Black Diamond athlete David Göttler is currently in the Himalaya acclimatizing and preparing for an alpine-style attempt on the massive West Pillar of Makalu. Below is the first in a series of expedition dispatches David is sending us directly from the mountain with photos from photographer Daniel Bartsch. Stay tuned to the Black Diamond Journal in the coming weeks for more progress updates from the team.

We are alone here in the Makalu base camp for the west ridge, enjoying the quiet and being able to fully concentrate on climbing. We heard of the events that took place on Everest over the radio and then from back home, and are even more glad to be over here on Makalu. As of yesterday, our first acclimatization trip is behind us and we are all doing well and are back at base camp! We climbed to 6200m on the ridge, which leads to the actual West Pillar, and then continued after a rest day, and spent three nights on the normal route for further acclimatization up to 6800m.

What’s nice is that we are slowly but surely getting closer! It’s been over a year now that we’ve been focusing on Makalu and it’s West Pillar: finally we’ve been able to tackle the first few meters of the ridge! About a week ago we head out to explore the beginning of the ridge which leads to the actual West Pillar. We were all eager to see what we would find.
We were pleasantly surprised with what was waiting for us; a snow-free stone and gravel ramp up to about 6000m.
We set up our tents and the next day set out over a firn and ice ridge. The ice here is incredibly hard and brittle. How many times during pre monsoon in recent years, have the conditions been this dry with so much bare ice? Let’s see if it will work to our advantage or disadvantage …
We explored the ridge up till 6200m and once we had taken a good look, we head back to where we had set up our tents for another night before heading back down to base camp the following day.

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