D.Urubko and S.Samoilov were awarded by Asian Piolet D'Or in Seoul

The Asian version of the famous "Golden ice axe" was held on November 8-10 in Seoul, Korea. The aim of this great event was to recognize the best ascent carried out by Asian climbers in 2006.

"Golden ice axe of Asia" were organized by the Korean “Men and Mountain” magazine, the French “Montagnes Magazine” and Grivel Company.

The newly created award was won by the Kazakh mountaineers Denis Urubko and Serguey Samoilov for their new route up the NE Face of Manaslu (8163 m). This great alpine style ascent was carried out by the duo on 4 - 9 May 2006. (Their second new route on another 8000m peak was in 2005. Urubko and Samoilov climbed the virgin SW Face of Broad Peak (8048m)). Understandably the strong Kazakh mountaineers had received a nomination for this ascent in the Piolet d'or 2006 in its worldwide version hosted in France.

This Asian event used the tried and tested "nominations" system, from which the Jury chose the "best realisation" of the year. There were two other teams apart from Urubko and Samilov for "their" Manaslu. The first were Katsutaka Yokoyama and Fumitaka Ichimura from Japan for the new route "Before dawn" (1000m with difficulties up to 5 - 5.9, WI4+, M6) climbed last September on the North Face of Broken Tooth (2760m) in Alaska. The second team was the Koreans Gu Eun-Su and Yu Sang-Beom for their new route (third overall and first Korean) via Thalay Sagar's North Face (6904m) in the Indian Himalaya.

As mentioned previously the international jury - comprised of Im Duc Young (mountaineer, stylist and journalist working for some of the most important Korean magazines), Philippe Descamp (chief editor of Montagnes magazine), Valery Babanov (mountaineer), Tsunemichi Ikeda (journalist for Rock and snow, the most important Japanese climbing magazine), 2 journalists from the Korean Climber magazine and a journalist from the Korean Man and Mountain magazine - chose to award the prize to the Kazakh duo on Manaslu.

All that needs to be added is the fact that the success of the event exceeded all expectations. The evening was celebrated with a dinner at which 500 people were invited and the interest.

17.11.2006