Kyrgyzstan Climbing - So Close to the Summit!

After spending a night cold enough to freeze our water bottles solid, even inside out tents, we got up around 4AM to pack up, eat a quick breakfast, and start our first summit attempt.  Of course, it's dark at that time, so we all had our headlamps on.  The reasons for starting so early include the fact that the glacier is less likely to swallow you when the temperature is lowest, and that bad weather usually arrives in the afternoon.  So, the idea is to get up and back down before bad weather arrives.  This means the team is obliged to maintain a fast pace, with few stops.

As far as the guide's pre-trip research indicated, no one had climbed this mountain before, which meant there was no established route.  The guides conferred on a route by looking at satellite photos, and then looking at the mountain itself once we arrived at advanced base camp.  This photo shows advanced base camp (see tents at lower right) and our route from there to the glacier.  We would have to go around the vertical edge of that big white glacier, by climbing up beside a steep and icy waterfall, to reach the peak.  Once at the glacier, we took a sharp right passing off the right side of the photo, out of view from below.

The first several hundred vertical feet of climbing were on that terrible scree terrain; loose rocks of all sizes.  At one point, Syco grabbed onto a three-foot tall rock to pull himself up, but the rock rolled loose.  He fell, landing flat on his back, which scared the crap out of us.  Luckily, his backpack broke his fall, and the huge rock fell beside him, instead of on him. We were all relieved to see him back on his feet in no time, as if nothing happened.

This mishap reminded us of the story Dave had told the night before about a recent trip he led in Mongolia, where a woman on the climb suffered a compound fracture in her leg while high up the mountain, in a region where no helicopter rescue was available.  They had to splint her leg, give her antibiotics and pain killers, and physically carry her down the mountain.  Dave and Misha had told us there was little chance of a helicopter rescue here either, so the idea that something like that could happen on our trip was in all our minds. 

After an hour or so of hiking, a little bit of dawn light started to filter into the sky.

Here we are approaching one of the more difficult passages of the climb, just at the icy waterfall.  Misha is preparing the rope so we can do a bit of rock climbing alongside the waterfall to get over this vertical rocky section.  Misha is out front, holding a rope, scouting the way up.

This was pretty daunting.  Being roped together meant no one could take a step up until the person behind was ready.  The worst point was where there was no good grip for our feet or our hands. All we could do was scoot up using the friction of body on rock, praying we wouldn't slide backward down the rock face.  Falling, even when roped in, is no fun: think broken nose, broken teeth, etc.

An hour later, we'd put on crampons and hiked a good ways up the glacier. There's an art to hiking on a glacier while roped together.  First of all, never step on the rope. Second, match your pace to the person in front of you, so there is little slack. The less slack there is, the shorter their fall into a hidden crevasse would be.  Third, don't jerk the rope too taught behind you.  Fourth, each footfall must be as close as possible to the same as the person in front of you, since stepping anywhere else may break through the surface to a hidden crevasse.

Here we are arriving at a brief resting point on the ridge.  Those are Misha's hands, reeling in the rope as each person arrives on this rocky outcrop where we stopped to decide where to go next.  That's my brother John, head down, trudging up the incline.

This spot afforded a spectacular view into the next valley.

A panoramic view of the same valley.  This is a truly remote place, where very few humans, if any, ever go.  Yes, there are still a few places like that left on our planet.  It makes me sick to think most of you are looking at this on a mobile phone screen.  If so, at least do me a favor and turn your phone sideways!

At this point, I was pretty exhausted, with the climbing, and the pace of the climbing, but the group was all in favor of continuing to the peak.  After a brief break, where we all tried to have some water and a snack, we returned to the wide open glacier, heading toward the peak.  The hiking became steeper and steeper as we approached the peak, with nothing but wide open white glacier in all directions.  I was just behind Misha, who was leading.  As we moved up,  he slowed down, searching with his ice axe for anything solid to use as an anchor.  Finally, he stopped and looked around.  He turned back to talk to Dave, saying it wasn't safe to continue without any anchor points, as there was a danger the seven of us could set off an avalanche.  Dave agreed with Misha, and we were all content to defer to their expert judgment.  At the end of the trip, we learned that one of Misha's best friends, an elite mountain climbing guide had died in an avalanche about a month before, in bad weather on Lenin Peak.

