The South African Chogolisa Expedition 2004

Introduction

Following my 2001 Hunza recce we debated possible objectives for a proposed expedition to the Western Karakoram in 2004. There were basically two proposals we had to consider :

An expedition to the Karakoram’s Batura valley to attempt a first ascent of the unclimbed northeast ridge on Sani Pakkush (6 952 m) over a 6 315 m subsidiary peak on its east side, which would have to be climbed from the Batura glacier by its north ridge

An expedition to attempt an ascent of Chogolisa (7 668 m) by its northwest spur accessed from the Vigne glacier which branches off the Baltoro glacier at Concordia. The ascent of the approx. 1 000 m high northwest spur, which involves technical climbing, gives access onto a large ice plateau from which the mountain’s north face is climbed. The route was first climbed in 1984.

I strongly favoured the Sani Pakkush option but the decision was finally taken to go for Chogolisa, probably because it is a 7 000 er. But it is also a truly alluring mountain and it has a well documented and fascinating climbing history.

There were ten members on the expedition, seven South Africans (Ian Bailey, Linda Daffue, Fran Hunziker, Ulrike Kiefer, Anthony van Tonder, Robert Zipplies and myself from South Africa – all members of the Mountain Club of South Africa, Cecilia Rademeyer a prospective member of the Mountain Club of South Africa and Harry Kikstra and Marian Slot NKVB members from Holland)

Here is my account of the expedition transcribed from my daily journal.

Saturday 3 July

Our Emirates flight to Islamabad over Dubai was about an hour late taking off from Johannesburg, but finally landed in Dubai at about 01:30. After disembarking we met up with Arabian Adventures (who we had engaged to make the necessary arrangements for our short stay in Dubai) who drove us to the Moon Bay apartments – going out from the concourse to get into the taxi was like stepping into an oven! At the hotel we found we had been allocated decent large rooms with good aircon- with all the expended pent up energy we simply crashed, completely oversleeping and only surfacing after 11:00. But we did manage to all foregather for a late breakfast. Then Ulrike, Fran and I walked down to the sea, first exploring new shopping arcades on the way (selling mainly textiles) before climbing onto the small wooden ferry to get to Deira and the old town on the other side of Dubai Creek. How beautifully cool in comparison on the water! Fantastic going back, first to the Spice Souk (wonderful aromas) then taking our time strolling through the Gold Souk. On the way back we stopped for lunch eating a papaya at a streetside café and then a little further on found the fruit, vegetable, meat and fish market by the side of the canal. We then caught a ferry across the canal and made the horribly hot walk back to the hotel (we later found out that the midday temperature had been 48⁰ C!)

We rested in our hotel room until 19:30 when Arabia Adventures picked us up and took us back to the airport. Our rather full Emirates flight to Islamabad (about three hours) took off at 22:15. Disembarking at Islamabad there was a long tedious wait collecting all the expedition bags, sticky heat, jostling crowds and crying babies! Then walking into the arrivals hall we were met by the usual mass of humanity - so very happy to find the smiling face of Abbas, Vista Tourism’s representative in the crowd waiting for us with our names on a board. We were driven in a Vista bus to the Park Continental Hotel and were thankful to be able to fall into bed.

Some Dubai thoughts :

The surpisingly clear seawater in the canal despite all the rubbish tipped off the boats

The incredibly fine yellow gold filigree work you see in the shops of the gold souk

The friendliness of the shopkeepers, eager to sell their wares, but equally happy to show one and talk about the wares they are selling.

