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The team includes Yuri Koshelenko, Nicolas Totmyanin and Carlos Buhler, who’ll join Russians in Katmandu. The expedition aims to break a new route on Melungtse’s north face. Melungtse is located between Nepal’s Rolwaling Valley and Rongshar in Tibet. This is an isolated area, without any civilization.
The team will cross a Nepal-China border via a Bridge of Friendship between Kodori and Zangmu and move on jeeps to a Cho-Oyu base camp. After it yaks will takes the expedition with all its load from Tingri village to a Fulashan pass (still covered with snow at the moment). From the other side of the pass a new yak caravan from one Rongshar village will take climbers to a place that they’ve chosen for their base camp. Entire travel from Chineese boarder to Melungtse base camp should take 8-10 days. After pitching a base camp, the climbers are going to explore Melungtse and Gaurishankar north face to make their final choice. A start of the climb is planned for the 10th of May, after interlunation.
According to an expedition leader, Yuri Koshelenko, this expedition turned to be more expensive than an `ordinary’ Himalayas expedition because of difficulties of access to this far-remote region. That’s why, in spite of the fact that a thread of a route is not determined yet, the team had to buy a permit only for one mountain. (Nepal authorities asked 6000 more dollars for an additional permit to Gaurishankar ).
Iljas Tuhvatullin, who originally was planning to join the expedition, failed to go because of some problems with his health. So well-acclimatized and very experienced Russian climber Nicolas Tomyanin took his place (instead of his own climb of Mt. Everest).
Carlos Buhler and Yuri Koshelenko are old friends. Carlos took part in Koshelenko’s `Open Caucasus’ project in 2002, and now they are climbing together again. Carlos Buhler is a well-known and well-accomplished American climber. His CV includes a lot of new routes to 6000+ summits (mostly in Himalayas and South America), a climb of Mt. Everest in 1983 and very many other climbs.
General Sponsor of the expedition: RostSelMash company (as a branch of `Novoe Sodrujestvo’ holding).
General Equipment sponsor: BASK company.
Sponsors: Beal, Boreal.
11.04.2005
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