Knowing we'd reached our high point for the day, we all paused and looked around.  Here's what the peak looked like from where I was.  We estimated we were between one and two hundred feet from the top.  So close!

The tracks we made are visible as a line across the glacier leading up to the point where we've stopped.

This view shows the entire valley, all the way back to our base camp; all the way back to where we saw our shepherd on horseback in my second article on this trip.  In the middle of the river bed, way down there, you can even see the giant boulder we hiked past in another photo from my first article on this trip.  The boulder looks like a big black speck in the river bed about one sixth of the way up from the edge of the glacier.

In this photo (taken by Syco), you can see how photography is a bit of a challenge in this situation.  My pack is resting against my leg. The camera had to be packed away any time we were on the move.  I could only take photos when the whole group was stopping for a time.  It took time to take off the pack, get out the camera, take a few photos, then pack it away again.

After this, we turned back and headed down the mountain.  It was then that Dave, at the lead of his rope, was checking for crevasses with his ice axe, and dropped into one suddenly.  Fortunately, everyone was doing just as they should, the rope was taught between team members, and Alan and Rhys immediately fell back and dug in with their crampons and ice axes, securing Dave at the edge of the crevasse.  He'd only sank in up to his chest, catching his crampons on the far side of the crevasse.  He was able to leverage himself back out of it.  You can imagine how frustrating it was that my camera was packed away at this point!

A short while later, we arrived back at the icy waterfall we'd climbed on the way up.  Misha spent a few minutes deciding the best way to descend.  Here's Rhys rappelling down the icy waterfall we'd passed on the way up.

The view of the valley from up here, at this time of day, was beautiful.

This article is the third in a series about a truly adventurous mountain climbing trip my brother and I took to a remote part of southeastern Kyrgyzstan, near the Chinese border.

Click here to see the first article, which as all about getting to base camp. 

Click here to see the second article, about setting up advanced base camp, and training on the glacier.

Kyrgyzstan First Ascent - Training Day

After setting up base camp the previous afternoon, we packed up and headed out early in the morning to look for a good site for the first advanced base camp, and to do some alpine mountain climbing training.  We walked along the riverbed in some places.

[Note: I love making the photos huge, but I know this causes issues on some people's laptops.  To make them fit on your screen, you can press Control-Minus once or more times to shrink it.  Also, you can click on any image and it will pop up in a viewer sized for your screen.]

It took a few hours of hiking to get up to a good site for advanced base camp.   Millions of years of glacial motion has ground solid mountain rock into gigantic moraines of gravel, hundreds of feet high.  Moraines are no fun to hike on, because rocks are rolling and sliding under your feet with every step.  This photo was taken from the area where two glacial valleys join together. 

The aquamarine color of the pond is typical of glacial runoff water all over the world.  Water running off of a glacier contains stone dust created by all these rocks rubbing together.  The dust is so fine that much of it stays suspended in the water, rather than sinking to the bottom.  I've seen glacial water this same color in Canada, Norway, Argentina, and other places too.  

Here we are just after setting up our tents at advanced base camp.  This is where we'd launch the first summit attempts from.  For those of you who aren't sure, I'm the one on the left.  That's my brother John on the right, the one responsible for getting me into this crazy adventure.

After we set up our tents, we hiked up onto the glacier and did some training with crampons, ropes and ice axes.  Here's the team, all roped-up and ready to go.  That's Misha, our local guide on the left.  Then Dave, our guide from Secret Compass, John, Rhys from Sydney, Syco (pronounced seeko) from the Netherlands, and Alan from the UK.  We just found out Misha is going to be a member of a team attempting a rare ascent of K2 in winter.  So, yeah, Misha is a world-class mountaineer.  I'm actually worried for him on that trip.  That's extremely dangerous, even for elite climbers.  Here's a link to the climb.  Misha is a nickname for Mikhail.  His full name is Mikhail Danichkin.  

Misha set up a route to practice using our ice axes and crampons.  When I saw what he was doing, I was asking myself if it was OK to opt out of the exercise.  Of course it wasn't.  After climbing down one side of this glacier runoff stream, we had to jump down from one side to the thin ledge of ice on the other side.   Here's John mid-jump.  That's Misha watching over him.  