Sunday 4 July

I think because we were all so absolutely bombed out after all the walking we did in Dubai in the heat of the day and arriving so late in Islamabad (due to the time change we lost another hour flying from Dubai), we only woke at 11:00, but did just still manage to find some breakfast. It was good at last to meet Harry and Marian and a bit later Bilal, the person in Vista’s office responsible for all our expedition’s arrangements getting into and out of the mountains. Bilal brought with him our expedition’s appointed Liaison Officer, Tarig a captain seconded from the army. We sat down in the hotel lounge and went through all the clothing and equipment we had purchased and assembled for the LO – he said he didn’t like the Cape Storm trousers we had bought for him and insisted that he wanted the money to buy some jeans himself! Maybe an early indication that we might experience some problems there! After finishing these formalities we all piled into the Vista bus for Bilal to take us to Rawalpindi to do some last necessary shopping at the market.

Rawalpindi

Rawalpindi market – streetside butchers

The Rawalpindi market is an incredible maze of narrow twisting alleys selling everything imagineable from money changers, spice stalls and cloth and made up clothing shops to stalls selling all sorts of fruit and vegetables, even specialist photographic shops. Of course it is simply teeming with people including quite a lot of women.

Colourful spice stalls

We needed rupees for making our purchases so we started off by changing some of our US dollars (the exchange rate 1 US $ = 58 rupees) at an amazing stall on the street with the money changer sitting behind a sort of wooden trellis. There were necessary items we had to buy for the expedition – buckets for water purification on the trek up the Baltoro glacier and at our basecamp, almonds, shelled walnuts, sultanas and dried dates, lady finger bananas and a strange shiny fruit that looked like a too large olive, but was very sweet. And of course the girls had to buy pretty cotton dresses for raving around town! We tried to stay away from the stalls with meat hanging up outside and with buckets filled with liver and tripe – everything swarming with flies!

At the market some of the stalls also sold bunches of cut twigs that we were curious about. Tarig explained that these are special twigs that people going into the mosques use to clean their teeth – the ends of the twigs splay out and they are soft, so perfectly suited for this purpose.

The market was very specialised. For instance Anthony who was looking for a polarizing filter for his camera, not only found what he was looking for, but was also lured into buying a fancy new lens! Fran ended up buying a new camera because her Canon seemed to have given up the ghost – one could find a good range of specialist cameras at prices well below those we had seen in Dubai. Of course there are question marks – it seems much of this equipment is from the grey market and is probably smuggled into the country. Despite the large crowds of often curious people we never felt at all threatened or that our safety was compromised.

Hopping onto our bus again we headed back to Islamabad (not at all a long journey because Rawalpindi and Islamabad almost merge one into the other), but had to stop for the girls to go into a dye house to get their new dresses dyed. This had been another very hot and humid day so we were relieved to return to the coolth of our airconditioned hotel, but not for long, because it was already late and we still had to go to Bilal’s office to settle our final financial arrangements with Vista and we wanted to call by the internet café’ too. Then all ten of us congregated in the Tandoori restaurant next door and enjoyed a really good supper – naan bread with a yoghurt and a dill dip followed by either a chicken or mutton dish and ending with green tea. To bed quite late, but it was a good day.

Monday 5 July

The day was spent doing last minute shopping, sorting out all our last problems in Islamabad and packing all our equipment, clothing and food into the drums and kitbags we would be using for the long walk in up the Baltoro glacier to our basecamp. We would only be using some of the drums for the walk in – those we would not have to refer to would be taken straight through to basecamp. The main event of the day was Bilal taking everyone to the Ministry of Sport and Tourism for the formal interview that we, together with Tarig, apparently had to have with the Minister. This was organised for 13:00 so we had time to finish the packing. But when Bilal arrived at the hotel he told us that he was concerned because Tarig had earlier complained that he was feeling ill, so he had had to arrange for Ya Ya, Vista Tourism’s sirdar who would be with us for the whole expedition, to collect him from his military mess. However Ya Ya found that he was also not there, so we had to wait another hour at the Ministry before he did arrive and we could go through and meet the Deputy Minister who we were now told would be conducting the interview. The Deputy Minister then spent about five minutes giving us a perfunctory interview – basically just asking us if all our arrangements were in hand – what a waste of time!

