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Denis Urubko looks back at a busy 2003
09:37 a.m. EST Jan 18, 2004
As one of Kazakhstan’s leading climbers, Denis Urubko put in his share of climbing time last year. (He also seemed to pop up whenever someone nearby was in need of rescue.) In a recent interview with Russian Climb.com, the climber reflects on all the action in the previous 12 months, starting with last year’s winter expedition on the northern wall of K2, headed by Karl Wielicki. The team struggled to plow their way up to 7800m through the worst winter weather conditions. Illness and frostbite took its toll, and the expedition retreated without the summit.
But the winter did include various ascents of the fifth category of complexity in extreme conditions in the gorge Tuyuk-Su near Almaty and the mountains of Kyrgysia in gorge Ala - Archa.
Denis speaks of Vladimir Suviga and Valery Babanov’s attempt on the unclimbed summit of Nuptse East earlier last year. The pair reached a height of about 7000 m. on the southern edge of the top, but turned back because of bad weather, though Babanov went back later and made the summit.
He then explained about the selection process for the Karakoram expedition:
“The spring demanded the mobilization of all the forces from Kazakhstan climbers. Before the Karakorum expedition, selection competitions revealed the best climbers for the trip to mountains of Pakistan. Powerful financing allowed the expedition team to expand to eight participants. The head of the expedition Baghlan Zhunusov pulled together the financing and the team and, under decision of the main trainer E.T.Ilinskiy, the objectives of the expedition were declared at once: Three eight thousand meter summits - Nanga-Parbat (8125 м), Broad (8046 м) and К2 (8611 м).”
The expedition team then undertook a high level training program, which Denis delves into further in the article linked at left.
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