Once on the other side, we had to climb up and across the nearly vertical ice wall.  Here's John using nothing but his toe spikes to climb the wall.    

In this close-up, you can see the bottom spikes of his crampons are touching nothing.  

This is hard on the calf muscles, not to mention scary!  You have the sensation that the grip these two small spikes jutting out in front of your toes might break the ice any second.  Each time you take a step, you must always have two other points of support: ice axe in one hand, and the toes of your other crampon.  The most precarious points along a traversal are at the ice screws that secure the safety line to the ice wall.  At that point, you have to unhook one of your two carabiners from around the rope, then re-attach it to the rope on the other side of the ice screw.  Then you have to do the same with your second carabiner, so there is no time when you're not secured by at least one carabiner during the crossover. The whole time you're moving the carabiners across, you're supported by nothing but toe spikes dug into the ice.  

It was a great relief when we got to the top.  The relief was short-lived though, because Misha made us do it all over again for more practice.  Happily, having learned a lot from the first time across, the second time was considerably less nerve-wracking.  After this, we did training on crevasse rescue.  That was truly fascinating, as we learned how to use knots and carabiners to create leverage that allows a smaller person to pull a larger person up out of the crevasse.  

During this time on the glacier, the clouds came and went. Sometimes, it was all gray looking up the valley from where we were standing.  I couldn't get enough of staring at this peak, even if I was supposed to be concentrating on the training.  

There were glacial runoff streams all around us, like the we were training on in the photos above.  While we were in the middle of crevasse rescue training, I took a few minutes to run over and catch this one, taking advantage of a brief period of full sunlight. 

Other times, the sun broke through and brought the mountain tops into sharp relief.  You can actually see the advanced base camp here if you're looking at this on a computer screen, through probably not on a mobile phone.  You can see the green, blue, and red tents on the flat area just this side of the lake. 

Here's Misha over there taking photos later in the evening.  See him?  He's on the ridge, just under the cloud a bit to the left of center.

See the next article for photos from our first climb. 

Click this link to see the first article in this series about getting to base camp.  

Mountain Climbing in Kyrgyzstan

Early this summer, my adrenaline junkie brother was looking for something big to do to mark his fiftieth birthday.  Searching on the internet for "extreme adventure" and similar terms, he came up with this company based in London.  They've been doing extreme trips for years, like mountain climbing in Iraq last year, or crossing the desert in Libya even while it hovers on the brink of political chaos.  The trip that caught John's eye was to attempt first ascents of peaks in southern Kyrgyzstan, in the Tian Shan group of mountain ranges.  Like almost everyone, I had to look up where Kyrgyzstan is.  These would be peaks even the guides had never been to, with no known records of any previous ascents.

In preparation for the trip, we both spent lots of time this summer hiking stairs while wearing heavy packs.

After months of asking what we had gotten ourselves into, it finally arrived.  It took 24 hours of travel to get from Houston to Bishkek.  We finally met the cast of characters we'd be spending the next two weeks with at the Southside Guesthouse, a cozy place with a shared breakfast room and picnic table out on the patio in the enclosed yard.

The guesthouse was full of the most adventurous travelers we've ever met.  We met two different couples in their early sixties traveling with their own vehicles all the way from England to Shanghai.  One couple was driving a Land Cruiser, and the other couple each had their own giant off-road-capable motorcycles.

Our team consisted of a driver, a cook, a porter named Daniel, a Northern Irish guide named Dave (a former British paratrooper who guides TV crews in dangerous places these days), a local guide named Misha, who is a leading Kyrgyz mountain climber, me, my brother John, and three other climbers.  The three other climbers were Rhys from Australia, Sico from the Netherlands, and Alan from the UK.  All 25 or 26 years old!

Here we are about to head up to base camp in our GAZ-66, a Soviet military truck.  Manufactured in the late 80's, it was still going strong.  This is the only photo I didn't take. It was taken with Dave's phone.  

After spending the night at Misha's parents' cozy B&B in the lakeside town of Tamga, we were headed up into the mountains.  We passed over a high plains area between two mountain ranges on the way.  This was before we left the road behind.  This was early in the morning, so there was a nice mist rising off the highland lakes between the snow-dusted peaks.

Another from the same area.

Here we stopped to look around just before the road drops back down toward the rivers we would soon drive across.  