One of the remaining problems that came to light talking to Bilal, was the insurance deposit for emergency evacuation that had to be arranged. He told us that the helicopter company responsible for rescue would not accept our Austrian Alpine Club insurance because they want the money “up front” and that it would be necessary to get a letter from the South African High Commission in Pakistan providing a guarantee for payment. Thus after our discussion Bilal, Ulrike and I went to the South African High Commission office in town and explained our problem to Sarel van Zyl (Deputy High Commissioner) who was very sympathetic but explained that his office would not have the legal authority to issue such a legally binding letter to us. So, after going back to Bilal’s office, we phoned the Austrian Alpine Club’s UK office which put us in contact with their insurers, who after many more telephone calls and a fax that we sent, agreed to let us have a letter by fax on Tuesday providing the necessary guarantees. I also got hold of Barclays by phone and then also sent an e-mail confirming the payment details for the money to be paid to Vista. In the middle of the day, before our visit to the High Commission, Bilal took us to the Tandoori restaurant we had been to before for lunch, at which stage Tarig miraculously reappeared! But he wouldn’t sit next to the girls! After talking to Linda to sort out the immediate financial requirements, we had a rather unpleasant argument with Tarig about his insistence that he wanted to be paid in lieu of having the expedition feed him. According to the compromise suggested by Bilal, we eventually resolved that US$ 400 of the US$ 600 we had already paid to Vista would be paid upfront to the LO for his food allowance, but the arrangement would stand that Vista would provide the food for him, ie there would be no difference that the expedition would have to pay. Bilal also kindly resolved the immediate impasse of the helicopter guarantee, giving the undertaking that Vista would be prepared to provide the guarantee in the interim until the insurance company fax came through (to get the required code from the helicopter company).

Back at the hotel everyone finished packing and weighing the drums before helping to load them onto the bus that Vista had arranged to take us to Skardu. While all this was happening there was a wedding taking place at the hotel with very loud music which went on until the early hours of the morning. There was quite heavy rain first thing in the morning and then it became very hot again. Another serious problem arose during the day when Harry and Marian discovered they only had 30-day visas.

Tuesday 6 July

Bilal arrived at the hotel while we were having breakfast. Because Harry and Marian would have to stay another day in Islamabad to organise the extensions to their visas, Bilal arranged for them to drive up to Skardu in a separate minibus and transferred some of the baggage from our bus into the minibus to give us some more room. After saying goodbye and thanking Bilal we got away at 06:30. We picked up Tarig at his military barracks along the way and then set off for the KKH. It was a clear warm morning with good views of everything alongside the road as we drove – quite heavy traffic with a lot of beautifully decorated heavy trucks travelling in both directions.

There were all sorts of stalls selling stuff along the road and crowds of people milling around on and at the sides of the road especially in the villages we passed through. Among them we saw lots of beekeepers with their hives and the tents they obviously live in, also tea growing quite high up in plantations near Abottobad. There were fields where much of the wheat had already been harvested (and maize had been planted) where the hay was collected in beehive shaped ricks.

One of the beautifully decorated heavy trucks you see everywhere you travel in Pakistan

Further out in the country there were many rather crude houses which had flat roofs covered with earth placed on top of slate. After coming to Manserha we joined the Indus valley at Thakot and then continued on for a long way to Besham alongside this huge swiftly flowing river, sometimes streaming by quite smoothly and in other places breaking into wild rapids of boiling water.

Small village on side stream flowing into the Indus

We rather foolishly decided to drive on beyond Besham and stop further on for lunch and found that we had to go on for a long way to find the first reasonable looking place to stop. The people at the restaurant said it would take an hour to prepare our food, but Ya Ya jumped in and went to the kitchen himself to get things going, so we finally only had to wait about half an hour for our lunch. We walked up the river bank above the eating place to watch a farmer ploughing narrow terraced fields with a pair of oxen and a crude wooden plough and slightly further on were accosted by four tiny children who wanted their photograph taken.

