KATHMANDU, Nepal-Ueli Steck, a veteran Swiss mountaineer who promised never to return back world’s highest peak mount Everest after trading blows with a group of Nepali Sherpa is now in back Nepal to scale another peak Mt. Annapurna.
Ueli and his team have already occupied the base camp of world’s 10th tallest peak-8,091metre high- Mt. Annapurna 8,091, according to Gyanendra Shrestha, an official at the Tourism Ministry. “He has received the permit to climb Annapurna,” AFP quoted Shrestha as his saying.
In April, Steck vowed he never return to Mount Everest after a brawl with local Sherpa guides above the Base Camp during the course of fixing the rope. Report of Sherpas and climbers fighting had sent shock waves through the mountaineering world. The three veteran mountaineers –Italy’s Simone Moro, Ueli Steck and Briton Jon Griffith – had been moving sans ropes at more than 23,000ft. At the same time Sherpas were laying fixed ropes for guided climbers to use on their way to the summit. As the trio crossed these ropes on their way towards their tent at camp three, an argument broke out, with the Sherpas claiming that one of them had been hit by ice by the westerners, an allegation they denied. But the Europeans claimed they were free to ascend since they did not need to use the ropes.
“I am so disappointed and my trust is gone. I could not go back to this mountain, even though everyone says that this would not happen again,” Steck told swissinfo.ch, the international arm of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation.
“Who can assure me that the angry mob is not cutting my rope or burning my tent?” Steck questioned.
A blogpost published on Monday on the website of the US magazine The New Yorker cited a letter from Steck describing his plans to climb Annapurna via the steep Southface wall.
