Ascents of Jirishanca, Pumari Chhish East, and Jugal Spire are Awarded the 2023 Piolets d’Or

Alpinism’s highest honor, the Piolets d’Or, just revealed the three ascents that won top honors for 2023: Reino Hongo (M7 AI 5+ 90°; 3,600ft) on Jirishanca, Peru; The Crystal Ship (M7 5.10+ A2; 5,200ft) on Pumari Chhish East, Pakistan; and The Phantom Line (ED; 4,200ft) on Jugal Spire, Nepal. The award committee also gave a special mention to an impressive first ascent on the East Face of Northern Sun Spire, Greenland: Via Sedna (5.12c; 2,500ft) by an all-women team.

This year’s Piolets d’Or jury was comprised of seven veteran alpinists: Lise Billon, Ines Papert, Nikita Balabanov, Aleš Česen, Martin Elias, Genki Narumi, and Jack Tackle. The group will distribute the golden axes at a ceremony in Briançon, France, from November 14–16. At that event, American alpinist George Lowe will receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, which celebrates his decades-long career putting up outstanding new routes in Tetons, Canadian Rockies, Alaska, and the Himalaya.

Jirishanca, Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru

From July 21-23, 2022, Canadians Quentin Roberts and Alik Berg made the long-awaited first ascent of the South-Southeast Spur on Jirishanca (20,000ft). Jirishanca is a notoriously difficult mountain by any side, but its eastern aspect is most challenging; only two teams had ever made integral ascents, and none in alpine style. 

Roberts and Berg climbed in an admirable fashion: onsight, all-free, and in alpine style over three days. They faced steep, runout snow-mushroom climbing, unprotected slab traverses, and stout mixed climbing each day of their ascent. By day two, due to the poorly protected and traversing nature of the route, the pair was wholly committed to summiting in order to descend—or face a 60-mile circumnavigation down the opposite side of the mountain. 

On day two, for a feature Roberts is currently writing for Climbing, he says: “I clamber out of the bivy cave and look up to see the ridge snaking up above me like a petrified dragon’s back. Three-story ice towers are glued to the spine of rock like iron filings on a magnetic blade. Simul-climbing, we weave our way around them, climb over them, and tunnel under them. Each mushroom and gargoyle is its own puzzle to solve.”

In a press release about the ascent, the Piolets d’Or jury said, “[We feel]  this to be an inspiring line, direct to the summit, and climbed in exactly the style and with the spirit of adventure that the Piolets d’Or wishes to promote.”

Pumari Chhish East, Hispar Muztagh, Pakistan

French climbers Christophe Ogier, Victor Saucède, and Jérôme Sullivan made the first ascent of Pumari Chhish East (22,400ft) from June 25-29 via its extremely complicated South Face. Five attempts had been made on the face’s various rock pillars over the last several years, but it was the middle-left feature—one of its safest, and thus more challenging, lines—that was finally climbed to the summit.

The team climbed the initial 2,300-foot snowfield by headlamp, then tackled the steep rock pillar—of equal length—via traditional big-wall tactics: leader hauling while the seconds jumared. “The first three bivouacs were poor, exposed, and uncomfortable,” the press release states, “but the fourth day took them through the remaining difficulties, which included two vertical 6b [5.10+] rock pitches at 6,600m [21,650ft],” which were led all-free in rock shoes.

The trio surmounted summit mushrooms at 10 a.m. the following day and descended to their previous bivouac. They wisely waited there until mid-afternoon, until the south-facing wall was no longer in the sun, to lower the objective hazard as they once again committed to the face.

Of their ascent, the jury wrote: “The jury felt this to be an elegant line, a line of strength that was full of uncertainty, on one of Pakistan’s big unsolved problems. It is not the easiest option on the mountain, but the steepness and sustained high level of difficulty made it one of the safest, rising almost directly to the summit.”

Jugal Spire, Jugal Himal, Nepal

Tim Miller and Paul Ramsden, both of the UK, made the first ascent of Jugal Spire (21,500ft) via its striking North Face from April 25-29. In a video about their ascent, Ramsden points out that the Jugal mountains are the closest peaks to the busy epicenter of Kathmandu, and Jugal Spire is perhaps the closest 6,000-meter peak to the city. But the range is mercifully free of 8,000-meter peaks, and thus the valley through which they approached the mountain is pleasantly quiet. 

Phantom Line is an apt name for this route: Ramsden said the slight weakness breaching the North Face would appear and disappear under different light conditions, making them wonder if a climbable line existed at all. 