Farmer ploughing with oxen and a wooden plough

Inquisitive children alongside the KKH

Then it was another long drive in the afternoon, the mountains now much steeper and the gorge much narrower, the slopes looking much more arid. Perhaps 20 km before Chilas, it was already dusk with the valley opening up somewhat again, when there looming out of the dusk ahead of us we could see the huge snowy summit of Nanga Parbat (8 125 m) – a simply stunning sight. All along the road we had seen these massive piles of cut logs. Tarig gave us a nice story first saying that these were trees harvested from planted forests and that for every one tree cut, there were five new trees planted. But this was rather belied by the wonderful scent of the freshly cut juniper wood as we drove past – these were clearly old forest giants being systematically cut out of the high valleys. Nazir Sabir had previously told me that the Forestry Department was hugely corrupt and that some people in it were making huge profits from this exploitation. You certainly also did not see any evidence of new nurseries being established along the KKH to cultivate new trees.

We finally got to Chilas at about 20:00 and checked into the Shangri La Indus View hotel. It was still oppressively hot. Of course there was no sign of Harry and Marian – we hoped they might check in later. We enjoyed a good buffet supper shared with a bunch of Italians.

Wednesday 7 July

We made a good early start from Chilas getting away at about 05:30 after breakfast. It was already quite light. Someone checked with reception and came back with the news that Harry and Marian had finally arrived at about 02:00.

We could see that this was now really arid country. Long stretches of the road traversed very unstable moraines and there was a lot of evidence of constant landslides and washaways (in fact when Harry and Marian did finally catch up with us in Skardu, they described how they had experienced great difficulty negotiating a narrow section of the road in their small minibus where a fresh landslide had obliterated the road, clearly not so long after we had passed the spot ourselves.

Nanga Parbat's (8 125 m) North Face

As the road started to bear further west, curving around towards Gilgit, the huge mass of Nanga Parbat began to dominate the landscape. It is a hugely impressive mountain when you consider that its summit at 8 125 m towers some 7 000 metres above the KKH at Raikot bridge, (where you again cross to the river’s true righthand bank) and is only a few kilometres in horizontal distance from it. Tarig told us that the jeep track that takes off at the bridge to Fairy Meadows and the Nanga Parbat Base Camp was no longer passable as sections of the road had been washed away. A short way on we stopped at the monument marking where three of the world’s greatest mountain ranges meet – the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges and a little further stopped again to appreciate the incredible view of Nanga Parbat’s immense north face, avoiding a flock of persistent stone “gem” sellers and the inevitable crowd of tourist “gapers”.

Monument on the KKH marking where three of the world’s great mountain ranges meet

Those in the photo – Cecilia, Ulrike, Linda, Andre’, Anthony, Robert, Fran and Ian

(Harry and Marian were delayed having to extend the validity of their visas in Islamabad)

Some way before reaching Gilgit we turned right onto the continuation of the KKH still following the Indus river to reach Skardu. This was the second time I had driven along this section of the KKH and I was so much more impressed than on the previous occasion. Firstly the road is cut into solid rock for much of the way where the river is bounded by very steep cliffs and secondly the Indus is so hugely impressive, mostly flowing in a much narrower gorge with wild wild water at narrowings between the cliffs and some quite horrendous rapids.

Also many of the small settlements along the way appeared to be just hanging oases of green on the steep rock faces. You see the major side kloofs carry lots of water and everywhere you look there are immense mountains. Looking across at the rock faces and steep slopes on the river’s true lefthand bank, we tried to fathom how the locals could possibly get across some of the really steep sections, but without fail could see clearly defined and obviously well used trails on either side of these sections. We drove on to where there were a few more villages on the road, some of them very attractive with avenues of beautiful trees and verdant fields – we could see there must be plenty of water available for irrigation.

Small settlements clinging to the cliffs above the river

There were many apricot orchards, most of them with the fruit still hanging on the trees and lots more put out to dry on the rocks too – great splashes of orange. We finally did stop for lunch at a very attractive place where the people organising our food laid a table with chairs for us outside in a lovely grassy field with a little stream running nearby. They also presented us with a couple of large bowls of beautifully sweet apricots freshly picked from the adjacent orchard.

