Night-nakedness

During Everest’s 1986 monsoon season, Erhard Loretan and Jean Troillet completed a daring, alpine-style ascent of the route in only 42 hours, without the use of oxygen, ropes or tents. Finding snow conditions perfect along the ascent, Loretan and Troillet glissaded down the entire route to the base of the North Face in less than five hours.

Interestingly enough, they chose to acclimatize only to 6 500m prior to their summit attempt. Medical studies have measured that the human body only acclimatize up to this level, those results however opposed to by many climbers.

Loretan and Troillet climbed mainly at night, opting for speed. They climbed very light, carrying nothing at all above 8000m. Their climbing style was later referred to as “night-nakedness”.

http://www.mounteverest.net/story/stories/EverestDirectAug182003.shtml

Mountaineers of the Eighties brought the mindset of the Alps to Everest: speed, commitment and breath-taking boldness

At 10 pm on August 28, 1986, three small figures moved to the base of the huge Tibetan North Face of Mount Everest. The summit wisped coldly a full 3 000m above them.

The trio carried no bottled oxygen, no tent, no harnesses and no rope. They climbed on, into the silence of the North Face.

Heading directly for the Hornbein Couloir, the trio reached 7 800m by 11 am, where they rested and drank for 10 hours. At 9 pm they were off again, the snow conditions perfect. One man turned back at 8 000m, but two continued, gaining the Couloir. At 1 am the darkness forced the two climbers to stop below the tricky exit from the Couloir. The pair waited impatiently for the pale dawn, setting off again at 4 am.

Then the summit. They rested ninety minutes on top, and then prepared for the descent by sitting down. With their GoreTex overall shells slippery against the snow, and each with an ice axe gripped by his side, they pushed off down the 3 000m face. The two climbers sped down the face, controlling their speed and direction with deft movements of the ice-axe, watching the contours of the snow, watching each other.

Five hours later the two climbers were back at their camp. They had been away for less than two days.

With this remarkable feat, the Swiss pair, Erhard Loretan and Jean Troillet, had met the challenge laid down by Messner and Habeler when they brought a new style of climbing to the Himalayan giants, the so-called "alpine style" practised in the French Alps.

Alpine style climbers eschew the use of fixed ropes and pre-established camps, instead climbing the mountain in a single push, bivouacking where necessary. Speed is of the essence as they must travel light and avoid poor weather. However, the sheer scale of Everest hampers pure alpine style ascents, and often modern mountaineers will mix siege and alpine techniques on the world's highest peak.

Loretan and Troillet, who had begun their route with Frenchman, Pierre Beghin, who had to turn back, had climbed mainly at night, unroped. Strangely, they had opted to acclimatise only to height of 6 500m before their assault on the 8 848m mountain. They didn't even carry a rucksack above 7 800m, such was their belief in the need for speed when climbing oxygenless above 8 000m. Commitment and control to this degree is only shown by the finest exponents of extreme climbing. It was, as a fellow Himalayan alpinist quipped, "night naked-ness".

This immaculate alpine ascent of the 1980 Japanese North Face route has been called one of the finest act of alpinism in the Himalayas, ranking along with Messner's solo of Everest, and the great Hermann Buhl's solo of Nanga Parbat in 1953.

http://www.outthere.co.za/everest/style.html