Challenges

‘The ascent of Makalu, a happy page in the history of the Himalayas’. It was with this pithy phrase that Jean Franco, leader of the French expedition to Makalu in the spring of 1955, summed up their magnificent victory on the fifth highest peak on the planet. We'd like to retrace this perfect adventure for you... And we take this opportunity to introduce you to our next ascent of Makalu in April 2022, guided by Serge Bazin.

Gasherbrum massif. Six towering peaks, two of them over 8,000 meters: G II (8,035 m) and G I (8,068 m). In 1934, the international expedition led by Günter Dyhrenfurth produced the first fictional feature film to be shot in this grandiose setting. This was followed by the heavy expedition led by the Frenchman Henri de Ségogne (660 porters, 11 tonnes of equipment) in 1936.

On 10 September 1856, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas George Montgomerie (aged 26) climbed the glacial slopes of Haramukh (5,191 m), a well-defined peak 40 kilometers as the crow flies from Srinagar in Indian Kashmir. A look back at the careers of the most emblematic early explorers and mountaineers who set out to discover the glaciers and peaks of the Karakoram.

2nd May 1964. The race for the fourteen "8,000s" officially came to an end. Fourteen short years separate the victory of Herzog and Lachenal on Annapurna I (3 June 1950) and that of the Chinese team led by Xǔ Jìng. But one ambiguity remains... A look back at the first ascent of the smallest but most controversial of the 8,000 meters.

On our next expedition to the summit of Everest North Face, guided by Bernard Muller in spring 2021, we will be lucky enough to have Ngima Nuru Sherpa as our Nepalese expedition leader (Sirdar): a Sherpa who has already climbed Everest 22 times. He is the youngest person in the world to have set foot on the roof of the world so many times, and the second to have been there so many times.

The wind. The terrible Tibetan wind. It insinuates itself between all clothes, freezing the slightest patch of skin exposed to its bite. On this night in October 1954, four men, who had already imagined themselves on the summit of the "Goddess of Turquoise", had a painful experience. Victory over Cho Oyu would have to come from the frozen fingertips of Herbert Tichy, accompanied by his friend the Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama. Here's a look back at the Austrians' success.

Harold William Tilman, better known as Bill Tilman, occupies a special place in the pantheon of Himalayan climbers. He made the first ascent of the highest peak in the Indian Himalayas, a victory achieved without the use of oxygen.