Verdant farmlands with beautiful avenues of poplars Rustic local

We had stunning views of Haramosh (7 406 m) driving up the Indus valley, then not too much further on, getting quite close to Skardu, the valley quite suddenly widened out to a huge basin ringed with snow-capped mountains mirrored in the tranquil waters of a large lake. Arriving in Skardu at about 17:00 there was some confusion with Ya Ya first taking us to the K2 Motel, which was full, and then going back to the New Masherbrum Hotel where we checked in. It was a beautiful afternoon and we still had time to take a walk down on the pebbles next to the river close to the hotel and enjoyed watching the kids bathing and women washing clothes.

Playing in the Indus river in Skardu - still quite a small stream

We discovered that the hotel was full of Italians and somehow found ourselves invited to join them for an outdoor barbecue on one of the hotel terraces (we had chicken kebabs followed by fresh melon, whereas the Italians had organised the roasting of a whole sheep for their evening meal). A lovely warm evening but we were tired and hived off to bed quite early. A rather noisy night from the traffic on the road right in front of the hotel.

Hussain, one of Vista’s local agents, came to greet us at the hotel – like Ya Ya he seemed to be an extremely engaging and friendly man. We felt that they would make a positive contribution to our group being a happy one – the only “fly in the ointment” our LO who continued to annoy us all hugely, thinking that he could order us around and dictate how we must do things!

Thursday 8 July

This was a day of chores getting everything ready for our departure. Also some relaxation before life would become more demanding again! We spent the morning shopping for the last few things we needed – lighters, candles, soap powder, etc and after lunch at the hotel went back to fit Tarig out with his plastic boots – an expensive outing! Whereas we had hoped to be able to hire them, we found we couldn’t do so and had to pay US$ 200 for them. And Tarig also had to be provided with some walking poles! The idea was to try to sell this gear when we returned to Skardu or to take them back to South Africa and try to sell them there. The best thing that happened in our day was to welcome Harry and Marian who had arrived in Skardu at about 22:00 the previous night. Contrary to what we thought, they had only managed to reach Besham the previous night after battling all day to get their visas fixed in Islamabad. That had meant that they had had an even longer day driving through to get to Skardu.

The bad thing that happened during the day was more infuriating meddling by Tarig. On the way up the KKH he had very directly asked if I had brought a gps along on the expedition and I confirmed we did have one (knowing the rules do state that their use is forbidden). When he told me during the afternoon that he would have to take possession of it and hand it over to the army, I pointed out that this action could potentially compromise the safety of members of the expedition. Eventually he backed down after we agreed that we will let him keep it at basecamp and arrange that we can use it to fix and record the positions of Advance Base Camp and our Top Camp so that we can more easily access these camps in bad weather, or if any rescue operation may have to be initiated. The other weird assertion that Tarig made was that Bilal had confirmed our departure flight from Islamabad was on 18 August, whereas a departure date of 20 August was clearly reflected on our tickets. He therefor claimed that the schedule for the expedition he had been given was wrong and we would have to go back to Islamabad two days earlier than shown on the schedule. I then also broached the possibility that when we walked out, we might return over the Gondoghoro La and Hushe rather than going back down the Baltoro, explaining that this had been discussed with the Ministry who had been happy to accept it. Tarig immediately said that this would not be possible as no request to this effect had been submitted to the military. I pointed out that we were working strictly in accordance with the Government rules and regulations where this additional requirement is nowhere stipulated. As the Ministry had approved the request we would be proceeding according to their acceptance. I guessed this would be an issue he would certainly try to take up again with us – none of us were happy with the guy’s confrontational attitude.

