Jost Kobusch ends his expedition

Jost made a couple of interesting adaptions compared to his last attempt. One major change was setting up his BC close to Lobuche at the Pyramid International Laboratory at 5.050 m. This meant a greater distance to the mountain, roughly a day’s march away from the normal BC at the foot of the Khumbu Glacier. On the other hand, it but must have helped him deal some two of the biggest issues of winter-solo exeditions by providing warmth, comfort and company.

He then set up an advanced BC close to the standard BC (which was obviously empty, Jost’s tent was the only one).

A next major change was the route he chose up to Lho La pass. He chose a path left of his previous attempt and set up C1 left of the serac @ 5.713 m, sheltered by the surrounding vertical rock face. Later in the expedition, on February 22th, he was able to reach C1 in one single, 15 h-push from the pyramid, which allowed further optimizations of his initial routine. Consequently he was able to completely skip C2 on Lho La pass (6.000 m) which, due to its exposure, was particularily vunerable to the strong winds. By the end of January, his tent got destroyed in one of the windier nights forcing Jost to retreat back to BC.

C3 was set up at around 6.464 m, half way up the West Ridge and sheltered from the threatening seracs by a smal rock belt. Jost reached C3 two times, at the beginning of January and by the end of February and spent multiple nights up there, waiting for a favourable weather window in order to push further up the mountain. Unfortunately that never occured and in between, the strong winds completely prevented any further action.

He eventually retreated, collecting his broken tent at former C2 and safely got back to BC.