British climbers Nick Bullock and Paul Ramsden have made the first ascent of a 1600m, ED+ route up the North Buttress of Nyainqêntanglha's South East Face (7046m) in Tibet, China over seven days.

The pair began their ascent on the 2nd of October and descended via the East Ridge to the South Valley, arriving back to base camp on the 8th of October.

Believing themselves to be the first Western party to explore the valley to the North of the Nyainqêntanglha peaks, Nick and Paul scoped the line on Google Earth and were motivated by the possibility of trying the face on the North side - described by locals as 'not the side to climb from'  - and managed to obtain difficult-to-acquire permission to attempt the face.

Without communications, the pair had no weather forecast to work from and were forced to climb without expectations of perfect weather windows. Writing in his blog, Nick described the heavy snowfall and harsh conditions that the team faced from day four onwards:

'The weather in the range was complicated. Most days had sun, rain, snow, wind, sleet, cloud, storm, hail. No day was the same and mostly the weather of the moment only lasted for a little while before some other form of meteorological bruising took over. This climb was not going to be one of those [for which you] wait for a perfect five-day forecast, which was OK, because we had absolutely no form of contact from which to get one, we were on our own.'

As usual, Nick has written an excellent blog detailing their climb.

More information in interview form to follow (once they're back in the UK!)...

Read Nick's blog.

Nick is sponsored by: Boreal, DMM and Mountain Equipment