In the afternoon we finished the last of our packing in preparation for the jeep trip up to Askole. A big wind and dust storm came up later reducing visibility and making it very dark. It also resulted in the power going off several times. Then Tarig evidently wanted to flex his muscles some more – this time he took issue with the fact that we had a satellite phone on the expedition. He said we should have declared the phone when we were in Islamabad and obtained a code to allow its use. He said he could talk to the army base in Skardu to obtain permission for us to use the phone, but this would have to be on the basis that he would keep the phone in basecamp and he would have to speak on the phone. I pointed out that the phone served two purposes – that it was available in case of an emergency and that we needed to use it for updating the expedition’s website. In both these instances it would be absurd for him to insist on speaking on our behalf! He at last agreed that we could use it, so long as this was in his presence!

We made an early start loading all the equipment and food onto a convoy of a Landcruiser and four Jeeps setting out at about 06:30. When we left there was quite a lot of cloud and the threat that rain was likely later. Leaving Skardu we first drove next to the Indus for a way and then climbed over a ridge to get into the Shigar valley following a narrow but good tarred road as far as Shigar, the road then changing to gravel and deteriorating a lot with several very muddy sections. This too was a very beautiful valley – very verdant with lots of apricot trees with the golden fruit still hanging on the branches, fields of wheat and barley and our road often in a spectacular avenue of poplar trees. It was the time of day when the schools were obviously just starting and we saw lots of little girls all dressed in the same blue and white uniforms. What was so nice to see was that many of the girls were openly curious about our passing jeep parade and returned our waves while others were clearly more reserved and hid their faces, but still took shy peeks at us through their fingers.

We passed through a number of similarly very attractive villages as we continued up the wide valley. We even saw some water storage dams obviously built for irrigation.

Along this section, the road was already twisting and turning with the jeeps following very closely one behind the other. The combination of these contortions and the vehicles’ diesel exhaust fumes made me and several of the others feel very nauseous (I had already not been feeling very well to the extent that I had skipped breakfast at our hotel in Skardu). We consequently organised the jeeps to travel further apart in our convoy and felt a whole lot happier for this change (I had already swopped from the Landcruiser to one of the jeep’s front seats). We stopped at Dassu for morning tea and some distance further on at the last reasonable village in the valley called Hoto. It was still overcast, but pleasant sitting beneath the beautiful trees outside.

Passing a jeep full of porters working for another expedition

The Braldu valley beyond Hoto becomes progressively narrower and more rugged

Beyond Hoto the road in places became far more spectacular. It was very narrow with sharp corners and was often cut out of the sheer cliffs – one was always aware of the raging torrent of the Braldu river below.

Typical section of the road getting closer to Askole

Eventually, after crossing the Braldu on another suspension bridge (they only carry one vehicle at a time and sway and oscillate markedly), we arrived at Askole and drove down to the campsite below the main village. The village was quite small, teeming with porters and trekkers and it immediately struck us that it was a pretty dirty place! There was one rudimentary (triple berth) loo, but most of the porters still seemed to prefer going into the bushes around the camp. We could see that there was a lot of rubbish lying around and because the water supply looked quite polluted, we drank the Nestle bottled water that we had bought in Skardu. Ya Ya and Hussain quickly erected our mess tent and we moved to sit inside it after stashing our gear under tarps as it had started and then continued to rain gently. Later the rain stopped and we used the opportunity to put up our own tents and get a bit better organised. Cecilia gave me some anti-nausea pills and I had a short kip in my tent before supper.

Fran walked up to the village and visited a small clinic built in the memory of a German doctor who was killed when climbing on K2. I didn’t feel like eating anything at supper time again – appropriately there was some discussion at supper about the need to carefully observe sensible personal hygene guidelines. It was a bit of a pain for some of us having to listen to complaints about our food not being spicy enough – Robert and Marian both seemed to have eating requirements that were quite different from the rest of us and Tarig joined in with some complaints too. We headed off to bed just in time because the heavens opened and it simply poured with rain with quite a lot of lightning accompanied by thunder too.

