Kobusch, together with his penchant for lengthy, lonely, daring climbs, is making an attempt to up the ante even additional.
Not solely is he climbing in winter and alone with out supplemental oxygen, he’s making an attempt to succeed in the highest of Everest by way of the West Ridge, a much more formidable path than the 2 most typical routes, which practically 98 % of summit seekers use. Kobusch should cope with sheer partitions, bullet-hard blue ice pitched as steep as a church spire and a last gully of ice, rock and snow — referred to as the Hornbein Couloir — by which just a few folks have ever set foot.
“Doing a route that hasn’t been executed earlier than in winter is one other method to do one thing for the primary time,” Bierling stated. “What Jost is doing, it’s very technically difficult, and he’s doing it fully alone. If he makes it up he will probably be standing on the identical summit that everybody stands on. However the way in which he will get there — you possibly can’t really evaluate it, it’s so completely different.”
Climbing Everest by himself is just not a departure for Kobusch, however a continuation of his trademark type. In 2016, after he climbed Annapurna I (26,545 ft) solo, he determined he was seeking an expertise much more monastic and distant.
“Different folks had been climbing the mountain on the identical day,” he stated of Annapurna. “I used to be on the lookout for true wilderness.”
In 2017, he discovered it. Kobusch climbed Nangpai Gosum I (24,019 ft), which was then the fourth-highest unclimbed peak on the planet, alone. “Subsequent I went on the lookout for that uncooked area on 8,000-meter peaks, for the toughest and largest mission I might presumably think about,’’ he stated. “And it was fairly apparent. It was Everest.”
That is his second time making an attempt to climb the West Ridge of Everest solo in winter, after an preliminary try within the 2019-20 season. On that try, he reached an elevation of 24,167 ft earlier than turning round. In each cases, his solitary experiences have been as completely different as possible from the mainstream Everest that most individuals know.