Edurne Pasaban - Annapurna - 14 eight-thousanders

Ranking: 10 Elevation: 8.091 m
First conquered: on the 3rd of June 1950 Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, with a French expedition (which included Louis Lachenal, Gaston Rebuffat, Lionel Terray, Marcel Schatz, Jean Couzy, Jacques Oudot, Marcel Ichac, Francis de Noyelle) reached the summit of Annapurna I. This was the first peak over 8,000 m to be successfully climbed by a human.

Spring 2010 was the time chosen by Edurne Pasaban to make the definitive push towards completing the challenge of the 14 ‘eight-thousanders’. After a change of plan, the mountaineer from Gipuzkoa began the final stretch of her challenge with Annapurna. On the 13th of April, the climber set foot on the top of the most dangerous peak on the planet, at 8,091 metres. Bad weather prolonged the expedition on ‘the goddess of the harvests’, where avalanches are frequent.

Annapurna is, statistically, the deadliest of the 14 eight-thousanders due to the constant avalanches that sweep all its slopes including the ascent route on its Northern face. That is why Edurne hoped to spend as little time as possible on this mountain.

Annapurna gives its name to of a series of peaks in the Himalayas, a 55 km long massif whose highest point, Annapurna I, rises to 8,091 m. This makes it the tenth highest Summit on earth and thus one of the ‘eight-thousanders’. Annapurna is a name in Sanskrit which can be translated as ‘goddess of the harvests’.

On the 3rd of February 1987, Jerzy Kukucza and Artur Hajzer became the first mountaineers to successfully climb an «eight-thousander» in winter.