Romanian mountain climber Horia Colibasanu is planning to ascend Mount Everest, the northern route, without bottled oxygen this spring. Colibasanu, who has so far climbed six 8,000-meter mountains so far without supplementary oxygen, left last week for Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. . Nepal is the starting point of this expedition. Colibasanu and his climbing partner, Peter Hámor from Slovakia will climb Everest via the Northern Route, from Tibet, China. Peter Hámor has climbed ten 8,000-meter summits up to now and opened several new routes.
He is also the first Romanian to reach the summits of K2 (8611 m, 2004), Manaslu (8163 m, 2006), Dhaulagiri (8167 m, 2007), Shishapangma Central Summit (8.013 m, 2009), Annapurna (8091 m, first Romanian ascent, 2010), Makalu (8.481 m, 2011) and Lhotse (8516 m, first Romanian ascent, 2013) without bottled oxygen.
In 2009 Horia received the “Spirit of Mountaineering” award for his role in the rescue operation of Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, who died in 2008 while attempting to climb the 8091 m Nepalese mountain, Annapurna. Also, the Romanian alpinist was part of a documentary made after this tragedy, called “Pura Vida”. The film that presented the detailed reconstruction of a rescue operation lasting for four days that involved some of the best mountain climbers in the world, won the Serbitzu Saria Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2012.
Oana Vasiliu