Tripreport from Robert

[Harry]

Robert just sent me his tripreport, this might be useful for future expeditions:

Chogolisa – Bride Peak

With its symmetrically clean lines, this is one of the Karakorum’s most beautiful, yet least climbed and seen mountains. Andy Fanshaw called their traverse of the summit ridge the Magic Line. Yet it is not to be underestimated – the famed Herman Buhl lost his life here.

Over the years I have developed this love – hate relationship with mountaineering. I thrive on the remote nature, the hard physical work, and the isolation. This all helps distract from the mundane issues of life and invigorates the soul. But, I dislike the nights (the difficulty to breathe and the claustrophobia) and I hate being really scared. But with the unpleasant memories of previous expeditions sufficiently distant, it was time for a new adventure.

Our expedition consisted of 8 South Africans (Ulrike Kiefer from Jo’burg, Linda Daffue from Kroonstad, Anthony van Tonder and Ian Bailey from Pietermaritzburg, and Fran Hunziker, Andre Schoon, Cecilia Rademeyer and myself from Cape Town). We were joined by my two Dutch friends, Marian Slot and Harry Kikstra. Harry was using this as a warm-up to a subsequent trip to the North side of Everest. Our destination was a not-so-well-known mountain called Chogolisa (‘Big Hunting ground’ in Balti). Chogolisa is an aesthetically proportioned mountain in Northern Pakistan’s Karakorum Range, and is situated a long day’s walk from K2.

Chogolisa’s first summit attempt was undertaken in 1909 by the Count of Abruzzi (after an unsuccessful attempt on K2). He got to an impressive 7,498m – a height record at the time. The mountain is best known for claiming the life of famed Herman Buhl in 1957 when a cornice collapsed during the descent from an unsuccessful summit bid with Kurt Diemberger. The Northeast summit, Bride Peak, was first climbed a year later by a Japanese team using bottled oxygen. The 10m higher Southwest summit (7,665m) was only first summited by an Austrian team in 1975. By 2004, the mountain had seen a mere 8 or 9 successful ascents.

We opted for the route most frequently used to climb the mountain. It was pioneered by a German husband and wife team in 1976 (who drove to Pakistan from Germany and had to hike in 150km). This route follows the 1000m high technical Northwest rock and snow ridge accessed from the head of the Vigne glacier. The spur leads onto a snow plateau (about 6500m), which then leads a further 1150m up the summit slopes of Chogolisa’s northern face.

Following a frantic two months of organising, the team congregated in Islamabad in early July. We met our tour operator, did some shopping, and sat through a bureaucratic and rather pointless session with the Ministry of Tourism. Our guide, YahYah, we soon established to be a wonderful person with a joyful, even-tempered predisposition and many years of guiding experience. We also met our rookie Liaison Officer (LO), Captain Tariq, an initially reasonable seeming, somewhat portly, 28 year-old fellow. However, it soon transpired that he was using this trip as a money making scheme, under the guise of trying to shed some weight.

We then embarked on a two day journey up the Karakorum Friendship Highway (a 10-year joint project between the Pakistani’s and the Chinese) along the impressive Indus valley. This is undoubtedly the most beautiful, impressive, and unrelentingly terrifying road I have been on. Sheer drops to the Indus below and steep loose slopes of rock and scree above, and an apparently reckless approach to driving, made for sustained jaw clenching. The initially lush green slopes of the Hindu Kush range soon gave way to a desolate, mountainous desert with an occasionally contrasting green oasis – ancient farming settlements tapping water from glacial rivers along canals chiseled into the rock. On our second day along this road I got my first glimpse of an 8000er – Nanga Parbat.

In Skardu, one of the bigger towns in the Northern Territories, we swopped our bus for a bunch of jeeps and took a bouncy 6 hour ride up another impressive road hewn into the mountains to Askole, the trailhead of our 70km slog up to base camp. An astounding 104 porters would accompany us on our trek in. Another 20 or so had already carried in supplies or would do so later.

Looking forward to a peaceful saunter up the magnificent Baltoro glacier, we were soon reminded of the reality of the geologic instability of these mountains, when some car-sized boulders came somersaulting down the slopes where we had just passed, forcing several porters to jettison their loads and run for safety.

With each day’s walk up the valley and the ancient glacial ice, the magnificence and scale of our surroundings increased. But these were still the foothills. Slowly the peaks became steeper, higher and whiter, and we got to see our first really famous peaks: Great Trango, Nameless Tower, and Mashabrum – separated from each other by immense subsidiary glaciers feeding into the Baltoro.

After 6 days we finally arrived at Concordia (4600m), the confluence of three major glaciers, where K2, Broad Peak, G4 (Gasherbrum), plus a host of ‘lesser’ peaks, presented themselves in unobscured glory. Concordia resembled a tent village. It was a busy year with K2’s 50th summit anniversary. Many tour operators had pitched permanent tent villages.

