UKC

We have just heard from camp 2 on Manaslu 8156m on the Sat Phone that Guy Willett and Emma Jack have summit and SKIED down Manaslu. Thats the worlds 8th highest mountain.
This is a British 1st Ski descent for that Mountain and maybe a world first.
With them from the Dream Guides team was Rob Casserly, Bonita Norris and Lynette Trott.
GREAT EFFORT GUYS

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:
More to follow

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

Well done all....

Will we be seeing some pictures in the coming weeks?

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

nice one....would that also be a FFD* for this peak?



* first female descent

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

Well done Guy! Sounds like a pretty cool adventure.

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:


Just wondering what you mean by the world first comment kenton? As a quick google has told me it was first skied in 1981.

In reply to Frank4short:

i think he means first British ski descent....is this not correct?

In reply to Morgan Woods: That would be a British first not a world first surely? By the way i'm not having a go here just curious by what he means when he says world first.

In reply to Frank4short:

ok gotcha....still could be FFD or a descent by a new route.

looking forward to details....also wonder what it would get in resort parlance....red with a bit of black thrown in :p

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

Good effort! I hope they were using Dynafit Manaslus ; )

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:
Fantastic news Kenton!! I looked at the blog at dinnertime and was wondering how they got on!! Congrats to Guy, Emma and the rest of the team!!!

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:
Congratulations Kenton. Here is a link about the history of skiing 8000 meter peaks and a thread about Dave Watson's recent ski of k2 from the Bottleneck
http://www.wildsnow.com/2108/ski-8000-meter/
http://www.k2tracks.com/

In reply to Cy Kaicener cdwubm:
Congratulations to Guy and Emma (edit)

In reply to Frank4short:

It was skied from just below the summit pyramid, which by all accounts is unskiable so if Guy and the crew did a double back flip from the very top with skis on it will be a first. In all seriously these peaks do change and what was undoable then may be very attainable now.
The 1981 ski was in fact the first ski of an 8000m peak, a great effort for back then.
What ever is the result its a great effort by the team!!!

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

Congratulations from the Echunga Aussies.
What a wonderful achievement.

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:

Did they ski down from the true summit or from the fore summit? Did they get to the summit on 27th or 28th?

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:
I slid down Manaslu on my bum last year. Does that warrant first Male British Bum Slide Descent? There should definately be a category for sliding on your bum, with or without a bin liner.

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides:
hi all, I will ne back home im a couple of days and will post a detailed account of the ski etc then. meanwhile, suffice it to say that if you are looking for powder, there are better and easier stashes...

Guy

In reply to guy wilet:
Nice one Guy, Hope it was better skiing than Kenton's snow plough!!
Tom

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides: Hi everyone! Back in Cham now = beer, macdonalds and all things good! Anyway so here's the low down on skiing Manaslu. Is it a first ever descent? Not sure - the ethics of ski mountaineering are even more complex than climbing! (combines ethics of climbing and skiing...)Anyway we are trying to clarify the start point of the descent and the 'completeness' of the descent by the austrians in 1981. If the discrepencies are minimal, ie they started at the logical skiing point and skied pretty much all the icefall to close to basecamp then they bag the first descent - if not then we do! Anyway, this is not the main point. I reckon both descents are 'way cool' and a great adventure, so I am not getting too bogged down in it.

So what happened? We set off at about 2.30am on 28th sept and summited around 9am. We skied from 15-20m below the true summit (the summit ridge wasnt skiable) at the logical start point. We were using oxygen. Feet were freezing in ski boots (had to thaw them out for an hour on the way down at 7500m). The ski started with a 40ish degree couloir at over 8100m which was cool. The snow down to 7500m was pretty bad breakable/unbreakable crust and i was managing about 6 turns before lungs burst. It's a bit like doing squat thrusts with an ill fitting gimp mask on - fun for a while...

From 7500m oxygen was off and full 60l packs were on and we rattled across some exposed glacial ice onto a 40ish degree pitch of chalky crust (cliff to the left) before traversing well right onto some great snow on a huge face at around 7200m - amazing ambiance and amazing to be making good boot top powder turns so high and so alone. We were a long way from the fixed ropes of the ascent line at this point. To avoid a big bergschrund we traveresd back left to our camp 3 at 6800m.From there great snow (bootop powder over breakable crust) took us to the icefall at 6250m. Here I managed a great wipeout as my right ski got snagged in a loop of buried fixed rope as i crossed a snowbridge, quite alarming.

We continued weaving through crevasses, sidestepping up short snow/ice steps and down hanging slopes to 5800m. A bit like a theme park, but more of a pain in the arse. By this stage we were in white out due to convective cloud building and wet surface snow was sluffing somewhat. But all turned out well as we followed someones old tracks across the final glacier back to base. Got there by 4pm, completely powered down!

I had taken my skis off once at 6200m to do a 5m abseil over a crevasse, as we couldnt see another way round in the white out. Emma downclimbed maybe 250m in the icefall.

So there we have it, a great adventure. Would probably get 4.2 E2 grade overall but hard to tell when so shafted at 8000m!

Thanks for your interest!
Guy

In reply to guywillett: Wow good work, sound quite amenable too, other than the obvious skiing at 8,000m. Have you skied any other 8,000ers Guy? (I'm think Cho Oyu) If you have how would you compare it in terms of difficulty?

