Climbing's Oscars: The Five Finalists for Piolets d'Or Awards

The five finalists for the coveted 18th Piolets d'Or award, mountaineering's version of the Academy Awards, have been announced. A six-member international jury unanimously chose five alpine ascents that they felt exemplified the best mountain climbs of 2009. The French words Piolet d'Or translates as "Golden Ice Axe."

The jury, led by Slovenian mountaineer Andrej Stremfelj, were given a list of 55 important 2009 ascents which they quickly whittled down to the top five using the criteria established in the Piolets d'Or charter for "imaginative and innovative new routes, using a minimum amount of equipment and building on experience...questions of style and means of ascent take precedence over reaching the objective itself." The short list contains an American/Scottish ascent, two Russian ascents, a British ascent, and a Kazakhstan ascent.

The five ascents nominated for the Piolets d'Or are:

• Cho Oyu (8,201 meters), Nepal. Denis Urubko and Boris Dedechko from Kazakhstan pioneered a new 2,600-meter route up the Southeast Face of Cho Oyu from May 11 to 15. This was Urubko's last of the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks. He is the 15th man to have climbed them all and the ninth to not use oxygen.
• Chang Himal (6,750 meters), Nepal. British climbers Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman climbed a new 1,800-meter route on the central pillar of the North Face of Chang Himal near Kanchenjunga. The route, rated M6, was quickly climbed from October 29 to November 2.
• Gongga Northwest Peak (6,134 meters), China. Russians Mikhail Mikhailov and Alexander Ruchkin reached the summit of this unclimbed peak in China's Sichuan province in five days last April. They climbed a 1,100-meter rock pillar with mixed climbing on the bottom and superb 5.10 rock climbing on the upper section.
• Xuelian West (6,422 meters), China. Americans Jed Brown and Kyle Dempster with Scottish climber Bruce Normand climb the North Face of the unclimbed peak Xuelian West in the Tien Shan range via a long difficult route from August 26 to 30. Their route, named The Great White Jade Heist, is 2,650 meters long.
• Pic Pobeda (7,439 meters), Kirghizstan. Russian climbers Vitaly Gorelik and Gleb Sokolov climbed a huge 2,400-meter buttress alpine-style in eight days on the North Face of Peak Pobeda, the highest peak in the Tien Shan range. They climbed lots of black ice and difficult mixed terrain during the ascent last August.

The winner will be announced at the 18th Piolets d'Or which takes place April 7 to 11 in Chamonix and Courmayeur in the French Alps. A Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Reinhold Messner, probably the greatest mountaineer of the 20th century. Alpinists from around the world will attend not only for the awards but also for conferences, lectures, debates, films, and meetings to celebrate modern mountaineering.

For an insider's perspective on the Piolet d'Or, read Swedish alpinist David Falt's thoughts in his blog post Piolet d'Or 2010 The Alpinism Oscars on his E9 Climbing blog. Among other things, David says, "In this year's bag is a nice mix of great achievements, some maybe better than others, some more hyped than others but the key element is that they are all great achievements, illustrating the beauty of the pure alpine challenge and in the age of relentless commercialism, over-hyping of 8000m 'heroes' and even blatant fraudulence to gain entry to this club, the appeal of the alpine ideal should not be allowed to dim."

Photograph above: Russian climbers Alexander Ruchkin and Mikhail Mikhailov made one of 2009's best ascents up a 3,000-foot rock pillar on an unclimbed peak in China. Photograph courtesy RussianClimb.com