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A K2 Profile on the Line: Jordi Tosas
Jun 28, 2004 16: 03 EST
The Catalan K2 ‘Magic Line’ expedition is no doubt the premier Karakorum climb this season. It isn’t just the route itself, still waiting to be repeated, but also the climbers, the group of men who have decided to follow a line that no other team is daring (and there are a lot of teams on K2 this summer). It is clear they are highly experienced, even though some of them may have been refered to as ‘new faces in the Himalayas’.
Today we take a look at Jordi Tosas, not because he might be a newbie, but because he actually needed a new face. Back in 1990 a huge rock hit him right in the head while climbing Shisha Pangma. It was a close call, evacuation ‘in extremis’ included, but he luckily managed to get off pretty well, after some time in the hospital and ardous ‘restoration’ work.
Nevertheless, his desire for climbing remained intact. He was by then already living in Benasque (Central Spanish Pyrenees) and had decided to live from and for the mountains; nothing so unexpected from someone born right by Mediterranean Sea, in Catalonia.
As a mountaineer and climber, he denied sticking to a single discipline. On the contrary, he was more than aware of anything new coming to his particular world: gear, destinations, styles and choices he could apply to the mountains around him. No surprise, in relatively warm Spain, that he pioneered the incoming trend of ‘Dry-tooling’, opening new lines, technically extreme and, naturally, very dry.
Anyway, more than ice-climbing variations, the great discovery for him was the snowboard, and the infinite possibilities opening far away from the ski-slopes for those who dare to face the treacherous snow conditions and highly steep slopes of Himalayan mountains. There was no time to lose: he tried once, bought a board, and in five years he was heading to Cho Oyu, ready to try the fist snowboard descent. Said and done, off he went in the fall of 2000, climbed and snowboarded down. Swift and easy. Well, not so easy actually. For the descent, he fixed his boots by readjusting the bindings to get a better response and hold tight in very steeper sections. The unexpected problem showed up only when he made it back to BC; Jordi was suffering from serious frostbite in their toes.
Back home, physicians diagnosed no other choice but amputation. Instead of that, Jordi turned to his friend and neighbor Christophe Pavelic, former guide and doctor from ENSA (the mountaineering school in Chamonix), and an expert in eastern traditional medicine. For months, Tosas followed a therapy based in natural oils, and practiced deep meditation, not only in his homeland, but also traveling around Vietnam. After months, he finally underwent ‘western’ surgery, but meanwhile he had had time to climb again and even took part in a climbing expedition to the Bolivian Andes.
With meditation skills and peace of mind as tools to recover from the pain and face new challenges, in 2002 he aimed for K2. Along with Jordi Corominas and Mikel Zabalza, they intended to climb the Kukuczka route from the Pakistan side of the mountain. Weather wouldn’t give them a chance, but at least Jordi managed to climb the most of Broad Peak, and descended in the best way he knew how: snowboarding. In 2003 he climbed and snowboarded down Shivling, in the Garwhal Himalayas.
This summer he is back to K2 with Corominas – his climbing and working partner, as they both run a mountain guide company in Benasque-, to finish what they started, but even in a more difficult way: the ‘Magic line’ awaits them to climb it for the second time, and perhaps at the end of the season the slopes of K2 will be showing the unmistakable trail of a snowboard.
The South West Pillar of K2, dubbed "The Magic Line" in a widely publicized pre-expedition tour. Reinhold Messner took one look at this route in 1979, called it "suicidal", and switched to the normal Abruzzi route. It was climbed in 1986 by a Polish team, and is still the hallmark of "suicidal" excellence, with exceptionally hard, steep sections of icy rock at very high altitudes.
The head of the expedition is Oscar Cadiach, who has done 5 expeditions to Everest, 2 of which reached the summit. Cadiach has climbed Nanga Parbat, and opened the route 'Free Tibet' on Cho Oyu and a new route on Broad Peak central. He has also climbed Shisha Pagma, Makalu and Lhotse.
Team members also include Manel de la Matta has climbed Cho Oyu and Shisha Pagma. Jordi Tosas descended Cho Oyu on a snowboard. Jordi Corominas has climbed Daulagiri alone and Valentí Giró.
Images of Jordi,snowboarding Broad and the closer shot, courtesy of www.guiasbenasque.com
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