Last Autumn I traveled to the Himalayas for the first time. Quentin Roberts (Canada), Tim Banfield (Canada) and I spent six weeks in Khumbu area of Nepal acclimaziting and trying to unlock one of the last big unclimbed lines in Nepal – the North Pillar of Tengkangpoche. We got very close of success on this magical line, but after six days on the wall blank slab stopped us. We reached a new highpoint at 5930m, but still we were 550m short of the summit. I´m not sure if I ever will attempt something as proud and beautiful again.
There has been so many blogs and articles about the climb that I just link them here and won´t write more.
Blog post in Finnish at Camu`s website: https://www.camu.fi/blog/tengkangpoche-pohjoispilari/
Story in English at Planetmountain: https://www.planetmountain.com/en/news/alpinism/tengkangpoche-north-pillar-unclimbed-attempt-juho-knuuttila-quentin-roberts.html
Cutting Edge podcast: https://soundcloud.com/american-alpine-journal/a-proud-failure-quentin-roberts-on-tengkangpoche-in-nepal
I´m feel happy and privileged about the whole experience, even though the line was much different from our first and second objectives, which crashed down due to politics and other climbers climbing planned faces before us. Luckily Quentin is a boss climbing that kind of a terrain that fast! I hope I can reach the same level, though I might prefer a terrain where you can move slightly faster. 😉 Best of luck for his next attempt!