From Concordia it was another day’s walk up the Vigne glacier before we at last reached our base camp (about 4900m) situated next to an avalanche-sheltering rock spur below the Vigne peaks. At this stage most of us were feeling the symptoms of the altitude (and some had colds and gastro). Lucky for us we had a few days of bad weather which gave us all a chance to recuperate and acclimatise. Just having arrived at BC, our LO decided that he was quite ill, and with our expedition doctor’s encouragement, Captain Tariq headed back for the comforts of Skardu (at any measure, he was unwilling to accept a female doctor’s diagnosis of mild mountain sickness). We were all much relieved. Our relationship with him had cooled to barely civilised.



From BC, with the help of two porters, we began the arduous process of lugging equipment up the gently sloping Vigne glacier. Our first major hurdle presented itself in the form of a daunting-looking icefall. Instead of tackling the labyrinth of precarious-looking snow bridges and ice walls, we opted for skirting the problem on the rather exposed left-hand valley slopes. This led us to the upper reaches of the Vigne glacier, where we established our Advanced BC (5500m) at the base of the 1000m high spur providing an objectively safe’ish gateway to the snow plateau that in turn leads up the summit slopes. ABC was in the centre of a pristine snow bowl of high mountains. On sunny days we would fry in this parabola of focused sun rays. During bad weather, the bowl would spring alive with avalanches rumbling down the steep slopes. In fact, there was always stuff coming down – when it snowed there were avalanches, when it warmed up there were more avalanches, and when the sun came out the spur would start shedding rock. All of this would relentlessly work on our nerves.



The nights, to me, were the worst. Many of us experienced Periodic Breathing* problems, blocked nose, and the claustrophobia of waking up in a hot sleeping bag. I would wake up, hyperventilate, struggle to worm out of my hot cocoon, search for the light, and then settle down to breathing rhythmically and telling myself that all was ok. Added to this were the occasional loud crack of the glacier below us, and the ongoing rumbling of avalanches. All this generally made for pretty poor quality sleep, exacerbating my tiredness and grumpiness.

*Periodic Breathing is a type of Cheyne-Stokes breathing, where the climber wakes up acutely distressed and air-hungry. Because the breathing is shallower while sleeping, the climber’s O2 saturation levels drop even lower than they already are in the awake state at altitude.

We were for the first time starting to get a little worried about our schedule – the planned two to three days for establishing ABC, had turned into more than a week.

At ABC our days seemed to alternate with strenuous activity of working our way up the ridge, and days of restful inactivity usually coinciding with a worsening in the weather – this was a time to read, dream, chat and just be.

After having to sit out some more bad weather, Harry and I kicked off the climbing up the spur. A 4am start would mean 5 – 7 hrs of climbing before the snow would soften, making any further climbing too difficult and dangerous. It was slow progress dragging up and placing 250m of fixed rope, and it became an event finding solid rock placements. Snow stakes in the airy snow would take a day or two to solidify. Other team members followed us up carrying heavy loads of equipment. Ulrike and Anthony took it further the next day, creating a fixed route up to 5800m, where we later dug in a higher camp. Here the ridge became less steep, but we had to continuously concentrate to keep our distance from the corniced edge.

To prevent a Buhl-like accident, we placed running belays and bamboo wands as route markers. I found the going hard, very hard, and I felt exposed – just a little dot on the huge flank of this mountain. We frequently broke through the airy snow, and slowly I could feel my burning desire to reach the top wane in the face of so much hardship. I had to dig deep, one arduous step at a time, to push on behind Harry, who was leading this section. We only managed to laboriously trudge up another 220m of altitude, before our energy left us and we returned to our high camp.

 

Once again a few days of bad weather moved in, forcing us into the inactivity of listening to avalanches, reading and playing cards. Now time was starting to run out. Harry and Ulrike decided they would make a summit attempt. They slogged up to the higher camp in very poor conditions, supported by other team members carrying additional supplies. After spending two days in uncertain weather conditions, they reluctantly decided to abort. 500m of technical climbing up the spur were still required to access the 6500m high snow plateau, from where the 1150m high summit slopes could be tackled – this would push their time, endurance and acclimatisation limits.

With beaten down spirits we started the several day long process of stripping gear off the mountain and ferrying it back to BC. Early one morning, as I was on the lower slopes jumaring up the spur, I had my scariest experience of the trip. I heard the sound of ice whirring past me, coming from the hanging glacier above. When one of these smashed into my plastic boot, I unceremoniously dropped into a foetal position holding my axe above my helmet. While waiting for the whirring to end, I had a desperate urge to be lying on a warm, cosy Camps Bay beach (watching babes).

