Blog: johnloguk

ELUSIVE SUMMITS (PART 1)

There are many reasons why some of us climb mountains; chasing a real challenge in an increasingly artificial and controlled world, seeking solitude, seeking companionship, searching for something deeply personal within us, pushing ourselves physically and emotionally etc. The oft quoted "because it is there" comment by George Mallory about Everest has come to be the ultimate climber's motivation, but he was actually taken out of context. He made it as an off the cuff remark to an American journalist, and later said that if he had had more time he would have said something much more profound! Strange that, because you can hardly get more profound than "because it is there". It is just that Mallory felt he had short changed the mountains somewhat in that short phrase.

I suspect that most climbers are like me, we all climb for a multitude of reasons, and these change depending on the circumstances. But there is no doubt that there is something deep within us that wants to push ourselves that little bit harder, that little bit further, just to see what is around the next corner, both geographically and spiritually. I have a lifelong ambition to climb all the 3000' mountains in Britain, known as "the Munros". I'm about 2/3rds of the way through them, and no doubt they will be the subject of another blog on another day, there is much magic there. But the real challenges are in the big mountains, and this blog is about my search for an elusive Himalayan summit.

Now I'm an ordinary guy, pretty fit for my age but I'm no Chris Bonnington or Reinhold Messner, so this tale is within the reach of most people reading it, honestly it is! I first went to the Himalaya after a chance meeting with a guy in the Nags Head pub in Edale, Derbyshire. It turned out that he was "training" for a trip to Nepal and a trek to see Mount Everest. Now this guy was great, we had a lot of laughs, but back in my tent that night I was horribly jealous that he was about to go to the Himalayas, and I was due to go back to work on Monday! So I sat down with some walking magazines when I got home and decided I was going to see Everest myself. To cut a long story short I went on a package trek to the Everest region, quite an adventurous one, taking in a few small peaks round about 18,000', but it left me wanting so much more. It was basically a walking trip, with nothing harder than a Lake District fell, and wherever we went we were overshadowed by huge ice peaks, I wanted to climb something bigger. I needed to get high and look down on things, not be looking up all the time.

Towards the end of that first trek it became obvious that several of us felt the same way, and over the next few months we kept in touch and planned our next move. The next natural step was to tackle a trekking peak, there are 14 in Nepal, between 19,000' and 22,000'. These vary in difficulty from technically "easy" to pretty difficult, but at that altitude nothing is really "easy". You need permits, much like the bigger peaks, but at a much reduced fee from the "big ones". We went for the highest of the trekking peaks, Mera, which just happens to be technically "easy" and offers stunning views of Everest.

Everything went well, meeting up with old friends in Kathmandu, seeing the sites for a couple of days, then going to the airport for the flight to Lukla and the mountains. We watched our bags loaded onto the little Twin Otter plane, the adrenaline was starting to pump, itchy feet, nervous smiles, even more nervous tummies! Then disaster, we watched as our bags were taken off the plane again, the weather had closed in at Lukla, no more flights that day! This is a regular occurance in Nepal, clear mornings, but increasing cloud as the day goes on, and lots of later flights get cancelled. The next day the same thing happened, soul destroying, what to do? If we lost more days there wouldn't be enough time left for the trip. We rushed around Kathmandu trying to find alternatives, basically another peak that didn't require a plane to get to it, and one we could get a permit for quickly, there wasn't one. Then a nice man at the permit office felt sorry for us and said we could have a permit to climb Ramdung Peak, we were saved.

Now Ramdung (later to be affectionately known as "Sheep Sh*t!) is 19,500' high and lies on the south side of the remote Rowaling Valley. This was where Eric Shipton found the famous Yeti footprint while doing a recce for the 1953 Everest expedition. It is now a popular trekking destination, but then it had been closed for over 10 years, and we were only the second group to have a permit to climb Ramdung in all that time. There are different routes to the Rowaling, but ours took the road to Charikot, followed by the long descent into the huge Tamba Khosi valley. We then trekked north up the Tamba Khosi, before climbing out steeply to the east and the almost hidden mouth of the Rowaling.

Unlike the blazed trail to Everest base camp this was true unspoilt Nepal, and we were the only westerners in the whole area. Very quickly we realised that we had fallen on our feet, and this was going to be much better than the more popular Mera Peak. We didn't see any Yeti, but we did see a sophisticated tiger trap, set up to catch a tiger that had been killing the local goat population one by one. Personally I hope the tiger got away, but we could understand why the people wanted to catch him. The trek was uneventful until we got near the village of Beding. Then a big snowstorm came in. We had a memorable lunch sheltering in a cave, slowly turning into kippers with the smoke from the cooking stoves, then a slow trudge in worsening conditions to our overnight camp in Beding itself.

