A team of four Slovenian women climbers have made a combined four new routes in the mountains above the Lalung Valley in the Indian Himalayas. Standing out in terms of length and difficulty is a 2,000-metre route they named Here Comes the Sun on the eastern ridge of the previously unclimbed peak Lalung I (6,243 m).

The new routes were climbed by Anja Petek, Patricija Verdev, Ana Baumgartner and Urša Kešar, members of the women's Alpine climbing expedition Lalung 2024, with their feat announced by the Alpine Association of Slovenia on 2 October.

It took Petek and Verdev five days of Alpine-style climbing in mid-September to climb the Here Comes the Sun route. They rated it ED, the highest rating under the French six-level scale.

Before that, on 31 August Petek and Verdev climbed a new route, called Connection (1,400 m, 15 hours) to set up camp at 5,300 meters, just below an unnamed peak above the valley.

Petek, the most successful Slovenian woman Alpine climber lately, previously also participated in expeditions in Kyrgyzstan (2017) and twice in Peru (2019 and 2022).

In Peru, she climbed a new route in the eastern face of the previously unclimbed Hualcan (6,165 m) with fellow Slovenian Andrej Jež and Peruvian Aritz Monasterio.

Another tandem in the Lalung 2024 expedition were Baumgartner, who has gained the most experience in the Slovenian and central Alps, and Kešar, who has also participated in expeditions in Peru and Kyrgyzstan.

The two managed to climb new routes below the unnamed 5,332-metre peak - in the northern face of the peak on 10 September, a 800-metre route called Bear Camp, and the 670-metre route Calm Before the Storm? on 13 September.

The mountaineers ended the expedition early, after less than four weeks, because of the bears that kept visiting their tents in the base camp.

"This is the first [female] expedition in which the climbers climbed a new route that ends as it should, at the top of the mountain," veteran Alpine climber and mountain guide Tina Di Batista commented for the Alpine Association of Slovenia.

Di Batista hopes the expedition will encourage other Slovenian women climbers to tackle even higher mountains in the Himalayas and put Slovenian women's mountaineering on an even higher level.