Nuptse shares in the glory of the Everest Massif and is the southern border of the Western Cwm. Viewed from the Thangboche Monastery it appears as a massive wall guarding the approach to Everest. It is joined on the right by  Lhotse. Just southwest of Mount Everest. The Tibetan name, Nup-tse, means west-peak.
Part of the Lhotse-Nuptse-massif, the main ridge is joined to Lhotse by a 7556m high saddle made up of 7 peaks and goes west-northwest. Its steep west-face drops down more than 2300m to the Khumbu-glacier. The south-face of Nuptse is 2500m high and 5 kilometers wide. The north side is above the Western-Cwm valley with the upper part of the Khumbu-glacier above its famous icefall. The main summit Nuptse I (7861m) was first sumited by a British expedition on the north-ridge (Scott-route) on May 16, 1961 by Dennis Davis and Sherpa Tashi. Notably Sir Chris Bonington was also a member of the FA expedition. The main summit until September 1996 received only two more visits.
In October 1997, Slovenian climbing legend Janez Jeglic and fellow countrymen, Tomaz Humar ascended Nuptse's 8000 foot West Face. It turned to be Jeglic's last climb. Rushing to beat an impending storm, Humar arrived on Nuptse's summit fifteen minutes after his partner. Jeglic's tracks in the snow abrubtly ended. Apparently, Jeglic had been blown off of the summit. With Jeglic was all of the duos protection. This forced Humar to descend terrain rated at WI 5 and 5.7 with little more than a 50 meter remnant of rope and his tools and crampons.
The dramatic south face with 7000 feet of vertical relief boasts the South Pillar. A feature that captured the interests of climbers such as Jeff Lowe, and Mark Twight who once described the line as having the "elegance of a Halston dress and the abrubtness of of a metal-studded dog-collar." During spring 2002, an expedition led by Steve House attempted a line to the west of the South Pillar. Although joined by Canadian Barry Blanchard, Steven Koch, and Slovenian Marko Prezelj their attempt was dashed.
An excellent article was published in issue 7 of The Alpinist regarding Nuptse in Winter 2003-04.
|