This was in a restricted area close to the Chinese border, requiring a permit to enter, but the driver just blew past the checkpoint off-road. There was a bit of nervous laughter about that. Here we were in a military-looking vehicle.

We drove across a giant riverbed, actually the confluence of two major rivers.  It was probably more than a mile across, of gravel, grass, and rivulets of varying depth everywhere.  We were often hanging onto anything we could grab onto as the truck negotiated steep rivulets.  Sometimes it felt the pots and pans in the back of the truck clanged loudly as the flew in the air as the truck seemed like it was about to roll over.  But the truck was built for this stuff, and we had an experienced driver.  The view from the other side.

A short while later, we arrived at the end of the valley where they had planned to establish base camp.  There was a shepherd on horseback, his three sheep dogs, and about a hundred sheep.

This was miles from any town or road, and long past any mobile phone or internet connectivity.  The shepherd lived out here in a tiny house with his family and a couple of other workers.  Hard to imagine what life is like for them.  

Misha told us these horses are a Kyrgyz breed adapted to the steep mountains and cold temperatures. We saw them riding these horses up impossibly steep rocky inclines with ease.

After our guides had a brief chat with the shepherd, the GAZ-66 headed back into the river bed and up the valley.  The funny thing is, we were all still out taking pictures.  The driver left us, and kept going for about a half mile without us.  The cab of the truck is not connected to the back half, so we were joking that he had no idea were weren't in the truck.

The river was getting deeper as we went up the valley, so we stopped to reconnoiter a good camp site on foot. I took this looking back down the valley. You can see Dave walking along the stream in the reddish jacket, and the GAZ-66 parked a ways behind him.

That afternoon, we set up the base camp at the farthest point up-valley that the truck could drive safely.

Here's a view of the base camp from one of the mountains just behind it.  What, you don't see the base camp?  See the zoomed-in version just below this.

And a closer view of the very same photo.  The yellow tent was the dining tent. You can see the GAZ-66 parked on the edge of the river bed.

Down in that riverbed, John found this Ibex horn.  Hunters come from around the world to hunt the Ibex here.  Misha (our local guide) said they're pretty common in the area we were in, but we never saw any live ones.  Only a couple of horns like this.

Next up, click here to see photos of us doing scary stuff our first day at advanced base camp.

You can see photos from our first climb in the third article.

Incredible Canary Islands Sunset Seen from Above the Clouds

Preview shot of the article below.  Facebook picks up the first photo in a blog post, so it has to be one of the best, even though it is totally out of order.  I hate this, but it's true, people won't come see the rest if the picture isn't that interesting.  Read on for the story.  This photo catches the sun just as it slips over the horizon. The mountains of La Gomera, over there across the ocean, are visible on the upper left.  

So, back to the order of things as they should be, starting here.  After a short hike where we took that photo of the pines reclaiming the lava in front of the volcano, it was late in the afternoon.  Instead of returning to the lodge, we decided to explore the other side of the park.  Since we were in the Mount Teide National Park, we were still at a pretty good altitude.  As we came around the bend in the road, we realized we were looking down on a cloud bank over the ocean, beyond the pine forests.  What a cool view! 

I stopped the car along the side of the road to take the photo above.  This part of the park has no view of the volcano, so it was pretty quiet.  Only a few cars passed while we hung out taking photos.  Here's Jennifer taking pictures.  

In most places along this road in the national park, there is nowhere to stop and park your car.  You have to find one of the few places without guard rails, cliffs, or boulders.  We found one place with a short concrete parking pad just a little further down the road, with one car already parked on it.  We had a bit of an adventure there, as I didn't realize the pad had about a foot-high dropoff at the back side of it.  I was trying to wedge our car next to the other one by parking at an angle and backing in.  In the middle of this process, I heard someone outside the car yelling "STOP!"  I turned off the car and put on the emergency brake so I could see what was going on.  

A couple was coming back to the car parked next to us.  They were the ones who had yelled.  I looked down to see that I had driven one of our back wheels off the edge of the concrete pad - it was hanging in midair, with a vertical drop of about a foot below it.  Luckily, all I had to do was get back in the car, and drive forward a two feet.  Whew, that could have been a real pain!  

This is one of the pictures taken minutes after all that excitement. There's nothing but ocean under all these clouds.  

