Two climbers trapped at 7000 meters: “We expect a miracle; God help us to come down from the mountain “

MADRID – Marek Holecek pamper your satellite phone, keep it warm in a pocket near your chest, take care of your nearly discharged battery life. At night, he turns it on and sends a message coldly describing the situation in which he finds himself. Your team immediately bounces the text on your social networks. No one can help you, even if you haven’t asked for it either. His immense experience tells him something that he prefers, at this stage, not to hide: “We hope for a miracle which will hopefully happen on Saturday”. Holecek wears three days trapped and without moving, with his friend Radoslav Groh, at 7000 meters in the Baruntse, a 7,129-meter mountain in Nepal whose summit was reached on Tuesday in the middle of a brutal storm, hit by Cyclone Yaas sweeping India. It will be the eighth night that the couple will spend on the wall, the third nailed in the same place. Without visibility, the descent on the southern ridge, that is to say the normal route of the mountain, is impractical or pure suicide. That’s why they wait, far from the world, in another galaxy, but connected to life thanks to a satellite phone that at least helps their families not to lose hope.

Marek Holecek, a 46-year-old mountain guide, is one of the best climbers of the decade, winner of two ice axes for his climbs with Zdenek Hák in Chamlang (2019) and Gasherbrum I (2017), a guy who gladly accepts rewards but warns: “I will never practice mountaineering to be rewarded” . In 2019, along with Radoslav Groh, he was on the verge of earning a third prize for his ascent of Huandoy Norte, Peru, but now the only price they both expect is to stay alive. Terribly honest in his account of his life as a mountaineer, Holecek clearly explains the mixed feelings when he goes on an expedition: the internal struggle before leaving his family, the need to climb, the urge to return. Son las mismas preguntas que se repiten como un eco atormentado de generación en generación, tal y como recordaba Holecek cuando recogió su Piolet de Oro in 2019: “Doug Scott decía que desconectaba completamente cuando deseaba enfrentarse a sus límites, pero que no por ello renunciaba to the life. He said that if he wanted to focus fully on the climb, he had to forget that he had a pregnant wife waiting at home and bills to pay. He said that on his return, he could resume his life, with his obligations ”.

On May 20, Holecek and Groh launched their challenge: open a new alpine-style road on the north-west face of the Baruntse, a wall of 2,000 meters. They immediately saw that the business was going to be more severe than expected: “In general, in recent years, in the Himalayas, there is not much snow on the north and west faces. The snow and ice have visibly diminished, ”he said after having climbed 12 hours in mixed technical and exposed terrain and“ finding a bend where to cut a ledge in the ice where we can place our donkeys. A crazy bivouac but we continue ”. The verticality of the ground prevented them from pitching their small tent. Last Sunday, they sent a long text message: “At around 11 am, we found the remains of a tent emerging from the ice on a 60-degree slope. It reminded me of the sad story of my friends Peter and Kuba (Petr Machold and Jakub Vanek, who went missing on this mountain in 2013). Today we have a good bivouac, but we are ripe like blueberries, even if we still have strength. We are 200 meters below the summit and if the Almighty is home tomorrow and gives us his permission, we will complete the northwest face of the Baruntse. “

This was not the case. The couple found a hideous playground the next day, with vertical ice, uneven snow and expanses of rotten rock.. They spent the whole day of last Monday climbing to advance only 150 meters and bivouac 50 meters from the edge: “Avalanches flow on either side of our tent, which is our hotel. We are tired like kittens, frozen, hungry and thirsty. God helps us to go up tomorrow and to come down ”. According to Holecek, they would only need three hours of visibility to be able to undertake the descent and return to base camp, 180 minutes of light to be able to follow the ridge avoiding its traps, its ledges. They are even ready to try it at night, but the storm of “white darkness” must subside … or give them a truce. If the weather forecasts they manage are respected, This Saturday the storm should lose its intensity and clear the mountain of clouds. Holecek said after picking up his second golden ice ax that he was paying for the expeditions out of his pocket, without receiving any help: “Seen like that, it might not be so bad not to have help. The fact of having to seek life encourages us to give the best of ourselves and allows us to be competent ”. With the visibility, few people doubt that the two climbers will return.

EL PAÍS, SL.