Dave Turnbull climbs the summit ice slope during the first ascent of Gojung

The boss of the British Mountaineering Council and the president of the Alpine Club today released more details of their successful summit of an unclimbed peak in the Himalaya.

Dave Turnbull, chief executive of the BMC, joined HM Revenue and Customs employee Mick Fowler for the first ascent of 6,310m (20,702ft) Gojung, also known as Mugu Chuli.

The climb was achieved in four days on the west face of the mountain, which lies in western Nepal. Turnbull and the Berghaus sponsored climber, dubbed the climbing taxman, took a line up a central ice couloir to the summit, then traversed north along the summit ridge, taking in another unclimbed and unnamed 6,264m (20,551ft) peak.

The pair then descended to the upper reaches of the glacier that had been their starting point.

Mick Fowler said: “This was a brilliant outing; one of the best I have done.

“It had all of the right ingredients to make a great trip: remote area, challenging to get to, interesting culture, lots of eye-opening sights. And that was before reaching the mountain.

“The climb itself also had exactly the criteria that attract me. There was wonderful, technically challenging climbing, it was objectively safe, with an unclimbed, eye-catching line leading directly to a similarly unclimbed summit, and there was a different route of descent.

Mick Fowler, left, and Dave Turnbull

“We were even able to add a subsidiary first ascent on the way down.

“Add in incidents such as crashed aircraft – the airline that we flew in with had no active planes at all by the time we flew out – and amazing landslides from the heavy monsoon that at one point looked as if they would stop us even getting to the mountain, and we had a full selection of memorable moments.

“To overcome them all and achieve exactly what we set out to do, and find the climb even better than we had expected, has to make it all add up to one of the best and most enjoyable trips I have been on.”

A Spanish team made an unsuccessful attempt on Gojung in 2009.

The pair used clothing and equipment from Berghaus’s latest Extrem range, and tested prototypes of products that are being developed for future seasons.