As obsessed as I am with photo opportunities, it immediately occurred to me that was an amazing setup for a sunset.  So, despite the fact that we were almost two hours before sunset, we decided to stick around to see how it turned out.  It was definitely worth it.  

I know most of you are looking at these on mobile phones.  That kills me, because these should be seen on as large a screen as possible!  Well, at the very least, please rotate your phone sideways to see these full-screen on that teency device!   

In this early phase, you can see the rays of the sun filtering through the clouds just near the mountaintops of La Gomera, another Canary island just west of us.   

The photo below is really deceiving.  At first glance, that bright spot in the sky looks like the sun, but the sun is below the horizon.  That bright spot is actually a reflection of the sun in the high altitude, icy clouds.  

In this one, another Canary Island is visible to the northwest, the island named La Palma.    

A little closer view toward La Palma.  The pleasure in watching this slowly evolve in front of us is unforgettable.  One of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.

Moving on to a couple of nights later, we watched the sunset from the rocky shore near our hotel.  I know, way too many sunsets, but looking the other way was just a long row of hotel buildings, so this is what you get.  Here we have an Escher-esque view of puddles among the rocks reflecting the oranging clouds.  

Action sunset! 

This is the last set of photos from our trip to the Canary Islands.  This is the third in the series.  If you'd like to see more, click here to see these photos from all around the volcano, Mount Teide.  Click here to see a second set about a coastal hike on the far side of the island.

Coastal hike on Tenerife (One of the Canary Islands)

We spent one of the days of our trip to Tenerife on this hike along the mountainous coast of Tenerife.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, Tenerife is highly populated, so even in this remote area, there were houses and people almost everywhere.  This put a damper on the hiking, since you'd see a mix of sad-looking houses, roads, and power lines, almost everywhere except the best part of the hike.  On the other hand, the best part of the hike was really beautiful!

The hike starts from a well-maintained parking lot for about thirty cars along an extremely steep and windy road.  Despite driving an hour on long, winding, and steep roads, there were a moderate number of people there to hike.  There was a couple at the parking lot when we started, and there were people all along the trail as we hike.  There were only a few times when we couldn't hear or see anyone.

The trail quickly descends from the parking lot, along a grassy valley with a tiny, trickling stream with grassy banks, until it hits the ocean, about 45 minutes later.  The beach where it hits the ocean is black sand covered in large, smooth rocks of white, rust, grey and black colors.  The view down the coast from the black sand beach.  The breeze was nice.

Waves come rolling in with beautiful clear green highlights under their white crests. They keep the big rocks on the beach wet, shiny, and colorful.  Just next to the beach are steep cliffs the waves slam into, creating high plumes of spray.

After the beach, the trail climbs steeply up for a great view from the trail above.  In this view, you can see there is a town of small white houses just at the base of the devils-horn-looking conical hill rising up on the shore in the distance.  Also, there are more jutting cones of stone out in the water.  And notice the yucca plants lining the trail.  That's Jennifer, my wife, just in front of me on the trail.  This view made the whole hike worth it!

There were some hefty lizards here and there along the trail.  Not too terribly afraid of us. This was near where we stopped to have our lunch. 

The clouds moving in from offshore created a nicely layered tableau of stacked colors that almost look out of focus, until you notice the rocky outcrop at lower right.  This was taken just as we were approaching the small town.  

The trail passed through the outskirts, actually onto a couple of two-lane roads passing a few homes, before turning steeply uphill and heading into the trees and toward the pass going back to the start.  

This was the view back down to the town only twenty minutes after we started back uphill.  That was the last impressive view on the trail.  

After that, we were in trees, passing under a big power line and beside small, white, cement houses.

I'll throw this one in just for fun.  Taken a couple of nights later.  There are always good sunsets from the western side of the island, if you're near enough to the coast.  First thing to notice is that there's another island some miles away out there.  Quite a large island, with its own mountains.  The line of clouds forming a sort of crown of the island are created when the wet ocean air slides up the mountains of the island, and cools down and condenses at a higher altitude.  The same thing happens on Tenerife.  The clouds can sometimes seem to just stick to the top of the island, when they're really just regenerating themselves constantly.

This is the second post from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands.  You can see the first, all about Mount Teide, the huge volcano on the island, by clicking on this line.