Maya Maya - Peter Podgornik: I dedicate this story to the later deceased members of the expedition; Aleš, Beni, Borut, Filip, Franček, Marjon, Nejc, and Pavle.

Perhaps the present record will evoke memories of the others, now gray-headed and bald-headed members of the expedition with whom we shared fear and happiness at that time.

For Pavle and me, the day of departure of the expedition was a wonderful present for our twenty-third birthday." - Peter Podgornik, alpinist

IN PREPARATION FOR THE EXPEDITION  

The south face of Lhotse is a part of a huge natural barrier in the south of Sagarmatha - Mt. Everest. For many years, the summit of Lhotse (in Tibetan it means Southern Peak of Sagarmatha) was even thought to be its southern pre-peak. Lhotse south face consists of large snow flanks that are interrupted by rock steps, steep gullies, snow edges, and steep rock walls in the upper half of the mountain. The weather here is mostly changeable - the usual daily snowfalls mean constant danger of avalanches due to the steep slope. Strong winds are additional danger. 

As it is customary in Nepal, in addition to bureaucratic problems, there were also problems with the arrival of equipment and the possibility of air-transport to the mountains. The members of the expedition came under Lhotse in separate groups, due to flight problems from Kathmandu to Lukla, and the bulk of the equipment came to base camp long after them, when they were already high in the wall. Aleš mostly managed to form rope-teams with experienced Himalayans and young aspiring climbers, who were gaining the necessary experience from the older climbers. The ascent took place in the expedition style, the members of the expedition attached fixed ropes during the ascent, they set up intermediate camps and they took turns in the wall. The Nepalese high altitude porters - Sherpas - were of great help, working hard for their daily bread in this steep and dangerous wall.

Members of the expedition:

SOUTH FACE OF LHOTSE WITH THE DRAWN ROUTE OF THE ASCENT (THE EIGHTH YUGOSLAV HIMALAYAN EXPEDITION) 

We are digging at the altitude of close to 7000 meters. Under the newly fallen snow, we are looking for equipment left here by friends a few days ago. With Pavle and Filip we are preparing a place for the third camp. We are lucky, we have come to the snowy area where we will soon prepare enough place for a tent. Aleš and Vanja join us, and together we quickly manage to set up the third camp. In the middle of the afternoon, there is already a twin tent, well fixed to the snowy slope. A thousand-meter-high overhanging wall rises above us. The rocks that break in it fly over our nest.

Aleš and Vanja say goodbye and they descend to the lower camp, but the three of us still don't know how to put into the tent three big backpacks and ourselves. Before nightfall, we succeed. The snow and severe cold soon force us into the tent. In it, we sit on a pile of equipment and food. We press our knees and heads together, and we breathe even more infrequently because there is already a significant lack of oxygen at these heights, which we feel strongly in our heads. Every move tires us, for every little task you have to think carefully about how you will tackle it to suffer as little as possible. Preparing dinner is a real pain. In a good hour, we manage to cook only a pot of chocolate, and for the appetizer, we eat a nice piece of bacon and toast. Since Pavle and I are still hungry, we start eating garlic. We eat it together with toast and it all seems normal to us. In my mind, I am at home with my poor mother. If she saw us with what appetite we ate garlic, she would feel sorry for us, especially me, who left lunch on the table so many times because of garlic. Soon after dinner, I felt the need to go somewhere.

Equipped as for climbing, with an ice axe in hand and strapped to a rope, I got out of the tent into the dark night. I didn’t go far because going back would make me too tired. After much torment, I managed to get my climbing harness and four pants below my knees. My fifteen-minute straining and moaning were accompanied by teasing from inside the tent. When I was almost sure that nothing would happen, nature moved closer, a small avalanche above me had already grown right at my knees and filled my pants. Luckily I didn’t have diarrhea that day. I returned to the tent fairly quickly with swear words on my lips. We spent the night like three stunned canned fish, two heads and one foot at the entrance, the rest on the other side of the tent, with all equipment under us, deeply breathing and catching our breath until morning.

We consoled ourselves with the thought that we would sleep when the time comes for it. We are up very early; a little warm drink will be enough for breakfast. Filip belays me from the tent as I begin to climb new meters in this mighty wall. The weather is bad, strong winds and cold nearly thirty below zero. Although the terrain looks to be easy, I have a lot of work to do. Under the deep snow, there are steep rock slabs, which I struggle to breakthrough. I have to clean the snow several times and look for cracks for pitons. I have triple gloves on my hands. I have to put off the upper gloves several times when braiding rope loops because otherwise, I am too clumsy and slow.

