COT14

One of my previous expeditions attempted mountains in the Gasherbrum. The name means "The Beautiful Mountains" an understandable name when you have seen the huge cirque of awesome mountains. Two of the group reach higher than 8000 meters and are therefore part of my project, COT14.

Together with Jan Marthorne and Mads Granlien I summited Gasherbrum I, or G1 as it is often called, on a wonderful day with almost no wind. We climbed the mountain in alpine style by the Japanese couloir which is almost on the left skyline and takes you to the shoulder in 7000 meter. From there you cross the icefield where the avalanche in the picture above started. After the icefield you climb what we called "the S-couloir" due to it's shape.

At the top of that a short summitwall took us to the summit. Unfortunately we could not see from below where the highest summit was situated and I ended up on a lower summit before going some way down and climbing up the true summit. The two others were a bit behind and could warned by me luckily avoid the detour and climb directly to the summit.

I spend a total of one and a half hour on the summit, half an hour before Mads arrived, another quarter of an hour before Jan arrived and then we spend three quarters of an hour together taking video, pictures and enjoying the beautiful day.

We also had a permit for G6, the lowest summit in the group, but an unclimbed 7000+ peak. We had identified a comparatively low risk route, but after two of a french team of three died attempting another route on G6 we decided not to make an attempt.