Petzl Crew's blog

For what seems forever will this thaw ever come to an end?
After waiting with excitement for the last couple of months for the guys to arrive, all seems to be falling apart... Wanting so much to show people how good Scottish winter climbing can be things are off to a slow wet start.

In Mid-December, I flew to Nepal with Ines Papert (Germany), Jen Olson (Canada), Cory Richards (USA) and Chris Alstrin (USA).  Our goal was to try to open a new route on the North Face of Kwangde Lho (6187m).

           Lionel Bonnel and Stéphane Brosse at Zermatt. Photo courtesy of Dan Ferrer.

The itinerary:

Aymeric Clouet, Mathieu Maynadier, Julien Dusserre and Frederic Degoulet went to Nepal and did the first ascent of "the Gorillaz Peak" (6741m), in the Ganesh.5 mountain.

Aymeric explains us the story of the film :
"Once again, a gang of young french mountaineers, headed to Nepal to satisfy their desire of adventures and friendship. But during the first night in Kathmandu, Juju lost its hair, victim of a sort from GANESH (the God with an elephant's head...).
Searching for an explanation, the team crossed a part of Nepal by foot, and then used their skills of mountaineers to reach the summit of Ganesh 5, looking for the Nepal Medecine..."

A film by Team les Collets

Download the poster of the film

The story of the expedition

December 2006

We know that we want to leave for an expedition next year, we're sure to go somewhere but the 'where' is yet to be decided.
We have a lot of ideas: Alaska, Pakistan, India, but nothing more specific yet.

In fact, the most complicated part of an expedition is to find the right project; a mountain that all of us feel passionate enough about to drive us through a year's planning and organising. So, during the ice-climbing gathering in La Grave, we bump into "Clouclou" (Aymeric Clouet) who had just arrived back from Nepal. We catch up, drink a little wine and he tells us that he saw a stunning mountain that looked particularly interesting, in the Ganesh region of the Himalayas.

That Monday, we head to L'ENSA to check it out.

The mountain is the Ganesh 5 and it had been climbed only twice before; once by the Japanese and once by the Slovenians (Thomas Humar amongst others) over ten year ago.
We decide to go !

Next come the preparations and all the painful procedures of organising a project over the course of a year.
In the end, it all goes pretty well; we find sponsors, get some funding, enough support so as not to have to sell the car in order to go!
Out there, the Trinetra agency would organise the rest.

End of August 2007:

Clouclou gives us a call; his expedition with clients has been cancelled and he's looking for a project.
We think it over and it's decided; we'll leave as a team of four.

October 2008 :

Arrival at Katmandu. There's the paperwork for the permit, payment for the agency and bags for 15 days trekking and 30 days at base camp to be organised. Most importantly: there are the ‘Kathmandu' film scenes to set up and it's a pretty big job.
All that in 24 hours !
Finally, we leave Kathmandu and all its activity to set out for 15 days of trekking to acclimatise.

We follow the road of lake Gusaikund, a popular pilgrimage route that for the next few days leads us towards les Ganesh, though the peaks remain out of sight. At long last we arrive at the lake with a view of the mountains.

We feel welcome at the lodge. We're alone with a family and their three children who hanker with our IPOD and other gadgets.
We feel so at home that we end up spending four days here, walking around the lake to acclimatise and playing cards with the children as we wait for our Dal Bat dinner each evening.
The time we spent with the family brought us a little closer to the Nepalese people, even if the language barrier made it tricky as only the eldest son spoke a little English.

They tell us about their family history. As Tibetan immigrants they arrived with nothing and survived by sharing the running of a Lodge (of a similar sort to that which the CAF leave in the charge of guardians).
They talk about the frustrations of comparing their own situation with the young generations of the western world.
As of recently, television and the Internet have allowed them to see quite how different their own existence is from that of the West.
We tell them that it's no doubt they who have the better rhythm. I think they appreciated the sentiment but find it hard to believe with the IPOD, cameras, satellite telephone and all the electrical goods that we wouldn't be without even for a trek in the mountains.




After the few days we have to tear ourselves away from the lodge to go on to Tatopani, where the porters will meet us to head up to the base camp.
Once we find the porters, we begin a two-day hike towards the base camp, where hard work awaits us.


For financial reasons, we haven't taken on a Sirdar (the person who would usually organise the team of Nepalese porters). As a result, we're left to manage the group of 18 porters ourselves and it's not so easy.
We were, all the same, impressed by the porters resilience and above all by the quality of the work done by Rai and Kamals, our two cooks with whom we spent the month at base camp and who took such good care of us.



Eventually we make it to the base camp, though the final stretch was tough and painful for some of the porters.

We settle the payment and share a meal of Dal Bat and traditional cakes together before those that are not to stay on, leave to head back in the dark, unable to stand the temperatures at base camp.




Life begins at base camp as we sort out our equipment, and stake out the Eastern ridge of the Ganesh.



After two days of preparations, we set out to transfer our equipment to the ridge and set up a second base camp 550 meters up; the start of the trickier climb.


The climb allows us to complete our acclimatisation and scope out the next stages of the route.
Back to base camp tired but pleased, we know the route we'll take and the conditions look good; fine weather ahead. 

After a day's rest to sleep and re-organise our packs, we head off, intending to continue along the ridge, pass the first rocky section and leave the tents and equipment at the top.



This time around, we begin to realise the true difficulties of the climb and the scale of the mountain that towers above us.
The ridge is awesome, precipitous and it's difficult to secure ourselves along the steep slope where the snow ledges give way to a drop of over 2000 meters.
Despite everything, we reach the rocky terrain on the second day where we spend two nights.