We awoke to a magical winter wonderland of deep snow and pristine azure blue sky, definitely a morning when we were glad to be alive. Huge peaks all around, the village clinging to the steep hillsides, looking almost as though it had grown organically out of the rock. We weren't going to go far in all this soft snow, so it was a good job we had planned to stay for a day to acclimatise to the altitude. We took loads of photos, found the local football pitch, visited the Gompa (monastery), and had a bit of a trek up towards the Tibetan border on the north side of the valley. It was a great day. That night we were invited to visit a local family, something that often happens in Nepalese villages. They plied us with chang (homebrew) and chilli chips that took the top of your head off. Never one to refuse food I was the only person to finish the chilli chips, to much applause from our hosts. They had clearly thought us soft westerners wouldn't be able to cope with them, I was something of a hero, if only for a few minutes!

The next day we moved up the valley to the summer Yak pastures at Na and made another camp. The snow was starting to melt and we explored the first part of the route up our mountain. We also explored towards the Tashi Labsta pass which leads to the Khumbu and Everest. We were revelling in being so alone up here, everything felt new, none of us had read anything about this area beforehand, making us feel like true explorers. Suddenly we realised that one of our party, Alexa, was looking very ill, almost on the verge of collapse. Her chest was gurgling, pulmonary oedema, altitude sickness, this was serious. Quickly into a sleeping bag and a tent to get warm and assess the situation. She was vomiting horrible black liquid with flourescent green chunks, I won't even attempt to describe the smell, and for some reason I ended up clearing it up! It was clear that Alexa had to go back down the valley, the only sure cure for altitude sickness. To stay at this altitude would result in death in a few hours, literally drowning in her own bodily fluids. As usual the porters and sherpas are happy to do whatever is asked of them, and they physically carried Alexa back down the valley, and 2 of them agreed to stay with her for as long as it took. She didn't want any of us to give up our chance at the mountain, so we were under orders to carry on and climb it for her.

Alexa's illness put a dampener on things that night, altitude sickness is a killer and it can creep up on anyone so suddenly. It put everything into perspective, at least we knew she would be OK at a lower altitude. The next day we pushed on up the mountain, establishing a camp just below the Ramdung Glacier. The views were stunning, north into Tibet and the beautiful triple peaked ice giant of Gauri Shankar. Menlungtse and the 8000metre lump of Shishapangma were in the distance, but numerous lower nameless peaks nearby dominated the view.

The following day it was onto the glacier. The snow had covered the crevasses so we roped up. It was hard going, breaking through the crust into the soft snow underneath at every step. We had regular stops, there was no rush, the weather was set fair now. We had to find a way around a huge ice fall of jumbled ice blocks bigger than a house, then onto flatter ground and our high camp. At the time this was the most spectacular place I had ever been. The views were now beyond compare. A plume of cloud trailed off Gauri Shankar like smoke from a chimney, suggesting strong winds higher up, but for now our campsite was idyllic.

Summit day dawned bitterly cold, minus 25 degrees at least, and this time the views did nothing to warm us up. Hot tea in our sleeping bags, then the usual painful decision to leave the warmth of your bag and get dressed. The simplest tasks can take ages at altitude and in extreme cold, but eventually we were dressed, breakfasted and roped up ready to go for the top. A couple of guys had decided they were exhausted and this was their summit. It is important to know your limits and very brave of them to admit they had had enough. Many people push on and get into difficulties, even on much lower mountains. The first couple of hours went well. We warmed up and the snow was solid under foot. Then we reached a col, where the ground fell away on all sides, leaving us with a short descent before the final climb to the summit. This was our first proper view of the summit, an icy dome, still looking a long way away, but the main thing to hit us was the wind.

Luckily the wind was behind us, but it was blowing the snow into stinging spindrift and rapidly covering our tracks. We decided to mark our route with canes that we could follow on the way back down if it got really nasty. It took an age to get to the base of the small summit dome and by then the wind was almost blowing us over. A quick discussion above the howling gale and we knew we were beaten. Maybe only 100' from the top, but it was steep hard ice. We could have climbed it, but it would have taken some time to make the route safe, and the longer we stood still the more the wind cut through us. It was also possible that we could have been blown off that final steep ice pitch, we were struggling to stand still on a broad ledge, so we turned and headed back down.

There was a brief feeling of failure and wasted effort, but that was blown away on the wind as we turned into it and felt its full force. With windchill we reckoned it was approaching minus 50 degrees, and any exposed flesh started to get frost nip instantly. My nose end was first, and I only just realised in time and made sure there were no gaps in my balaclava. The descent was an epic, especially the short climb back to the col, in increasingly soft snow that made every step a massive effort. The wind kept blowing us over, and as we were roped up we often pulled the next guy over with us, despite the slack on the rope. Tempers were in danger of getting frayed, then suddenly we were over the col and out of the wind again. There below us were the dots marking our high camp, safety. The next 2 hours were relative bliss as we watched the steam from the constantly boiling kettles getting closer.

Several cups of tea and energy bars later were were packed up and ready to move on down the mountain. We hadn't got to the summit, but we were damn close, and we knew we had made the right decision not to push for it. The walk back down the valley was a delight. The energy flows back into you as you descend from high altitude, you feel as though you are walking on air. A few days later we met up with Alexa again and swapped adventures.

This was a great expedition, but we still hadn't got our summit, so plans started immediately for our next trip, and that was even more eventful!

by johnloguk on 17:35 on 20th June 2007