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S L O V E N C I V H I M A L A J I O D 1 9 5 4 D O 2 0 1 3
Slovenians in the Himalayas
(1960 – 2013)
T
o respect the truth it must be said that
the first Slovenian mountaineer in the
Himalayas was a member of the Argentine-
an expedition for Dhaulagiri back in 1954.
Nevertheless the jubilee year 2000 is devoted
to the very first organized joining of Slove-
nians to the “Himalayan” nations, countries
or states - that is to the first Slovenian or for-
mally first Yugoslav expedition to Trisul.The
second and improved edition of the Table of
the most important Slovenian achievements
in the Himalayas (Editor PZS – Mountaine-
ers’Associationof Slovenia, 2004), comprising
achievements up to the year 2003, is intended
to celebrate particularly this jubilee.
A short review shows us that neither the
first nor the second expeditionwas successful
as they failed toachieve their goal. It ishowever
true that both expeditions headed to an un-
known territory and thus focused on finding
new access paths to the mountains. Both of
them did conquer some new, though secon-
dary peaks – the Trisul expedition conquered
two peaks and the Kangbachen expedition
one, but at the same time already reaching
the height of 7,800 m.
It took sevenyears fromthe start of thefirst
serious preparations in the fifties until the first
expedition took place and another five years’
gap between the launching of the first and the
second expedition. Meanwhile the PZS (Mo-
untaineers’ Association of Slovenia) set up a
special body for organized expeditions (The
Commission for Foreign Mountains Expe-
ditions – KOTG). The constant changing of
ideas among climbers namely posed a threat
for no next expedition to take place. On the
other hand the feeling of an unaccomplished
goal required a real success as soonas possible,
and this was achieved 2 years later by the 1966
Annapurna expedition, despite taking a path
thathasbeenclimbedbefore. Intervalsbetween
expeditionswere shortenedeachyear for ayear
and so experiencewasmore readily transmit-
ted to newcomers, so enriching The Makalu
Expedition took up the difficult southern
rock wall and reached 8,000 m. Two years la-
ter Kangbachen was climbed again together
with three other peaks. Complete success of
the 1975 Makalu Expedition raised Slovenia
into the Himalayan super powers. Although
these twoandsome later expeditions, especially
Gasherbrun 1977,Mt. Everest 1979 and Lotse
1981were organized inaclassicalmanner, they
already included strong elements of theAlpine
manner suchas theclimb fromthe last campto
the peak or when climbing someminor peaks
on the way.. The autumn 1981 expedition to
the southern rock wall of Daulaghiri finished
only after an 18 day climb and descend to the
other side of this magnificent odyssey, which
towards the end turned into severe suffering.
These last expeditions causedaboomof smaller
clubs' expeditions.
Not all ensuing expeditions were succes-
sful as they mostly dealt with yet unsolved
problems of the world’s highest mountains.
We compensated our delay in the first climbs
to the 8.000mhigh peaks with new paths we
climbed.The initial good endings of dangero-
us situations had to be followed by some bad
ones. Even though each life has the same value
as it is the only one has, the public as well as
mountaineers havebeenextremely affectedby
the loss of some of themost successful alpine
climbers of that époque on Manaslu, Yalung
Kanga, Kangchendzenga, K2, Gasherbrum,
Nuptse and others. Statistics of people clim-