In three hours of hard work, I manage to fix 120 meters of rope. Eventually, I make a belay and wait for Filip to come to me with a new rope, and everything needed to move forward. In the meantime the weather was getting worse and worse, it started to snow heavily. The snow wall around us turned into an avalanche path. Filip stops about 40 m below me and nails a piton. We all agree that we cannot go on in this weather. We go down to the tent, where Pavel serves us hot tea. It is near noon as we prepare for the one thousand five-hundred-meter descent into the valley. The situation is desperate. In the crack chimney under the third camp, we meet two Sherpas and friends who hurry to the third camp. Avalanches of new snow are constantly flooding us. A little lower, our friend Čopek joins us on the descent. Visibility is so poor that we often run over each other on the rope. We don't see anything, many times we are in doubt if the avalanches of snow and stones did not cut the ropes, which would be fatal for us. One by one, we would drive into white eternity.

A little above the second camp, we pile up together again and listen in horror as the avalanche flies right there where we have to cross a dangerous gully on a fixed rope. All we can do is, to zip up all the zippers and slings on the equipment and clothes, and then we go slowly through the waterfall of snow, for which you feel that it would tear your backpack from your shoulders and pull also you with. In the second camp, our friends serve us hot tea. They also have enough work to do with the maintenance of the tents, because otherwise, it can quickly happen that with a little carelessness someone runs out of air in the tent. In front of us, there is a long snowy edge, where the descent is progressing quite quickly. We just have to wait long enough for a friend in front of you to unburden the rope and fix himself to another rope.

We experience real hell again in a 120 m high rock step. It is still snowing with all its might; avalanches are constantly flooding us. The place where we should descend 100 m down the rope, is one single waterfall of snow. When we gather at the anchorage, we try to clean the frozen glasses in vain, there is almost nothing to see. From time to time, I run a risk of lifting my frozen glasses a little and squinting into white hopelessness. Going down the frozen rope is a special »pleasure«. The wall is so overhanging that our descent goes 100 m through the air. During the descent, which does not want to end, we are covered by a strong waterfall of snow. You gather all your strength and hope that you will endure to the end, and you also hope that no ice or stone might fly in the snow, in which case you would end up on the rope. 

Our friends at the first camp serve us a hot drink again. Our way goes down, we are still strapped on a rope, every now and then we are knocked down by an avalanche and thrown on the ground. At about six in the evening, we are happily out of the wall. We have a tiring day behind us, each of us wishes, we would never experience such horrors again in our lives.

Of three pairs of gloves, only one pair - the thinnest cotton gloves - remained on my hands. The others froze and disintegrated. I felt severe cold in my fingers. Shortly before we arrived to the base camp, I took off also the cotton gloves and watched my white fingers in despair. I knew immediately that they were frostbitten. Also, Pavle was horrified to look at them. In front of the base camp, I showed my fingers to Filip and Čopek. They both knew what happened.

At the base, I immediately started soaking my hands in water. The doctor gave me some pills. The injections had not yet arrived with the delayed loads to the base camp. As a consolation, I received from the doctor a liter of cognac, which was given to us by the Spanish alpinists. With tears in my eyes, I walked towards the tent, the frostbite interrupted my work on the mountain. This fact was very bitter for me. The thought of finishing somewhere above 7000 meters seemed impossible to me, because Pavle and I were doing so well. The thought that after 23 years I would leave my twin brother alone, the brother we spent so much good and bad together, the brother with whom I needn't talk to, but I still knew he thought the same as me, the brother who in this accident felt the same as me.

The doctor wrapped both my arms so that they looked like two rackets. Pavel and friends helped me to get into two sleeping bags. I took a sip of cognac hoping it would dilate all my veins and drive blood into my dead fingertips. The rest of cognac was drunk by friends who visited me regularly. Days and nights of severe pain and grief followed, realizing that it was all in vain. I could only watch Lhotse south face from the base camp with my arms folded. All members of the expedition helped me a lot, they had to feed me, guide me to the need, bandage my arms, and take care of all my needs. My fingers got a strange color; I was lucky there was no gangrene.

Work on the mountain was going on. Pavel got along well with Filip, with whom he was together almost until the end of the climb. Bad weather lasted until the end of the expedition, every day it was snowing also in the base camp. I kept an eye on everything that was going on in the wall, I listened to the conversations on the radio, and I was all the time with my friends. 

For the May Day holidays, I had already recovered so much that I went for a three-day walk with the doctor and Jovan. From the base, we went to the village of Feriche, and from there we went to the base camp under Sagarmatha. We were guests of the Bulgarian climbers who reached the top of Lhotse that very day. They followed the route of the first climbers - from the north. We also met members of the Japanese expedition that climbed the Yugoslav route to Sagarmatha. So I used my "sick leave" to visit the base camp of the highest mountain in the world.

