Post by Rónán K on Sept 8, 2012 11:34:17 GMT 1
Well, the Expedition. The Kyrg. THe Big E in Central Asia.
Went to the Kyrg. Bought 20kg of meat and 20kg of chocolate. Got in a big ridiculous 11 litre V6 diesel truck and drove to mountains. Got said truck stuck for 3 days and spent a week walking up and down with bags whilst getting headaches. Camped at 4200m for 2 and a bit weeks, mostly lounging about drinking tea reading kindle and playing chess. Occasionally got up and climbed mountains. I myself attempted
Peak Ujgur (4979m) by E ridge. (Kernan-Gilmour)
Seemed easy. 1hr 30min walkin to col at 4600m then a dash up the ridge unroped. Ridge some dodgy snow, roped up, found loose rock and decided against. Back at BC by 9am.
Unnamed Peak 5102m. 'Tramadol and Fingertape' by SE Couloir. (Gilmour-Kernan) 700m D
Decided on a cool looking big icy couloir. Long walkin again, negotiated avalanche debris then started daggering. Roped up at 11 pitches and 6 hours later reached the top - like the Contamine-Mazeaud on the Tacul but longer. Scottish III with a wee bit of IV. 8 abalokov abseils - some v. dodgy - to descend. Then a 2 hour walk across horrible crotch-deep soggy snow to BC. V hard to say where the actual summit was but we made it to 5065m. It's more of a ridge than a peak; now called Moonlight Arete.
Peak Ujgur attempt 2.
Eagle Traverse (Gilmour-Kernan) 1000m D.
Decided to have a go at Ujgur from a different angle - soloing up a wide couloir on the west of the N face. Very pleasant, mostly about 65 degrees or so, perfect soloey daggering. Roped at about 4800m and proceeded up a series of couloirs and over cornices into and out of China, reaching the summit at 9.30am and the first ascent of this peak. Descent was by the previously attempted east ridge; snow was better than before but there was nothing decent to abseil off so we had some dodgy badly protected downclimbing, reminiscent of downclimbing the crux of COsmiques Arete without the good gear. Interesting. Close call when COnor grabbed the sling I used as a belay to help lower himself - the rock it was attached to broke off and fell into China. Luckily he caught himself on the snow before we joined it.
From here we unroped and followed the snow ridge back doen to the glacier, back at BC for lunch!
Gets the name from the man-sized email that flew 10m overhead just as we finished.
Raven Peak (5380m) West Ridge
Poles tried it in a 27 hour roudn trip ending inf ailure, we wanted to, but it snowed a lot so we stayed in bed. I hate Alpine starts anyway.
Unnamed Granite Monolith of 5600ish metres.
Wanted to have a go at this as unlike everything else it was on decent rock. Walked in with bivvyh gear the night before, soloed up a 60m 70deg ice slope to what we thought was a cwm but turned out to be a maze of big seracs. Realised we were going to be too slow So abalakoved off and walked back to camp in the moonlight. Enjoyable anyway.
Peak Rock Horse 5189m NW Face. Gilmour-Kernan Route. 750mish, TD.
A couple of days to go and fed up of the walk in up to the far end of the glacier so we went for this one up a spur glacier near camp. Peak was climbed by the Poles along the snowy West ridge so we decided on the cool looking NW Face. Bradley joined us for the walk in but after him and Alek's excellent ascent of the NF of Night Butterfly (5062m) 2 days previous was too tired and turned back.
As usual, we were unroped (not much point on the snow) and started daggering at 4600m. We made excellent progress to a steepening and rock band at 4950m and roped up and started pitching. 2 full-on 60m pitches of Scottish IV followed, incredible at near 5k m. One easier pitch of III then mixed ground, with thin ice over bad frozen rock. Conor dropped 2 icescrews (I somehow caught them) and belayed early (belay composed of 2 unspeakably bad ice screws, 2 axes, and COnor's left leg). Pitch 5 was only 10m but involved balancing up on looseness and terrible ice with no gear and bad consequences for all concerned in case of a fall. Made it anyway and built a 3 screw anchor in good gear, meanwhile COnor's leg fell off or something (or at least felt like it).
Last pitch involved a bellyflop over a cornice and the last 40m to the summit. Amazing route, had everything and was probably the hardest Alpine route I've done. And the 1hr 30min form summit to tea was pretty good too.
Started the process of bailing back down the valley the following day; 5 days and 75km of walking later I set my eyes on a magnificent site: Sacha our driver sitting in his Kamaz truck. Back to civilisation for phone calls, beer, bread, butter, and no more tims of obscure Estonian fish.
