The french mountain guide Benjamin Védrines has just achieved a feat: the ascent of Broad Peak, 8,047 m, in 7 hours and 28 minutes from a start at 4,890 meters on the Godwin-Austen glacier, before descending by paraglider, and without bottled oxygen. A Fastest Known Time speed ascent twice as fast as the previous one, established in… 1984.
The news has just been confirmed by our network, although the precise date of the feat is not known. The mountain guide Benjamin Védrines has just climbed without oxygen the Broad Peak (8,047 m, Karakoram), by the normal route of the West Spur, in a record time of 7 hours and 28 minutes from a start at 4,890 meters, on the Godwin-Austen glacier. He then descended by paraglider, taking off from the summit zone.
It is an exploit, a time out of the norms, since the previous record was established at nearly 16 hours – more than twice the time of Védrines – since 1984 by the Pole Krzystof Wielicki, and had never been beaten since: in 1994, the Swede Göran Kropp reached the summit in 18:30 and this month of July, the same day as Védrines, the Kazakh Denis Urubko would have also reached the summit by the normal way, in 15 hours…
Broad Peak
Védrines climbed Broad Peak
at an average rate of 423 m/h
Védrines started the chronometer at midnight. He reached the altitude of 6630 m at 2:20 am (pace of 745 m/h), before leaving 45 minutes