The Line: A Climb for Kei Taniguchi
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In 2009, Kei Taniguchi from Japan became the first woman to win a Piolet d’Or (along with climbing partner Kazyua Hiraide) for a new route up 7,756-meter Kamet in India. Tragically, neither Taniguchi nor Hiraide are still with us. In AAJ 2025, we’re publishing a story by Akihiro Oishi, Taniguchi’s biographer, who set out to complete a route she had attempted years earlier in Nepal. We’re sharing part of Oishi’s story here.
“Mr. Hagiwara, what mountain is this?”
The question was asked by Kei Taniguchi as she looked at a picture taken by Hiroshi Hagiwara, editor of Rock and Snow, in 2013. The photo showed the unclimbed northeast face of Pandra (6,673 meters) in eastern Nepal.
In 2016, Taniguchi attempted Pandra with Junji Wada, retreating from two-thirds height (AAJ 2017). On return to Japan she wrote, “I’ve opened Pandora’s Box. I will definitely go back to check what’s inside.” Tragically, a month later, she fell to her death from Mt. Kurodake in Japan.
I interviewed many people to compile a book about Kei’s life, called A Piece of the Sun. In the final chapter, I hoped to incorporate a scene in which some of us, including Wada, climbed Pandra. However, Wada was seriously injured just before our team was due to leave Japan, and the expedition was postponed. Finally, in 2024, eight years after Kei’s accident, I went to Pandra with Suguru Takayanagi and Hiroki Suzuki to complete Kei’s route. Wada had become a family man, starting a new life.
We arrived at our 5,100-meter base camp on October 12. The approach to advanced base and the face itself had changed significantly in eight years due to global warming: The northeast face looked far drier than in pictures taken by the French team that completed the first route up the face. [In October 2017, one year after the attempt by Taniguchi and Wada, French climbers Mathieu Détrie, Pierre Labbre, and Benjamin Védrines completed Peine Plancher (1,200m, WI6 M6; see AAJ 2018).]
After acclimatization, we left advanced base for Pandra at 7 a.m. on October 25. It took three hours to reach the foot of the wall, after which we climbed to a bivouac site at 5,500 meters, where we pitched the tent using a snow hammock. The climbing to this point, following the line taken by Taniguchi and Wada, had involved crumbling rock and brittle ice.
On day two, we climbed three pitches of excellent, steep alpine ice, dubbed the Pandra Great Icicle. Above, a couloir with poor protection and belays cut through the center of the face, and at 5,800 meters we made our second bivouac.
On the 27th, we headed directly toward the summit. [From around this point or below, in 2016, Taniguchi and Wada traversed to the north spur; the 2024 team continued direct and joined the line of the 2017 French route, which came in from the left.] At around 6,000 meters, the French party had found a pitch of M6. Takayanagi, who is about ten years younger than us, onsighted that pitch easily—he should achieve great things in the Himalaya. At 6,200 meters, we found a bivouac site beneath a rock outcrop.
The next morning, we left our bivouac gear and headed for the top. Takayanagi climbed an overhang that was much more difficult than the M6 the day before. We then climbed ice and difficult sugar snow, with little meaningful protection, to reach a snow cave at around 6,500 meters after dark. We shivered through the night in just the clothes we were wearing.
With Suzuki in the lead, it took only 30 minutes to reach the top the next morning. Suzuki shouted, “Whoa, we did it!” I’ve been climbing with him for 20 years, but this was the first time I’d heard a serious roar. By 4 p.m. we had returned to our snow cave, and the following day we rappelled to the base.
We named our route A Piece of the Sun. It will continue to burn in our hearts and guide us toward greater mountains.
—Akihiro Oishi, Japan, with help from Kaoru Wada, Hiroshi Hagiwara, and Rodolphe Popier
2004 Taniguchi and Kazuya Hiraide complete a