We're pleased with the progress we've made but don't necessarily feel all that reassured for what's to come; it seems long and the route, complex.
Furthermore, from this point on, there'll be no question of any more back-and-forths along the ridge; we'll leave from here to climb continuously until we reach the summit.

We head down to base camp one last time, exhausted but confident all the same. It's a beautiful day.
This time we rest for two days and having recharged our batteries we awake to an unpleasant surprise; it's snowing and even if only lightly at base camp, we're not to know what things are like 2000 meters higher up.




The tension rises amongst the team. We speak very little (after thirty-five days together, there isn't much left to say) and everybody thinks about the days ahead, those that we've been building up to for the past year…

The third day; the weather forecast isn't too good but we only have eight days before the porters have to head back. It's now or never.
With our sacs packed with 7 days of food supplies, we're all feeling pretty on edge…
Within two days we reach the tents that we left at 6000 meters. The weather forecast still looks only average and it's starting to get very cold at night.



At this point, we're hoping to reach the summit in 5 days time and then head back down to the second base camp where we've left the food supplies.
The first day is chaotic. The weather's bad and the pitches of rock face that should have been easy to climb transform into an uncertain mixed climb.


Night falls and we still don't know where to sleep. Finally, at eight in the evening we find an incline of snow and we dig out a couple of holes to sleep.
The next day, the weather is beautiful and to wake up in the snow at 50 degrees is unforgettable: beneath our feet, 2500 meters of mountain face!!!



We set off again but the altitude soon takes effect and we advance slowly.  In addition, each time the fog descends, we're forced to stop so as not to lose ourselves in the snow.

Finally, around six in the evening, we arrive at the foot of the last rock face and the summit is within reach.
We abandon the idea of reaching the summit of Ganesh 5 to fight our way up a different virgin rock face of 350 meters that we baptise Gorillaz peak.



Michel announces beautiful weather for the following day, followed by violent winds in the evening time.
We need to reach the summit and get a move on.
We sleep, exhausted, and a bit tense having eaten very little over the past two days.

The next day is like a dream. It's a beautiful day and there's no wind; the ideal conditions to reach the summit.

The first pitches of mixed climbing are quickly completed and we arrive at the rock face of 6500 meters.


Above us stretch 200 meters of granite. To savour the unforgettable pitches of rock climbing, we climb without gloves as far as 6700 meters, to reach, at long last, the summit at four in the afternoon.



After a few victory photos we start to head down, for the first time in 6 days.
We arrive at the tents around eight in the evening, utterly exhausted but so delighted with the achievement that even our frozen sleeping bags seem soft and inviting.
Around midnight the wind, as predicted, starts to pick up and the rest of the night is long as we wait inside the tent as the wind roars outside.
In the morning we get up quickly. It's cold and the wind is hard to bear: we're out of here!



After an interminable descent, we arrive at the base camp where Rai and Kamal wake to prepare a meal.

Those were the most precious moments we shared with them, even if they didn't necessarily grasp the joy of our conquest, they were delighted for us and we shared beers, wine, foie gras and other various things…

We were on top of the world.

We wake the next day, euphoric. We stitch up our nicks and cuts, get the equipment in order and make the most of our last time at base camp; our home for the past month.



The next day, the porters arrive and we return to Kathmandu.

Our departure from base camp wasn't without emotion. Along the road back, we pass the local Nepalese at work and it's at that moment that we decide to celebrate our victory in Tonsai, Thailand. That, however, is another adventure…




© Photos
Aymeric Clouet
Julien Dusserre
Frédéric Degoulet

Text : Mathieu Maynadier
Traduction : Katie

Just a few words to introduce the MedeO'z movie, made for the Outdoorgames at Chamonix.
Please visit their website to learn more about this wonderful and very creative event...
The idea is (as we presented in a latest post) : Seven teams of professional film production companies had to create three differents projects in only five days!

• A 5 minute short film
• A photo gallery
• A 1 minute making-of short film

Our idea was to combine all the projects in one, instead of doing three separate projects.
We approached this contest like a global concept, relating the film, the photo and the making-of.
That’s what you will understand here below :

• 1/ THE FILM :
A 5-minute short film movie featuring 5 different sports: mountaineering, skiing, snowboarding, paragliding and base jumping. All the footage and editing had to be done in five days, from Monday to Friday and had to be shot in the Mount Blanc range.
The movie had to be understandable for the international jury, so we made the voice-over in English. A French version is coming soon!
But for those who don’t really understand English: the idea was to tell the story of our photographer, who wanted to take the 5 sports in one picture, instead of taking one picture of each sport. This picture took us a lot of work and energy!!

DOWNLOAD the movie

• 2/ THE PHOTO CONTEST :
Photographers of each team had to take 20 pictures, with at least one picture of each sport.
As I said above, the ‘project’ of our photographer was to shoot the 5 sports, but in one picture.
Please visit the photo gallery to see the 20 pictures of our ‘very special’ photographer :
Mr Tony Lamiche.

• 3/ THE MAKING - OF :
Then check out the “Making-of” short, the logical conclusion to this first film.
The rules of the making-of competition were to create a 1 minute short film, including footage of the movie creation, the backstage of the film and the Nissan car loaned to use for the week. As you can see, everything is connected, and that’s what we wanted to do.

• BACKSTAGE :
Download the story-board of the film, (.PDF) , which had been made three months before the event !!
As you can see, we did exactly what we drew, every shot was planned...
It's crazy to see how the film is so similar to the storyboard...

A lot of video equipment !!