Life, and the mountains, roll on. Eleven died in a massive avalanche on Nepal’s Mt. Manaslu in late September, but not everyone on the mountain packed up camp and left for home. Benedikt Böhm, part of a Dynafit team, stuck around, waited out the snowpack, and last week climbed from Base Camp to the 26,759-foot summit, then skied down, all without supplemental oxygen and in less than 24 hours. Bohm left camp at 6 p.m. on September 29 with Sebastian Haag. They picked up Constantine Pade at Camp 2. By Camp 3, Haag and Pade were weakening, so Bohm went ahead. By Camp 4, winds had increased to 100 km/hour, and he attempted to wait out the storm in an empty tent, but after an hour without change, headed higher, passing Haag on the way and summiting at 9 a.m. When it came time for the down, it…sucked. “It was the worst ski descent ever. Everything was wind-packed, totally unpredictable, and just really, really bad,” said Bohm. He and the other two, now back together, skied past the 15-foot crown of the September 23 avie crown, downclimbed ice at Camp Four, and skittered across debris. “It was no fun at all, we were just eating altitude….In the end it took 8.5 hours of seemingly endless ski descent that you should usually be able to ski in four hours in good conditions, no problem.” But Bohm survived — survived to claim Manaslu’s first oxygen-free ski descent. Nice one, Bennie. Via EpicTV.

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Tags: Climbing, Skiing

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