Lhotse Peak Expedition – 57 days

Lhotse Peak Expedition  Overview

Lhotse Peak Expedition is the fourth highest mountain in the world. It was first climbed by a Swiss expedition in 1956. The expedition also made the second ascent of Everest. The first ascent took a direct route up the Lhotse Face, famous as the route to the South Col. Later expeditions attempted the South Face, one of the steepest and longest mountain walls in the world.

The summit Lhotse East or Middle (8,414 m) is situated on the ridge between Main summit of Lhotse 8,516 m and summit Lhotse Shar 8,400 m. Any separate ascents up to this summit are practically excluded because of the steep walls and very crossed relief and it is possible to summit it only climbing up to Lhotse Main or Lhotse Shar before and then make a traverse of a very crossed ridge with a length about 1000 meters. The ascent up to Lhotse Main by itself or Lhotse Shar is the task of separate expedition and the additional traverse which requires several days of work on the height more then 8,300 m makes the Lhotse East unclimbed till nowadays. Actually almost all more or less interesting eightsousanders Faces and ridges in Himalayas were climbed. Last first ascent up to the summit higher then 8 000 m was in 1982.

Plans to be on the summit of Lhotse Middle already had several teams but all attempts were unsuccessful. In 1994 the team from Switzerland tried to make a traverse to Lhotse East but climbed the Lhotse Main summit on 9:10 a.m.had to refuse next climbing because of awful state of the route and wild froze. The Russian team (part of it is now participate in the autumn expedition) also tried to climb this last Himalayan citadel on spring 1997 but the very bad weather in Everest region did not allow to do it. On the descent from the Main Lhotse summit the strongest high altitude climber of Russia Vladimir Bashkirov was died.

In 1997 one try to summit east top by traverse from main Lhotse. The route of this year is the traverse via Lhotse Shar. The ascentis dedicated to memory of Vladimir Bashkirov.

Lhotse to the south of the worlds highest peak is a part of Everest massif. By virtue of it being 3km south of Mount Everest, from which the South Col separates it, it is considered as an independent mountain. It was first climbed by F. Luchsinger & E. Reiss in 1956. An impressive ring of three peaks makes up the Lhotse massif: Lhotse East or Middle, Lhotse east or middle, Lhotse & Lhotse Shar. The South Face of Lhotse is one of the largest mountain faces in the world.

THE ROUTE-  Following the same logistics and camps to Camp 3 as the Everest South Ridge climb, we attempt to climb via the normal route to the tallest peak of the Lhotse massif.

BASE CAMP-  You utilize the same camp and infrastructure starting at the base of the Khumbu Glacier as our Everest expedition uses.  Other camps are Camp 2 and Camp 3 and then you split off from there to a Lhotse Camp 4 then on to the summit.