Two Eastern European alpinists quietly summited the world’s eighth-highest mountain in spring alone, without oxygen, without fixed ropes, and without a base camp rediscovering what high-altitude climbing once looked like.
8,163mSummit elevation15Days from Kathmandu2Climbers · 0 Sherpas
In the autumn season, Manaslu expedition is one of the most trafficked 8,000-metre peaks on Earth a procession of fixed ropes, crowded camps, and supplemental oxygen stretching toward the summit. But in spring, the mountain remembers who it used to be.
Ukrainian climber Alexandr Moroz and his Russian partner Mark Ablovacky arrived on Manaslu this April as the mountain’s only permitted climbers. They carried their own gear, slept in an open bivouac at 7,500 metres, and navigated terrain stripped bare by wind a world away from the commercial expeditions that define the autumn rush.
The pair did not set up a formal base camp. Instead, they used the nearby village of Samagaon as their resting point. They departed on April 24, pitched one camp per day following the standard route, and reached the summit on April 28 completing the ascent from Kathmandu in just 15 days.
“It was an interesting experience.”— Mark Ablovacky, after returning to Kathmandu
A different mountain entirely
The route Moroz and Ablovacky encountered bore little resemblance to the post-monsoon version most climbers know. With no fresh snowfall to pad the upper slopes, the path was dry and windswept — long sections of bare ice and, near the summit, frozen rock that demanded dry-tooling techniques above 7,500 metres.
“It is not super hard from a technical point of view, but at 7,500m+, it is really tricky terrain,” Ablovacky explained. The only fixed line the team used was a handful of old rope fragments left by the previous autumn’s expeditions. At the summit, Moroz found their only traces: tattered prayer flags, frayed rope, and rags of fabric a ghost town at 8,163 metres.
The descent: survival mode
On the way down, conditions deteriorated sharply. A powerful snowstorm on April 29 deposited 60 centimetres of new snow in a single day. With avalanche risk high and visibility poor, the two climbers tied into a single 30-metre rope and proceeded with one acting as anchor while the other advanced effectively using a human body as a live avalanche probe.
“On the way back, we had 60cm of fresh snow in one day, so we used one 30m rope and one of us went in front to act as an avalanche probe,” Ablovacky told ExplorersWeb. They descended safely, exhausted but intact.
Why spring on Manaslu matters?
Manaslu has become one of the most commercially popular 8,000-metre peaks in recent years, drawing hundreds of climbers each autumn with fixed ropes, oxygen, and full Sherpa support. The spring window traditionally avoided due to technical ice conditions and less predictable weather offers a radically different proposition.
No queues. No fixed infrastructure. No safety net. For climbers willing to carry heavier packs and accept genuine uncertainty, spring Manaslu is a portal to an older style of Himalayan alpinism the kind practised before satellite forecasts and professional logistics became standard.
“One of us went in front to act as an avalanche probe.”— Mark Ablovacky, on the 60 cm snowfall descent
Moroz and Ablovacky returned to Kathmandu having shared the mountain with no one. Their GPS track, summit photographs, and helmet-camera footage offer a rare window into what Manaslu looks like when the crowds have gone home technical, unforgiving, and quietly spectacular.
Source: Explorers Web · Reporting by Angela Benavides
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