It’s also important to note that on the vast majority of Russian climbs, the fixed ropes have been removed, and Russians are no strangers to alpine-style ascents. Climbers like Koshelenko, Odintsov, Ruchkin, Valeri Babanov, Pavel Shabalin, and many others have resumes with countless fast and light ascents from the Alps to the Tien Shan to the Himalayas.
I asked Koshelenko — who participated in the Russian Big Wall Project for a few years, but has since left — for his opinion on the matter. “I personally always regard [leaving fixed ropes and camps] negatively,” he wrote, “and I know other climbers from Russia think this also. Sometimes on extreme ascents climbers get in such conditions when there is a choice of ropes or human life. I think of mountaineering as a noble sport and I welcome discussion about ethics, but I’m against pinning a label on somebody. Any person has the right to a mistake.”
Koshelenko had just returned from an immaculate alpine-style attempt on the north face of Menlungtse in Nepal with Totmjanin and the well-known American alpinist Carlos Buhler. Buhler has undoubtedly done more climbing with the Russians than any other American, having climbed both K2 and Changabang with them.
“When the Russians were finally able to climb in the Himalaya after Perestroika,” says Buhler, “they looked at objectives like the north face of Jannu and found a solution within the universe that they were brought up in. Climbing Jannu ... without an accident and with a lot of people reaching the summit, was exactly what the Soviet system had rewarded all those years. Now someone comes along and says it’s all bullshit. ‘You came in too late and we’re not playing that game anymore. Here are the new rules, so dance to the new tune.’

“In our country, we worship cowboys like Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone, and in the mountains we want to climb in cowboy style. But when we decided to try and put a man on the moon, we didn’t just get a slingshot and shoot them into space and say ‘Yahoo, let’s see if they make it.’ We did it in ultimate expedition style, to make sure that they were going to come back. That single event gave NASA fifty years of funding, whereas if they hadn’t come back the whole program might have been shut down. The Russians look at mountaineering the same way.”
The Russians find it strange that American climbers are making such a big deal about fixed ropes — they’ve said as much to me. Ultimately, it seems like a lot of this controversy was based on misunderstanding, but perhaps it’s for the common good that we draw attention to the question of what, as climbers, we are doing to the environment.
At the 2004 Piolet d’Or ceremony in Grenoble, House and Odintsov had a chance to discuss their differences of opinion. I would have liked to hear this conversation. House’s problem with the Russians includes more than the issue of abandoned ropes. He questions whether the so-called Russian style is even a valid means of ascent. Somewhat ironically, two members of the Piolet d’Or jury were Valeri Babanov and Koshelenko, who had provoked similar
criticisms from House when their first ascent of the southeast pillar on Nuptse won the 2003 Piolet d’Or. House later editorialized, “Alpinism is not: fixed ropes, fixed camps, bolts, high-altitude porters, or breathing supplemental oxygen. Ever since the great alpinists of the previous generation brought alpine style to the Himalaya, any other style of ascent is a gross and unacceptable step backward into the past, and a great strike against all that is beautiful about the pursuit. I also believe that alpinists from all countries should stand up strongly for good style and draw a line that the style Babanov and Koshelenko employed is no longer acceptable.”