Ondra’s StarOn 25th November 2024 we started our climb through the as yet unclimbed eastern face of the 7,227 meter-high Langtang Lirung which dominates the surrounding mountains. There were two of us to climb the face. The Slovak alpinist Ondra Húserka and I, Marek Holeček, so called the Fool. On the sixth day, around 11 am, we reached the top, where, according to the official records, no-one had stood for more than ten years.…

“Those above“ are good and they fancy us… The ascent of the northwest face of the Sura Peak, 6764 m, was carried out in Alpine style, from 19 to 23 May 2023. The difficulty of the ascent is proposed to be M6, the average slope is 70 degrees (but in some places it reaches up to 90 degrees), the length of the ascent route is 1,500 m, the elevation 1,300 m. The first ascent has been named “Simply Beautiful” and has…

Top 10 Expeditions of 2019: #3: ChamlangOver the last 12 months, ExplorersWeb has documented incredible adventures in climbing, cycling, running, walking, skiing and anything involving force of will and dedication to a dream in the outdoors. As this year comes to a close, we present our countdown of the Top 10 Expeditions of 2019.This year, the crowds and unnecessary tragedies on Everest cast shadows over the entire Himalaya and the climbs done…

Burning sky...Breathing rapidly, I am trying to get more air into my lungs. I look like a fish on a dry land, though. I’m just wordlessly opening my mouth struggling for the last bits of oxygen left in the air. It is a nasty feeling getting slowly suffocated. Moreover, when it is purely voluntary. Why am I doing it then? I even know that I’ll be lacking oxygen for the next few hours, and the difficult parts are still ahead. Things…

First ascent to Chamlang (7319m) NW wall. Climbed!!!UFOline…On May 23 we managed to finish the first ascent of the north-west face of Chamlang (7321 m), the face that has been attempted by many expedition in the past without any success. The summit of Chamlang oversees the Hongu valley from an exposure of two thousand meters. It rises up from the  moraine with a lake and reminds us more a solitaire than an integral part of the…

Hey man, it's there!The whole spring trip to the Nepalese Himalayas reminded me of a mouse in a running wheel. You just run, and when you stop, you fall down on the nose. Then, the subsequent rotation of the wheel shoots you mercilessly out. You're just out of the game and that’s it. In short, timing had almost no reserves, including experience, which lost any right to vote at the time of departure from home. The assumption was that…

When I started to climb, we still belonged behind the iron curtain of the Eastern Bloc. No quality climbing material was available in our country. There was some domestic production, but I rather prefer not to mention its quality. By the end of the nineties, our country took a breath of freedom, and I began to undertake my first trips to the Alps. I watched the equipment of the climbers living in the Alps and I silently envied. After various…

The Bloody Nose A new route “Bloody Nose”, Monte Pizduch Our target was Mount Wheat with four individual summits forming the Wall Range. It is located on the 30-kilometre-long Winkle Island, close to the Antarctic mainland, separated from it by a narrow strip of ocean. I had seen this peak already in 2014 when I climbed in Antarctica for the first time. At that time, we managed to climb a neat first ascent to a nameless peak of the…

Satisfaction! A new route “Satisfaction!”, Gasherbrum I. This project was initiated by a legendary duo of Polish Himalayan climbers Jerzy Kukuczka and Voytek Kurtyka more than thirty years ago, who did not succed to climb the central south west face.  We followed their idea and started to chase this project back in 2009 and chose the left hand ice couloir in central wall to start our climb.At that time the only unanswered…