In October, Christopher Gibisch and Jeff Shapiro climbed Black Wolves and Blue Poppies (M5+, WI4+, AI6, 1,300 meters) for Mount Grosvenor's third ascent. Check out Gibisch's trip report below.

We  left the US on the 12th of October, flying to the Sichuan capital, Chengdu. The 15-hour flight was followed by a long travel to Kangding and a 3 day trek into the northern end of the Daxue Shan with a permit to attempt Mt Grosvenor 6376m (aka Ri Wu Qie Feng).  The peak had been attempted by many strong teams over the last 10 years with all attention paid to the West and Northwest aspects.  British, Korean, Japanese and French teams, turned back by “loose, friable rock, powder avalanches, and high winds.”  Two routes had been successfully completed.  The first ascent by Himalayan veterans, Roger Payne and Julie-Ann Clyma was in 2003. Kyle Dempster and Bruce Normand then again climbed the face in 2010. Inspired by the potential, our goal was to climb an adventurous and technically difficult route on Grosvenors West face in "leave no trace" alpine style.

Mt. Grosvenor is a striking mountain.  An iconic, pyramid of a peak, it’s composed of technical faces creating no obvious “easy way up”.  The West face, to us, appeared the most technical and impressive.  It’s 1,300 meters towers over base camp and is littered with ice ribbons, broken by steep rock bands.  The North face, slightly shorter than the West, has potential for routes, but unfortunately is topped by large and threatening seracs.  Grosvenor’s East aspect was used as the descent route for the only two previous ascents but in our estimation, contains potential for shorter and more moderate ice lines.  Finally, steep glaciated slopes and ridgelines descending toward Gonga Shan (7,556m) represent the Southern aspect of the mountian.

After a short acclimatization period, we were fortunate to take advantage of an iffy forecast that turned into a short period of stable weather with only moderately strong winds.  We spent 2.5 days on the face with both bivis involving sitting tethered on very small seats chopped from the ice.  After a trying night ca 100m from the summit, we climbed easy ice slopes to top out at approx 9:25am on the 27th of October.

We spent a short time on the summit, before racing an approaching storm down the NE ridge.  When the ridge became too knife edge and rocky, we down climbed through a cornice onto the East face.  Approximately 12 rappels brought us to the last 300+ meters of steep snow, which we were able to quickly down climb together.  One more night spent in 100kph winds on the glacier between Jiazi, Edgar and Grosvenor was necessary before rappelling the col between Jiazi and Grosvenor and descending through icefall and endless snow covered moraine on our way back to BC.

—Christopher Gibisch