After the tragic events on Everest last year, Melissa Arnot was feeling disillusioned about high-altitude climbing. Yet her love for Nepal, its people and its mountains remained strong. So, in the fall of 2104, Melissa Arnot traveled back to the tallest range in the world but changed course, journeying to three newly permitted 20,000-foot peaks in the Upper Mustang region with guide Ben Jones and filmer Jon Mancuso on a self-supported journey to see what they could climb. In part one of the Mustang Mystery series we follow this journey, starting with the long and tedious approach just to reach the base of Mansail, Mansail South and Mustang Himal.
Last fall, the Nepalese government granted climbing permit access to more than 300 unclimbed peaks that range from 5,800 to 7,900 meters. Melissa Arnot, co-founder of the Juniper Fund, journeyed to three of these peaks last fall hoping to rediscover her love for high-altitude climbing in the extremely remote Upper Mustang region of the Himalayas. Securing permits for three previously unclimbed peaks with limited beta and poor maps, Arnot tackled an exploratory, self-supported climb with guide Ben Jones and filmer Jon Mancuso. In part two of the Mustang Mystery series, we follow the climb from the tiny mountain outpost of ChungChung to Camp 2 en route to a recon on Mansail Peak.
To find a new perspective on high-altitude climbing, Eddie Bauer guide Melissa Arnot traveled to the beautiful Upper Mustang region of Nepal last fall in an effort to find and climb three newly permitted 20,000-foot peaks. With a different definition of success and incredible challenges of routefinding, Arnot, guide Ben Jones and filmer Jon Mancuso pioneered a new route on a self-supported mission aimed at a first ascent in previously unexplored Himalayan terrain. Two recon attempts and fifteen days of struggle later they became the first climbers to stand on the summit of 20,600-foot Mustang Himal, a first, first ascent for Arnot we profile in the conclusion of our Mustang Mystery series.
