In March of this year, news sites on the internet created controversy based on a writer who claimed to know that Simone Moro was aware he did not climb the highest of the three Beka Brakai Chhok peaks.

This is certainly untrue and will be explained here in detail. The “case” of Beka Brakai Chhok (BBC) is truly one of the most confusing subjects in the history of High Asian research. Simone Moro achieved a fine, historical first ascent, a relatively rare feat in modern times. He and his companion Hervé Barmasse well deserved the “Dalla Longa Award”: BBC South is without question the most beautiful and the most challenging of the three BBC peaks.

In 2006, after private correspondence, it was realized that BBC Central is the highest of the three summits.

If you want to know the difference between the “big” world of passionate climbing, and the “small” world of private passionate research, then you need look no further than the story of BBC. This is a saga about peak identification and listing: it is about comparing maps and checking photos from all directions, mainly panoramas produced by expeditions that achieved first ascents. People involved in this confusing story are not to blame, particularly not the recent first ascensionists.

On August 6th, Riccardo Cassin, the leader of the successful Gasherbrum IV expedition in 1958, died, aged 100.

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Yesterday the Polish mountaineer Andrzej Marciniak was found dead on Posrednia Gran in the High Tatras. He ascended Everest in 1989 and Annapurna I in 1996. He was 50 years old.

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