Zang Brakk (4,800m), southwest face, Hasta la Vista David. Between August 10 and 13, Silve- stro Stucchi, Anna Lazzarini, Enea Colnago, and I clim bed a new route on the southwest face of Zang Brakk. O ur route follows

the m ost obvious line up the center o f the face, clim bing a series o f cracks and slabs up the lower portion that is less than vertical. On the second half, where the wall becomes vertical, we climbed a series of fairly obvious dihedrals. The quality of the rock we encountered was gener­ally superb. The slabs are very com pact and do no t offer m any options for protection. The

cracks tend to be very shallow and thin, and only take knifeblades, which were difficult to place, and occasionally an angle piton. We placed one bolt and one piton in each belay, which in tu rn we used on the descent, and placed only two o ther bolts in between pitches.

In bad w eather we fixed the lower 200 meters, and camped in a broad grassy ledge that we dubbed “il giardino” (the garden). In less than ideal w eather we fixed another 120 m eters o f rope above this point, and on the 13th, under a bright blue sky, we clim bed the rem aining 430 meters to the sum m it.

We nam ed the route Hasta la Vista David (750m, VI+ A l) in honor of a climber on an expedition from Navarra (Spain) with w hom we shared basecamp; he died during an attem pt on Drifika (6,447m)

Elena Davila, Bergamo, Italy Translated by Rolando Garibotti