2021 Honoured ascents

©Silvia Vidal

The Piolets d'Or promotes progressive mountaineering, alpine-style, doing more with less. Our awards reflect this ethos. But it also champions the spirit of exploration, a high level of commitment and self-sufficiency.

In this respect the Piolets d'Or would like to acknowledge the huge contribution to solo big wall climbing for more than two decades by Silvia Vidal. This Catalan is well-known for her impressive feats of endurance and hard aid climbing on remote big walls around the world. Her most notable ascents have been achieved mainly in total autonomy: entirely alone, no radio, no mobile, no GPS, no weather forecasts, no communication. Drilling tends to be minimal, and always by hand.

Vidal's new routes, climbed in capsule style, lie in places such as Alaska, Canada, Chile, India, Mali, Pakistan and Peru. Significant solo ascents include: Life is Lilac (870m, 6a A4+), Shipton Spire, Pakistan (21 days alone on the face, 2007); Naufragi (1,050m, 6a+ A4+), Raldang, India (25 days alone on the face, 2010); Espiadimonis (1,500m, 6b A4), Serrinia Avalancha, Chile (two weeks fixing the first 350m, then 32 days on the face, a total of nearly two months alone in this wild region, 2012); Un Pas Més (530m, 6a A4+), Xanadu, Alaska (36 days of ferrying equipment - 540km of walking - both up to and down from the face, and 17 days alone on the wall, 2017), and most recently Sincronia Magica (1,180m, 6a+ A3+), El Chileno Grande, Chile (16 days were spent load carrying, in and out, and after fixing the initial 180m, 33 days were spent alone on the wall, 2020).

SILVIA VIDAL

• SPAIN

Year of birth : 1971

Soon.

©Ethan Berman

Emperor (northwest) Face - Running in the Shadows (2,300m, US VI, M6 AI5 A0),
Ethan Berman (USA) and Uisdean Hawthorn (UK).
September 30 to October 1 for the ascent.

Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies and the Emperor Face the Rockies' biggest mixed wall. There were already five routes or variations on this face, the first, in 1978, by Jamie Logan and Mugs Stump. However, this new route follows a conspicuous gully system right of the 2010 Kruk-Walsh route and was climbed in excellent style: Berman and Hawthorn were only the second team (and the first for almost 40 years) to climb a new line on the face, and reach the summit, without using a helicopter for the approach or descent.

The pair walked 20km from the roadhead to the mountain (and later back again), bivouacked below the face, then climbed 1,800m to the Emperor Ridge, where they stopped for a second bivouac after 19 hours of movement. All technical climbing was on new terrain, with the hard pitches through thinly iced, steep rock barriers that often had a very Scottish feel. Next day, in poor weather with bad visibility, they made a complex one-kilometre traverse along the west flank of the Emperor Ridge to gain the summit, where they bivouacked once more before embarking on a 3,000m descent of the Kain Route.

ETHAN BERMAN

• USA

Year of birth : ....

Soon.

Uisdean Hawthorn

• UK

Year of birth : ...

Soon.

©Symon Welfringer

South face and southwest ridge - Revers Gagnant (ca 2,500m, M4+ WI4+ 90°),
Pierrick Fine and Symon Welfringer (France),
October 16-19 for the ascent.

After the pandemic thwarted plans to travel to Nepal in the autumn, Fine and Welfringer had just two weeks to come up with a new idea. Pakistan was the only country to allow them entry, and after a thorough study of mapping data they opted for the unknown south face of Sani Pakkush, a 6,952m peak in the western Karakoram that had been climbed only once; in 1991 by Germans via the northwest ridge.

This would be a thoroughly exploratory expedition: the south face is big and complex and rises from the head of the Toltar Valley, the upper part of the glacier almost certainly not reached previously by mountaineers. The odds would be stacked against them as October is generally far too late for climbing big mountains in Pakistan.

After more than two weeks of acclimatization, in clear but cold weather they climbed a difficult snow/ice/mixed spur on the far-left side of the face, with two bad bivouacs, before stopping early on the third day at a comfortable site on the crest of the southwest ridge. Next day, seven hours of hard work through inconsistent snow took them to the summit. On the fourth day they returned to their 4,100m base camp, downclimbing and rappelling the route of ascent.

.

SYMON WELFRINGER

• FR

Born in 1993, Symon Welfringer grew up in Moselle where, far from the mountains, he cultivated his passion for climbing. A childhood love that he never abandoned, from the podiums of the junior French Cup to the belay stance of his first 8c+ in Céuse. It's only when he was in weather engineering school in Toulouse, after two difficult years of preparatory classes, that he really discovered mountaineering. Just like a certain David Lama, he used his climbing skills to specialize in highly technical routes and experienced a meteoric rise in the field. We find him at the top of Divine Providence in winter for a rare repetition of the mythical route of the Massif du Mont-Blanc. But quickly, the Himalayan adventures began. In 2018, he opened Le quatuor à cordes (6B, A2, M4, 80º, 1100 m) on the west face of Lobuche East (6,120 m) in the Nepalese Khumbu. The following year, he headed to Pakistan for the opening of a new route on Risht Peak (5,960 m), On the School Route (M6/5/70°, 500 m). One of the three rope-mates with whom he shared this adventure is Pierrick Fine; and we know the rest of the story. After re-embarking for the Karakorum where they hit their Revers Gagnant (2500 m, ED+, 90°, M4+, WI4+) in a crushing virgin face, the two companions not only share the summit of Sani Pakkush (6953 m), but also the Piolets d'Or 2021.

PIERRICK FINE

• FR

Pierrick Fine, 26 years old, represents the new French wave of exploratory and committed mountaineering at high altitude. A climbing and canyoning instructor, mountain guide, vice world champion in ice climbing and member of the top team of French alpinists, this true jack-of-all-trades quickly moved on to mountains higher than the Chartreuse peaks around which he grew up. After two outstanding openings in 2019, first on the virgin summit of Risht Peak (Sur la route de l'école, 5, M6, 70°, 450m, Pakistan) and then on Grosvenor (Tcheu cte panthère, ED, WI5+, M4, VI,1300m, China), he came back to Pakistan in the middle of the pandemic with Symon Welfinger. They climbed Revers Gagnant (2500m, ED+, 90°, M4+, WI4+) on the virgin face of Sani Pakkush (6953m), an ascent that has earned them the recognition of the alpine community with the prestigious Piolet d'Or 2021.