After having spent just over 4 weeks in the mountains, we started our long slog back to civilisation. While most of the porters carried the bulk of our gear out the standard Baltoro route, we, with a select group of porters, headed across the Gondogoro La – a 5600m pass giving us access to the beautiful Hushe valley. Going up the steep, fixed rope slopes of the La, I was again impressed by the toughness of the porters. We had our crampons, ice axes and fancy gear, while they used plastic moulded sports shoes, wore thin socks and knitted gloves, often not even using a stick as support.

 

After celebrating on top of the pass, we headed down the steep and unsteady slopes to our next camp, where we feasted our starved senses on the sounds of birds twittering, the sights of grass and alpine flowers, and a Coke. What followed were a relaxed few days, interspersed with rest days of working our way down this shorter and generally more hospitable valley, while still being treated to awesome views of glaciers and mountains like Mashabrum. In the Shaishcho camp we spent a pleasant evening singing and dancing with the locals.

While after five weeks of camping I was really keen to get back to creature comforts, it was also a certain anti-climax coming back to civilisation – the noise, the filth, the clutter of our lives, …

Though the odds of failure on any big mountain are always quite high, it is difficult not to feel disappointed, and we had many an hour of passionate discussion on this topic – essential in processing the failure. I had learnt some important lessons. The reasons are rarely singular, but usually occur in complex multi-faceted interactions, and their interpretation is of course highly subjective. The passages below, which are a reflection on some of the reasons as I interpret them, should be seen in this light.

We had from the start been on too tight a schedule. When investing so much in an expedition, one should, wherever possible, allow plenty of time for the customary bad weather and slower than planned progress.

While we had regular bad weather spells, I don’t believe they were unusual. We tended not to always push on during bad weather, but rather used them as a welcome excuse for inactivity and resting.

While one or two of our group probably had sufficient climbing experience, most of us (including me) had limited high-altitude technical snow climbing experience. This is where I feel we lacked most. Climbing the standard routes on mountains like Aconcagua, Mont Blanc and Denali had limited experiential value for an expedition like ours, where there is no standard, well-trodden path, no fixed rope, no Sherpa support, and no emergency rescue service. This all requires much higher levels of commitment and drive.

Not all members of the team were truly committed to climbing this mountain all the way to the summit. This included me at times – I felt quite overwhelmed by this mountain, which resulted in a drop in commitment. Here it is necessary for team members to motivate each other through these moments of angst and doubt.

This is where it helps to intimately know your climbing buddies (warts and all), which is of course rarely possible on bigger expeditions. Altitude and the other extremes of high mountains put severe physical and emotional stress on members.  A good emotional support system and expressed empathy is immensely valuable in easing these stresses. Also, as a team you need to know exactly how all the members are feeling personally and how they feel about the mountain. This requires emotional openness and communication, and is something I feel we can all learn from. It is not easy to achieve, because it requires defence mechanisms and barriers to be dropped, which in turn makes people feel vulnerable. But I have found that once this has been achieved, the communication channels become more open and direct, and it strengthens the team bond.

But these issues, while important in planning an expedition, are really part and parcel of most expeditions, and to me did not significantly detract from a fantastic mountain experience, and I would like to thank my fellow team members for helping make this a wonderful trip. A big thanks also goes to our sponsors, who considerably lightened the financial burden of this undertaking (see sponsor list below).

So my love-hate relationship with high mountains continues, but already the memory of the hardships is receding and I am beginning to plot my next mountain adventure.

Travel information:
We used Vista Tourism (vista-tourism.com), who probably provided us with average to good service. They deal with a lot of South African groups, but mainly trekking groups and travelling sports teams. There were some disagreements about the final costs, specifically owing to porterage costs – but it was a difficult year with porter shortages due to the K2 anniversary. It is important to make sure that as many of the costs are confirmed ahead of time. There are a host of other reputable tour operators to choose from, and it is advisable to obtain several quotes.

This trip ultimately worked out very expensive, but if one is prepared to travel lighter with less gear and less creature comforts, one can save costs. Also, if a lower mountain is selected, one can save significantly on peak fees and porter costs, and the cost and hassle of an LO.

While most national travel advisory services list Pakistan as ‘dangerous’, our experience proved quite the contrary. The Pakistani’s that we met (especially those from the Northern Areas) were amongst the friendliest, most hospital and honest people I have encountered. Our Captain Tariq was our only exception. He later tried to formally accuse two expedition members of displaying public affection – specifically ‘kissing in public’ (somewhere high up on the glacier).
Rubbish is a significant problem in the area. See separate article on global rubbish ethics.

Sponsors:
Financial support: MCSA Cencom, and the MCSA Cape Town, Jhb and KZN sections. NKBV
Clothing and equipment: Cape Storm and RAM (Black Diamond)
Beverages, food and other: Nestle, Bokomo, PVM, Adventure Food, van Dyk Pharmaceuticals, UPD Pharmaceuticals, H2O Water
Dutch sponsorship: NKBV & The North Face