At 8:30 AM local time on March 9, 2012, Polish climbers Adam Bielecki and Janusz Golab reached the summit of Gasherbrum I (located in the Karakoram Range in Pakistan). This was also the first successful winter ascent of the peak by Polish athletes. On that day, alpine-style climber Gerfried G

        Last Friday (March 9), a Polish expedition successfully completed the historic first winter ascent of Gasherbrum I. The team was led by Artur Hajzer, while on the southern side of the peak, another team, Gerfried G...

GASHERBRUM 1, FIRST WINTER ASCENT
based on information provided by Polish journalist Piotr Drozdz

Gasherbrum I, First Successful Winter Ascent
According to information provided by Polish journalist Piotr Drozdz

       The Polish team chose the Japanese route on the southwest side of Gasherbrum I and took advantage of a rare brief window of good weather in winter — which meant they had to set out from Camp 3 (7,040 m) at midnight, in temperatures as low as -35°C (dropping to -53°C with wind chill), to attempt the summit. Bielecki and Golab reached the summit at 8:30 am under extremely harsh conditions. During the climb, when they were ascending about 100 meters in elevation gain, they went without water for several hours because their water and energy drinks had frozen. Even so, they did not use supplemental oxygen. They descended immediately after reaching the top.

       Weather forecasts indicated that the good weather would last only until noon, so Bielecki and Golab, after reaching Camp 3 at 2 pm, rested briefly before continuing their descent along the Japanese Shoulder, which had fixed ropes. They returned to Camp 2 (6,450 m) at 5 pm, where they met team leader Hajzer and Pakistani climber Shaheen Baig. The next day, the two reached base camp, by which time they had developed mild frostbite on their noses, and Bielecki also had slight frostbite on his big toe.

       This expedition finally succeeded after 49 days of waiting, during which they endured severe cold and harsh weather accompanied by strong winds. Bielecki and Golab remained confident until the very end that they would succeed, so they patiently waited for a good weather window. In the 1990s, Janusz Golab, together with Stanislaw Piecuch and Jacek Fluder, formed the “Polish Dream Team,” and he also established a new route on Kedar Dome. Adam Bielecki, a 28-year-old young climber, had just summitted Makalu the previous year.

       The expedition leader, Artur Hajzer, is also an experienced mountaineer who has participated in numerous high-altitude climbs. He began climbing in the 1980s, known as the golden era of Polish Himalayan climbing, and in 1987, he and Jurek Kukuczka completed the first winter ascent of Annapurna. This success was a response to Hajzer’s hope to “restore” the former glory of Polish winter Himalayan climbing, and he subsequently proposed the “2010–2015 Polish Winter Himalayan Climbing” project. The golden age of Polish winter climbing faded after the deaths of Kukuczka, Rutkiewicz, Andrzej Heinrich, Andrzej Czok, Tadeusz Piotrowski, and many other outstanding climbers.