During those days in the hospital in Kathmandu, we all felt fulfilled, yet also shared a seemingly contradictory desire to be back in the mountains. It was then that Alan, Matt, and I started enthusiastically scheming for our next expedition.

SUMMARY: New route climbed in alpine style up the north face of Jannu (Kumbhakarna, 7,710m) in Nepal, by Matt Cornell, Jackson Marvell, and Alan Rousseau (all USA), October 7–12, 2023. The route is called Round Trip Ticket (2,700m, M7 AI5+ A0). The trio descended from high camp at 7,500 meters on October 13, mostly following their ascent route.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in 1996, Jackson Marvell grew up in Utah and learned to climb on that state’s red sandstone and water ice; he lives in the town of Heber, Utah, with his partner and dog, and supplements his career as a professional climber by working as a welder.