Day one brought thin and unprotected mixed climbing and a protected bivouac to recharge. The route’s crux came the following day: a steep rock wall with a series of strenuous, Scottish-style chimneys hidden from view. “I’d never done anything like it before,” Ramsden said in the video. “It was safe-ish, because you’re wedged in the chimney, but there was no protection.” That night was much worse than the first; constant spindrift avalanches eventually ripped through their tent and they spent much of the night standing, waiting for morning. They crossed the summit slopes on day five, after 37 pitches of climbing, and rappelled from V-threads to the south—descending through previously unclimbed terrain. 

“The jury felt this was a perfect example of ambitious exploratory mountaineering,” the Piolets d’Or press release said, “carried out in simple but effective alpine-style: two sacs, two ropes, one tent, and no ascenders, bolts, or weather forecasts.”

Special Mention: Northern Sun Spire, Renland, East Greenland

The Piolets d’Or has given an honorable mention to an all-female team for their ascent of Via Sedna, and the expedition’s minimal carbon footprint. Marta Guemes (Spain), Caroline Dehais, Alix Jaekkel, and Capucine Cotteaux (France), Maria Sol Massera (Argentina), Caro North (Switzerland), Nadia Royo (Spain), and Ramona Waldner (Austria) left La Rochelle, France, on June 20 in a 50-foot sailboat, spending six weeks navigating stormy weather and dense pack ice to reach the shores of Renland, a peninsula in eastern Greenland. The Piolets d’Or jury points out that, because of these delays, the group had only 10 days to climb before they had to set sail once again. 

“Cotteaux, North, and Royo spent two days climbing steep difficult terrain and fixing 300 meters [1,000 feet] of rope, the leader sometimes resorting to aid while the followers mostly free climbed,” the press release said. “With one-and-a-half days now left before a predicted snowstorm, the three set off up the ropes, added four more difficult pitches [up to 5.12c], spent the night in portaledges, and the following morning, after a further six pitches of more reasonable [5.10 climbing], reached the upper south ridge.” The trio chose not to summit—a simple scramble—due to incoming weather. They rappelled, and were back in France four weeks later.

Lifetime Achievement Award: George Lowe

The Lifetime Achievement Award was first given to Walter Bonatti in 2009 to acknowledge the impact his career had on the following generations of young alpinists. Since then, legendary climbers including Silvo Karo, Catherine Destivelle, and Reinhold Messner have received the award. 

While it would take an entire book to write out George Lowe’s curriculum vitae, the Piolets d’Or jury has highlighted four notable ascents (and attempts) that make him worthy of this award. The first ascent of the 4,500-foot North Face of the North Twin in the Canadian Rockies, with Chris Jones, in 1974, is a clear highlight. Barry Blanchard, who made the first ascent of the face’s North Pillar in 1985, called the North Twin steeper than the Eiger and 50 percent bigger than El Cap. He believes Lowe and Jones’s 1974 ascent was harder than anything done in North America or Europe at the time. The jury also points out Lowe and Michael Kennedy’s first ascent of the Infinite Spur on the South Face of Sultana (also known as Mt. Foraker) in Alaska, in 1977; and the first ascent of Everest’s Kangshung Face, which was finally breached due to Lowe’s persistence finding a path through the crux 3,000-plus-foot rock buttress.

The Piolets d’Or jury values more than just Lowe’s summits, though: “… Perhaps even more impressive than these ascents is the 1978 attempt on the North Ridge of Latok I. … Jim Donini, Michael Kennedy, George, and his cousin Jeff Lowe spent 21 days climbing over 100 pitches above the Choktoi Glacier to reach a point around 150 meters [500 feet] below the unclimbed summit. They may have surmounted all the difficulties when a combination of wind, cold, and Jeff Lowe’s rapidly deteriorating condition due to altitude sickness forced a retreat. It remains one of the finest and most notable near misses in the history of alpinism, and despite literally dozens of subsequent attempts, no one has yet completed the route to the summit.”

Lowe’s beloved climbing partner Michael Kennedy writes: “There are few climbers who deserve to be described as titans. George Lowe is one of them. In a career that spans more than five decades and multiple generations, he has excelled in every form of the art, nowhere more so than in its most demanding and consequential genre: alpine climbing in the vast wilderness of North America and the Himalaya. … George has always exhibited a commitment to technical difficulty, small teams, and excellent style, as well as a fine-tuned sense of the great risks—and immense rewards—fundamental to operating in the alpine environment.”

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