Joint mountaineering team scale Mount Ruoni

Another virgin peak has been conquered, and its name is Ruoni. Between November 5 and 7, four members of the joint mountaineering team of the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and Kobe University successfully reached No.2 Summit of Tibet's Mount Ruoni, which is 6805 meters above sea level, during two climbs.

Chinese members of the joint mountaineering team pictured on their  way to Mount Ruoni's No.2 Summit.

On November 12, our reporter conducted a telephone interview with Professor Dong Man from the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), who was also the head of the Chinese team. Dong said that all the team members returned to the base camp on November 10, and are scheduled to return to Wuhan on November 18.

"We all fell into the crevasses."

Virgin peaks are full of hidden dangers. "This is the most difficult mountain I have climbed in over two decades," said Dong. The temperature on Mount Ruoni fell to below minus 30 degrees Celsius, and the wind speed reached 90 meters per second. The altitude was not that high, but the glacial topography was complicated. We could only climb between 10 am and 3 pm.

In 2002, Japan's Kobe University made a survey of the mountain. In November 2007, the two universities conducted another survey together and finally selected 18 mountaineers to climb, 10 from China and 8 from Japan. On October 12, the team left Wuhan for Tibet.

Walking on glaciers which could sink at any moment was just like taking the elevator but in reverse; and it was exhausting. "We all fell into the crevasses." Once, they walked five kilometers on ice to a place which was only 1.7 kilometers away in terms of linear distance.

On the morning of November 5, Deqing Ouzhu and Ciren Danta, sophomores from the School of Economics and Business Management and the School of Art and Media at the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) began their expedition to conquer Ruoni’s peak. At 1:18 pm, they reached the summit while Yuan Fudong, who took the Olympic Torch to Mount Everest, became an "unsung hero".