Cala Cimenti summits and skis Nanga Parbat

"An expedition isn't over until w've all returned safely to BC. True Patata? OK, IT'S OVER !!!… ” It's with these words that Carlo Alberto Cala Cimenti announced his safe return to Base Camp yesterday following several tense hours during the descent of Nanga Parbat after having reached the 8126m summit of 8126 at 14:46 the day before, together with climbing partners Vitaly Lazo and Anton Pugovkin.

Cimenti had travelled to the ninth highest mountain in the world at the start of June and together with the Russians had immediately began the acclimatisation phase, installing campos along the Kinshofer route. On 30 June the three began their summit push, reaching Camp 3 located at 6742 meters on June 1, not without difficulty. The following day they reached Camp 4 at 7150 meters and with the weather forecast still favourable, they started their summit push at 3 am on Wednesday 3 July.

“Sometimes I take 6, sometimes 10 steps. The sky is blue and the view is spectacular. I see the shadow of the skis on the snow and I already look forward to the descent. I'm trying to save energy. There is no reason to push things ang get there 1 or 2 hours earlier” Cimenti explained during the ascent. After 16 hours of effort, they reached the summit. "I'm lying on top of the world and I'm crying and laughing and I love you” is the message he sent to his wife Erika Siffredi.

The summit though is only half the journey and on the descent towards Camp 4 there were a few hours tense hours when his GPS position suddenly stopped moving. Fortunately, after an hour the mountaineer resumed the descent and, by now in the dark, he reached Camp 4. The following day the mountaineers descended by abseiling down the Kinshofer wall before returning safely to Base Camp.

Cala's wife, reached by planetmountain.com by telephone, shed light on those moments explaining "he replied with his usual tranquility. In the end, nothing serious happened. As you know, Cala's project was to descend from Nanga Parbat on skis and so he prepared a ledge a few meters below the summit, where he set off from with Vitaly. Anton, on the other hand, had already decided to descend on foot and had gone ahead, and they'd agreed to meet where they'd stashed some gear. Cala and Vitaly then started the descent but it was very cold and after a while the snow stuck to his skis. For all that time he didn't move, while removing the snow from below his skis." And then? "He didn't put on crampons, but continued skiing! By now it was dark, he had to stop again to get his headtorch, before calmly skiing to Camp 4."

The next day the three skied down to Camp 3. Then between Camp 3 and Camp 2 they had to remove them to negotiate an icey slope where they had prepared fixed ropes, and after abseiling down the Kinshofer wall they continued the ski descent all the way to the glacier, where friends and a well-deserved coke were waiting for them. As well as the celebrations!

For the record, during these very days Stefi Troguet and Sergi Mingote, as well as Boris Langenstein, have climbed the same route, while his climbing partner Tiphaine Duperier turned back at around 7800m. Langenstein descended on skis about 50m from the summit and joined Duperier. The first ski descent was carried out in 1990 by the South Tyrolean mountaineer Hans Kammerlander and Diego Wellig from Switzerland.

Link: FB Cala Cimenti