Hungarian mountain climber Szilárd Suhajda climbed the 8516-meter Lhotse in Nepal on his first attempt without the help of supplementary oxygen and high-mountain porters.
Szilárd Suhajda announced in January of this year that he would like to focus on the Big Five challenge in the future. This means the five highest mountain peaks on Earth, of which he climbed the second-highest, K2, in 2019, the first and only Hungarian to do so to date, without the use of supplemental oxygen. This time he succeeded on Mount Everest’s neighbor, Lhotse, Mozgasvilag.hu reported. The only Hungarian success on this mountain so far was achieved by Zsolt Erőss and László Gál in 2011 as part of the Hungarians on the World’s Eight-Thousanders project.
Without bottled oxygen, the climber reached the summit by the so-called “normal route” up the mountain. Above the base camp, he moved all his equipment himself and decided on his own strategy. He set up his own camps. His only aid was a fixed rope fixed by Sherpas, used by all those climbing the normal route.
The normal route of Lhotse to Camp 3 (7300 m) is the same as the normal route of Mount Everest South in Nepal, so they share a base camp. The two routes branch above Camp 3.
I am proud to announce that the Hungarian Lhotse Expedition 2022 reached its goal in the early afternoon of 14 May 2022: I successfully reached the fourth highest point on Earth, the 8516-metre-high Lhotse summit! I had an excellent time throughout the climb, but the weather was much worse than expected all day, which made moving around much more difficult. However, the highly changeable weather did not faze me for a moment and by the time I reached the highest point, I could not complain about visibility! My happiness is boundless, I can’t wait to tell the story of my climb – it was a great experience!”
Suhajda said.
Suhajda set off from Budapest on April 6, and from Kathmandu, with the usual trekking on foot, he reached the Everest and Lhotse joint base camp on the 16th. Five days later, on the 21st, he set off on his first acclimatization round, during which he slept one night at 6,000 meters above the Khumbu Glacier at Camp 1, and at Camp 2 for one night, at 6,400 meters.
The climber also shared a video from the top of the mountain:
Featured image: Szilárd Suhajda after the second acclimatization phase. Photo via his Facebook page