Work in the south face of Lhotse was going on in spite of serious problems with bad weather. The rope-teams of stubborn climbers were approaching to the summit in the form of an endless chain. Climbing in the wall was demanding work for the climbers and Sherpas. 

The ascent above the fourth camp was getting more and more difficult and dangerous because of constant snow avalanches from the upper part of the wall. The climbing route here was also technically demanding, so it sucked a lot of power from all climbers. 

Aleš, the expedition leader, worked and lived for Lhotse south face for nearly twenty years (since 1962 when he first saw this face). He was not only a leader and a splendid organizer of logistics. He kept returning into the wall with a heavy rucksack and a film camera on his shoulders and he helped to set up and arrange the camps. He helped at any work and he days and nights kept ukw contact with the climbers in the wall.

On May 1st Filip and Pavel set up the fifth camp in Yellow rock belt, formed as a snow funnel at the altitude about 7900 meters. The weather was extremely bad, snow was endlessly covering the tent and threatened to take it into the valley. After a troublesome night battle with powder avalanches, they were tired and they had to descend to the base camp in spite of their wish to climb forward. The next day Marjon and Čita experienced a torturous night in the same tent. They luckily survived and in the morning they gathered the strength to descend in the valley. 

The Štremfelj brothers inventively defended the tent against the snow cover and on the next day they fixed some more rope from the fifth camp onwards. After them, Beni and Stipe came. Beni had to return to the valley due to illness, but Stipe managed to climb up to the edge of the rocky wall and set up the tent for the sixth camp under the ridge cornice in the altitude of about 8150 meters. Viki and Marjan were the next to arrive there. After the icy night, Marjan from the tent belayed Viki. In deep and unstable snow he managed to climb one rope forward towards the summit. They both were exhausted and they returned to the valley. Viki had sciatica and Marjan was very dehydrated. We waited for him with the doctor on the glacier under the wall. During heavy snowing and powder avalanches, he got infusion in a small tent. So he could come to the base camp.

The weather was getting desperately bad. It was snowing all days. Avalanches swept the wall and their airblast reached our base camp. Hurricane wind blew in the heights. This wind blew off the tent of the Spanish expedition on Lhotse Shar. Two climbers were in the tent. They were lucky to stop a few hundred meters lower, but the consequences were frostbite and snow blindness.

 On May 12th Pavel and Filip arrived at the sixth camp, which was the starting point towards the summit. Pavel was thus the first Primorec (the native from the Slovenian region of Primorska) to reach a magical height of 8000 meters. I was very happy, I felt that also a part of me was with my brother at these heights. As they crossed the altitude of 8000 meters, they came out of a belt of clouds and blizzard in wonderfully clear weather. In the evening, we were happy to listen to Pavel's humourous words about the weather. They had a really beautiful view of the highest peaks of the world. The next morning, they tried to move on. The severe cold forced Filip to descend into the valley. His legs up to his knees were stiff. Pavel waited for the next rope-team to come to the sixth camp. In the evening, they huddled in a small tent under a huge overhang together, together with Andrej and Nejc. The mood in the base and in the wall was at its height. We all quietly hoped that the next day they would be able to climb the demanding last rock step and reach the summit.

They started as early as four in the morning, climbed the ridge, and crossed the snow wall. The snow was deep, with steep rock slabs beneath it. The belay could not be arranged at all. They were slowly moving their way forward, the wall was getting more and more difficult. At about noon they stopped at the altitude of about 8250 meters. The vertical rock wall stopped the work of our expedition about 250 meters below the summit.

Andrej, Nejc, and Pavel then spent 6 hours to reach the sixth camp in the terrible wind and snowing. Climbing back was mentally very demanding, as there were 3000 meters of wall under them. Due to deep and dry snow, belay was practically impossible. The following days the weather was bad again and the way of the top three climbers could only lead to the base camp.

All the members of the expedition were already very tired, some of them even seriously ill. Most climbers spent more than 30 climbing days, days of hard work, and constant fear of avalanches in this mighty wall. Only a few of them were still able to climb in such weather.

 The last serious and decisive climb was made on May 18th by Franček Knez and Vanja Matijevec. From the sixth camp, they traversed across the icefield to the left towards the ridge. They crossed along the steep snow wall over extremely dangerous snow gullies, hung with cornices and they reached the western ridge of Lhotse. Their climbing in both directions lasted twenty-four hours, mostly at an altitude of over eight thousand meters in extremely bad weather. With this legendary deed the wall was climbed over, but the summit, which is usually a reward for such work, was not reached.

Because of this, we did not return home sad. In sixty-four working days in the wall, we did what we could do and what nature graciously allowed us. Our efforts were much greater than with any successful expedition, and we proved to the world mountaineering public that the ascent over the Lhotse south face is possible.

Written by: Peter Podgornik, alpinist