Everything was primed and ready to go the next day. In the early morning hours of 2 August, the mountaineers set off from their base camp to begin their ascent of the north wall. Stefan Glowacz and Philipp Hans, who was also a part of the team last year, started things off. The rest of the team had to bide their time down below at a glacial moraine. The plan was simple: The separate teams were to ascend the wall at an interval of one to two days. But this best-laid plan soon went awry. After Stefan drilled two pitons into the wall and ran rope through them, a loud cracking sound shattered the morning silence. “Even the guys standing below on the glacier heard it. We all thought it was the sound of glacier ice, ” the LOWA-PRO Team athlete said in recalling the precarious situation. A second crack soon followed, and Stefan realised one thing: That was no glacier! “I’m completely exposed out in the open and stuck in one place, ” the extreme climber wrote in his diary. “There is no ledge nearby where I could take refuge if rocks started to fall. A third crack then pierced our ears, one that was much louder than the other ones. I started to panic. I was certain that something terrible was about to happen any second now. I just didn’t know how terrible: Would it be just a few rocks or a shower of them that came flying down?” It turned out to be a shower. A plate of granite silently slipped free from the wall about 100 metres above the two climbers and plummeted towards Stefan and Philipp, who was hanging on the wall 15 metres below Stefan. Their only option now was to simply press themselves as tightly against the wall as possible and pray. Luck was on their side! The plate crashed into a ledge about 50 metres above the two men and split into pieces: “The rocks shot by us on the right and left like bullets as they plunged downward, ” Glowacz wrote. “With a thump, a rock slammed into my right thigh. Excruciating pain shot through my leg. The lower section of my right arm took the next hit. I wasn’t scared or panicking at that point. I was totally in control. The shower of rocks eased, and suddenly everything was still. I held my position and waited for the next round of rocks to fall. The shock made me feel nauseated as I slowly tried to right myself. I was afraid to look down at Philipp. But miraculously just one rock had ‘grazed’ his thigh.” With Stefan’s painful wounds bleeding, the two climbers worked as fast as possible to get off the wall. The remaining team members rushed to meet Stefan and Philipp when they reached the moraine and attended to Stefan’s wounds. Some returned to the base camp, while Philipp and Christian gave it shot at two other locations. To no avail! They had no better luck the next day either – the north wall is brittle and, thus, incalculable.