| Route Notes |
… Makalu La to sleep. Following day to BC.
Sophie Lavaud, who was on Andreas Neuschmied's expedition, … that there was no problem on the descent.
Note: The summit claims of Marco Confortola for ANN1, DHA1, LHOT, MAKA and KANG are now in dispute; see articles published by Explorers Web and Lo Scarpone (portal of the Italian Alpine Club).
Sophie Lavaud telephone conversation with Billi Bierling on 11 August 2025:
Sophie Lavaud said that Marco Confortola definitely did not summit!
On the summit push, Camandona and Confortola started from C3. On the way, Marco Confortola fell into a crevasse between C3 and C4 and hurt his rib. Lavaud and Camandona continued and summited together. As the ridge was not fixed, the pair went down together and assisted each other. Lavaud stopped at C4 and Camandona continued to C3. After Confortola fell into the crevasse, he went back to his tent at C3, had some painkillers (Lavaud thinks) and attempted to summit again. Lavaud thinks he stopped on the steep slope before the col as this is where he took his alleged “summit picture”.
When Lavaud was in her tent at C4 (it was already night), she heard someone shouting. Marco was outside her tent begging her for something to drink. After she gave him her thermos, she asked him whether he had a tent to stay. Confortola said no and disappeared. Lavaud fell asleep again and when she descended with Nima Sherpa in the morning, she saw a red point on the traverse between C3 and C4 far away. When she approached, she was saw Confortola lying there. He was sleeping. She woke him up and put him on a short rope and guided him to C3. She was convinced that Camandona would be waiting there, but he was not. They rested a bit at the Kobler tent. Lavaud made some soup while Confortola slept a bit. On their descent to C2, Confortola was very slow and when they were just above C2, Confortola told Lavaud to continue as he would be fine on his own. After descending for about 10 minutes, she realised that Confortola was not coming so she climbed back up again to find him and found him sleeping again. So she picked him up again and they descended to C2 where the rest of Lavaud’s team was waiting and where she finally got some support to assist Confortola. Back at BC, Lavaud was very exhausted and did not see Confortola again until they met at Hillary camp, where he finally thanked her.
Arjun Vajpai Whatsapp statement to Billi Bierling on 11 August 2025:
All the Sherpas stopped at the false summit.
Till then Pasang Norbu fixed the rope up to the false summit.
And then Ferran [Latorre] took lead from false summit and Hans [Wenzl] from
Austria followed him.
I was 3rd person behind them.
Behind me was Boyan Petrov.
He took the pictures of the three of us in front.
Then slowly when the 4 of us started coming down, we
saw some climbers coming from the false summit to real summit.
Marco was not there.
Hopefully coming to Nepal soon.
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