Ondrej Húserka was descending from Langtang Lirung (7,234m/23,734ft) with his climbing partner, Czech alpinist Marek “Mara” Holeček. The men had spent six days pioneering the first ascent of the peak’s 2,220-meter East Face. Several earlier pushes, including one with another Czech alpinist, Ondra Mrklovský, had ended in rain and avalanches.
When the pair summited at 11 a.m. on October 30, “all the romance of the experience was condensed into these few exceptional seconds,” wrote Holeček. The view was spectacular. They were in the heart of the highest range on Earth, with the most famous mountains in the world around them. “The horizon stretched eastward,” Holeček said, “with peaks like Makalu and Everest rising like pyramids. On the other side, behind us, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri.”
It was a sublime moment, one capping a rare feat. But they were only halfway done.
The seldom-summited Langtang Lirung is among the most prominent peaks in Nepal, boasting over 1,500 meters of topographic relief. First climbed in 1978, it is known as a difficult, dangerous peak; per The Himalayan Database, it has only seen 51 attempts and 14 successful summits, and none since 2010. Meanwhile, 16 climbers have died on the peak, most recently legendary Slovenian alpinist Tomaž Humar, who died in a fall in 2009.
Though Langtang Lirung is dangerous from all sides—almost every trip report from this peak describes constant avalanches and rockfall—its sprawling East Face is considered the peak’s most treacherous aspect. A Japanese team made an attempt in 2010, but only breached 4,150 meters (13,615ft) before bailing. In 2022, a strong trio of Ecuadorians, Esteban “Topo” Mena, Joshua Jarrin, and Roberto Morales, turned back due to icefall, at 5,800m (19,028ft).
Now Holeček, 50, and Húserka, 34, had run its gauntlet and come out on top.
Nearly a week after leaving their basecamp, having successfully made the first ascent of Langtang Lirung’s East Face, the men began descending the glaciated summit ridge as the sun set, weaving through seracs, and bivying at a spot Holeček likened to “The Savoy Hotel of the mountaineering world.” The following day, October 31, Holeček began breaking trail through deep snow down the ridge. The terrain was hazardous and unpredictable. “Twice beneath my feet appeared dark cracks,” he recalled, “a terrifying reminder that the mass holding us was an illusion.”
The men resorted to rappelling when the seracs became too broken to climb around. They moved as quickly as possible to avoid rock and icefall. One “meteor-like” rock hit Húserka, cracking his helmet, but “the smile on [Húserka] face didn’t change,” Holeček recalled.
The men set up countless rappels through this tenuous terrain. In the fading light of dusk, Holeček set up yet another. For his anchor, he drilled an Abalakov (also called a “V-thread”), threading their rope through two intersecting holes drilled at 45 degrees in the ice. Abalakovs are generally considered extremely safe, and commonly used on descent to avoid leaving gear behind.
Holeček rappelled first, landing on a snow bridge between two deep crevasses. “Suddenly, I heard a grunt, and strange sounds that my nervous system instantly processed as wrong—sounds that didn’t belong there,” Holeček said. Though the V-thread anchor had held for Holeček, it had broken under Húserka’s weight. Holeček didn’t see the fall, but guessed that Húserka had fallen around eight meters, hitting an angled slope and sliding into the crevasse. “Long, cosmic seconds stretched before me, though surely it was less than half a minute,” Holeček said. “Suddenly, a voice called from the hellish hole, ‘Help, damn it. Help!’”
Holeček moved on instinct. He crawled to the edge of the crevasse and drilled an ice screw into the edge to make an anchor. Then he rappelled into the depths to find his friend. The crevasse was so deep that once Holeček had reached the bottom, light had faded entirely. Blocks of ice, knocked loose by his rope, began falling on him from above, a large one bruised his shoulder. Húserka was nowhere in sight.
“The icy tunnel narrowed into a dark chute, almost like a toboggan run, robbing me of any visibility,” Holeček said, “until I suddenly touched his hand.” Húserka, still conscious, screamed for his partner to pull him out. Holeček tried as hard as he could, but Húserka was wedged in tight, the ice chute too narrow and slick to squirm out of.
Holeček cut Húserka’s pack loose, and in the process found his friend’s headlamp. “Then the horror set in.” Now Holeček could see that Húserka was jammed completely upside down, with one of his arms trapped. He spent the next two hours trying to free his friend, working by headlamp, and finally managed to pull Húserka out of the fissure.
This small success belied a grim reality. Húserka was free, but he couldn’t move his arms or legs. His spine appeared broken, and he showed signs of internal bleeding. Increasingly, he became incoherent, lapsing in and out of consciousness. Four hours after Holeček entered the crevasse to rescue his partner, Húserka died in his arms.
Though just 34, Ondrej “Ondro” Húserka was a prolific alpinist. A member of Slovakia’s national alpinism team since 2011, Húserka won the country’s mountaineering association’s “best ascent of the year” award six times.
In the last decade, he established and repeated a number of respected routes in his native Tatra Mountains and the Dolomites, as well as further afield, such as Cerro Torre’s Southeast Ridge (5.11d C1 WI 5; 700m) in Patagonia and Summer Bouquet (5.13a), a new 900-meter route on the West Face of Kyrgyzstan’s Pik Alexander Blok (5,283m/17,188ft). In 2023, Húserka and Wadim Jablonski’s first ascent of Gangotri Gambling (5.11c M6 A0, 600m) on India’s Phaalkan Meenaar (5602m/18,379ft) was included in the list of “Significant Ascents” for the 2023 Piolets d’Or.
In the wake of Húserka’s death, Holeček said he is “burdened with the pain and images that I’ll carry to my last breath. I’m so sorry for [him], such a wonderful guy, a skilled climber, and a constant smile. Thoughts of self-blame haunt me—why him and not me?”
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