In reply to Frank4short:
Thanks! Yup quite amenable in lower altitude skiing terms. A few sections that make you think (crevasses or cliffs or glacial ice)and that you wouldnt want to cock up. The tiredness, altitude,pack and baggy ski boots and freezing feet etc make it more to contend with too. I had borrowed Kenton's down suit which was way too big for me and that coupled with the o2 mask made seeing difficult! But you are right, technically wuite amenable.

I skied from about 7100m on Cho Oyu a few years ago (I didnt summit)and I think Cho is easier. Technically probably similar (a couple of steep sections near ice cliffs) but fewer crevasses to fall in and so on. Skiing down the icefall on manaslu, whilst never desperate, did have a number of steepish sections with big crevasses to fall in if you fell.

Overall it felt well within my ability, but felt i had to be conservative.

Are you thinking of skiing an 8000er?

In reply to Frank4short: maybe should add that i was alpine skiing on manaslu and telemarking on cho oyu, for what its worth.

In reply to guywillett:


More of a dream than anything. Am trying, not very successfully, to convince some mates to ski denali 2011 (would go for 10 but it's a bit last minute) at the mo.

Basically just trying to quantify what's involved in skiing ability/technical difficulty terms at the moment. Just out of curiosity. You live in Cham, how would you compare them (other than the obvious altitude difficulties) to the trade ski lines in cham e.g. Cosmiques, Ronde, NE Courtes.

In reply to Frank4short: technically cho and manaslu are definitely easier than rond/cosmiques (these are given 5.1 E2) but short sections are 45 dgrees maybe. As usual the difficulty depends so much on the snow at the time and also the consequence of a fall. I think with these big hills you want to be comfortable on cosmique/rond type stuff so you have a good buffer to absorb the altitude/baggy boots/big pack and so on. Confidence is everything when skiing - there are no ropes! And a good repertoir of survival skiing techniques is good! Ie jump turning without lateral movement, multi direction side slipping and so on.

For example skiing a 100m (vertical) 40-45 degree slope with a big wide bergschrund at the bottom (and a cliff 10m beyond)at 6000m on Manaslu felt quite serious (in a white out) but having skied loads much harder , I felt very confident it was no problem. Of course I could have down climbed it.

Also you feel quite alone, partly because you are (!) but also because rescue is a problem and it feels a wild thing to do, so mental concentration and good decision making are key.

I suppose the other thing is that you may not have made any turns 4 months!

Sorry if this all sounds patronising!

I have been up Denali a couple of times and reckon it would be an awesome ski! Particularly rescue chute, messner couloir or orient express! I am planning on going there to ski at some point soon!

Where are you based? Sounds like you have skied a fair bit in cham>

In reply to guywillett: Cheers kind of what i was thinking. Based in Dublin these days but lived in Cham for a 3 years cumulatively, 5 winters. From about 99 onwards. Done most if not all of the standard hard but not super extreme descents there like previous examples, poubelle, bridge, rectiligne, ENSA, etc. Not sure i'm ever going to be technically able to take it the nest step in terms of european/cham skiing like the mallory, gervasutti but would like to try & take it to another level. A lot of what i hear about this type of skiing is that once you have the fitness & the head it can be quite amenable so long as you keep your head screwed on.

In reply to Frank4short: yup, its hard to make that next jump. Mental mostly, but so is the seriousness and consequently the need to get the conditions right! I find the mental aspect the most tiring on the very serious lines - i only have a few in me per season then my brains fried! I also prepare for them quite anally, taking enough kit to be able to get down or back up them if i dont like the conditions or in case there are some hidden surprises. Sometimes that just means axes and crampons but sometimes it means ropes and screws and wires etc for abseils.

One surpise i wasnt prepared for this spring was 3 boot buckles braking near the top of the eugster/mallery ! That just needed more conservative skiing and dealing with extra stress levels!

I reckon alaska (valdez) is a great area for pushing yourself, as the snow is usually mega and makes the slope angles 'ski' shallower compared to europe. Also i reckon denali would be awesome.

next time you are out herem let me know and we should hook up for a ski or at least I can let you know what juicy lines are in nick!

Other thing is last year I really got into skiing couloirs in the lower mountains of the chablais and aravis ranges - awesome and with no crevasses or altitude so less kit and can go further. Also no glacial ice underlying the snow...We were skiing them from december (would have been before but was in thailand...)

In reply to guywillett:

Guy....just out of curiosity for us gear heads what sort of ski set up were you using....is there any particular considerations at altitude eg strength vs weight? Cheers.

In reply to Morgan Woods: Hi Morgan
To be honest I was just using the same stuff i use here in cham (thats the only stuff i have!). So that meant some 10 euro poles from Technique Extreme, my G3 Reverend skis with dynafit 'comfort' bindings and garmont radium boots. My feet got worryingly cold despite wearing neoprene overboots (by Forty Below - very good) - this was due to size i think. Ie i should have had a size with more toe room, even though they were baggy from an alpine skiing point of view and i had taken out any custom fitting to increase room.

To be fair warmth was only an issue on summit day, when we were most hypoxic and it was -20 and so on.

I felt skis and bindings worked well and were a good balance of weight and performance. Boots could have gone bigger and softer, probably with bootheaters too. Other people with skis there had gone for lighter options...

Cheers
Guy

In reply to Kenton Cool - Dream Guides: Way to go Guy! Awesome!