That's a brief summary of what I and COnor did - a full report of what everyone got up to will follow!
Went to the Kyrg. Bought 20kg of meat and 20kg of chocolate. Got in a big ridiculous 11 litre V6 diesel truck and drove to mountains. Got said truck stuck for 3 days and spent a week walking up and down with bags whilst getting headaches. Camped at 4200m for 2 and a bit weeks, mostly lounging about drinking tea reading kindle and playing chess. Occasionally got up and climbed mountains. I myself attempted
Peak Ujgur (4979m) by E ridge. (Kernan-Gilmour)
Seemed easy. 1hr 30min walkin to col at 4600m then a dash up the ridge unroped. Ridge some dodgy snow, roped up, found loose rock and decided against. Back at BC by 9am.
Unnamed Peak 5102m. 'Tramadol and Fingertape' by SE Couloir. (Gilmour-Kernan) 700m D
Decided on a cool looking big icy couloir. Long walkin again, negotiated avalanche debris then started daggering. Roped up at 11 pitches and 6 hours later reached the top - like the Contamine-Mazeaud on the Tacul but longer. Scottish III with a wee bit of IV. 8 abalokov abseils - some v. dodgy - to descend. Then a 2 hour walk across horrible crotch-deep soggy snow to BC. V hard to say where the actual summit was but we made it to 5065m. It's more of a ridge than a peak; now called Moonlight Arete.
Peak Ujgur attempt 2.
Eagle Traverse (Gilmour-Kernan) 1000m D.
Decided to have a go at Ujgur from a different angle - soloing up a wide couloir on the west of the N face. Very pleasant, mostly about 65 degrees or so, perfect soloey daggering. Roped at about 4800m and proceeded up a series of couloirs and over cornices into and out of China, reaching the summit at 9.30am and the first ascent of this peak. Descent was by the previously attempted east ridge; snow was better than before but there was nothing decent to abseil off so we had some dodgy badly protected downclimbing, reminiscent of downclimbing the crux of COsmiques Arete without the good gear. Interesting. Close call when COnor grabbed the sling I used as a belay to help lower himself - the rock it was attached to broke off and fell into China. Luckily he caught himself on the snow before we joined it.
From here we unroped and followed the snow ridge back doen to the glacier, back at BC for lunch!
Gets the name from the man-sized email that flew 10m overhead just as we finished.
Raven Peak (5380m) West Ridge
Poles tried it in a 27 hour roudn trip ending inf ailure, we wanted to, but it snowed a lot so we stayed in bed. I hate Alpine starts anyway.
Unnamed Granite Monolith of 5600ish metres.
Wanted to have a go at this as unlike everything else it was on decent rock. Walked in with bivvyh gear the night before, soloed up a 60m 70deg ice slope to what we thought was a cwm but turned out to be a maze of big seracs. Realised we were going to be too slow So abalakoved off and walked back to camp in the moonlight. Enjoyable anyway.
Peak Rock Horse 5189m NW Face. Gilmour-Kernan Route. 750mish, TD.
A couple of days to go and fed up of the walk in up to the far end of the glacier so we went for this one up a spur glacier near camp. Peak was climbed by the Poles along the snowy West ridge so we decided on the cool looking NW Face. Bradley joined us for the walk in but after him and Alek's excellent ascent of the NF of Night Butterfly (5062m) 2 days previous was too tired and turned back.
As usual, we were unroped (not much point on the snow) and started daggering at 4600m. We made excellent progress to a steepening and rock band at 4950m and roped up and started pitching. 2 full-on 60m pitches of Scottish IV followed, incredible at near 5k m. One easier pitch of III then mixed ground, with thin ice over bad frozen rock. Conor dropped 2 icescrews (I somehow caught them) and belayed early (belay composed of 2 unspeakably bad ice screws, 2 axes, and COnor's left leg). Pitch 5 was only 10m but involved balancing up on looseness and terrible ice with no gear and bad consequences for all concerned in case of a fall. Made it anyway and built a 3 screw anchor in good gear, meanwhile COnor's leg fell off or something (or at least felt like it).
Last pitch involved a bellyflop over a cornice and the last 40m to the summit. Amazing route, had everything and was probably the hardest Alpine route I've done. And the 1hr 30min form summit to tea was pretty good too.
Started the process of bailing back down the valley the following day; 5 days and 75km of walking later I set my eyes on a magnificent site: Sacha our driver sitting in his Kamaz truck. Back to civilisation for phone calls, beer, bread, butter, and no more tims of obscure Estonian fish.
That's a brief summary of what I and COnor did - a full report of what everyone got up to will follow!