My Suunto aneroid registered Askoli’s altitude as 3 035 m.

Pedestrian bridge at Askole crossing the Braldu river

Saturday 10 July

Starting our long walk-in and leaving our jeep transport behind, we really felt that we were starting the next stage of our expedition. We made an early start, fortunately quite a nice warm and only partly cloudy start to the day. But the tents and the tarps used to cover the gear were very wet and it took a time to pack them. We finally got away at about 07:45 carrying light packs with an arrangement agreed with Ya Ya that we would wait for him and the main group of porters at the bridge crossing the Biafo river below the glacier, about 1½ hours walk from Askole. The path first climbed up to Askole village through cultivated fields of barley bounded by irrigation channels, then made a long traverse along a shelf quite high above the river. Lots of the villagers watched us as we went through the narrow alleys (with water furrows often running down them) between the stone houses. One house in particular had beautiful quite ornate woodwork on its upper storey. A little further on just after leaving the village along a narrow section of the path (walled next to a field on one side and with a steep mountain slope containing some large boulders on the other), we had to work our way past a large flock of sheep and goats going the other way. Some distance further on the path went through a deep erosion gully – the last members of the party had just passed through it when they saw and heard a big rock fall just behind them (what they described as “refrigerator” sized boulders tumbling down) - the porters closest to the fall fortunately being able to scatter without anyone getting hurt.

Walking up the Braldu valley on the way to Korophon and Jola

The path eventually dropped down to the main river, then swung left up the Biafo valley for a way to where a bridge had been built. We had walked for about an hour and a half from Askole to get there. We stopped at the bridge for about an hour sitting in the now rather hot midday sun waiting for Ya Ya, but when he still hadn’t arrived, we decided we must push on (Ya Ya later told us that there had been a problem rounding up the number of porters required because some of them were apparently sick). The path went on going up and down crossing the moraine below the Biafo glacier – we could see the Biafo glacier quite close by. It was quite rough going and already very hot. Eventually after about another hour and half walking we arrived at Korophon on the further side of the Biafo valley where there was some shade under some small trees, some grass, a small stone house and a rather turbid stream. Everyone had stopped there for lunch and some of the porters had collected firewood and made a fire to boil water to make tea. Hussain and Ya Ya arrived soon after us and joined us sitting on our sleeping mats on the grass.

After lunch we set off again making for our overnight camp at Jola where the Dumordo river comes down from the Panmah glacier. The path stayed quite close to the river for most of the way, going up and down slightly except at one section where it had to traverse across quite a steep cliff face. Whereas other impasses that we had had to negotiate had been built up with rocks and logs and were relatively straightforward, here the porters had to negotiate a difficult and quite dangerous section across a fairly steep blank slab, which caused a bit of a hold-up.

At the “corner” leading into the Dumordo gorge, we came to the old cable crossing, now replaced by a new suspension bridge much higher up the river. At this point the wind started blowing very strongly with big “blobs” of rain coming down, which had quite a psychological effect on all of us because we could already see the tented camp, but weren’t quite there. We were all pretty pleased when we did arrive at 16:00 – it had taken us two hours to walk from Korophon. We waited for a while for the porters to arrive and then quickly put our tents up. It was still not very nice weather. As I was still feeling pretty mif, I crept into my tent and had a short snooze.

In the late evening the clouds dispersed again revealing the sharply pointed rock and snow peak on the opposite side of the valley called Bakhor Das (5 809 m), looking quite beautiful.

Bakhor Das (5 809 m)

It turned out to be a good evening for me because at last I managed to eat some supper. Tarig didn’t make an appearance at supper because he was apparently pretty tired. The altitude at Jola is 3 200 m. Early to bed for me and this time an undisturbed night.

For what was previously described as a not very nice camp, we could see Jola was now very well organised. The camp was built by UNDP with GEF funding in April/May 2003. The water supply was well organised from quite a clean source and the water was stored in tanks at the tent platforms, built up with stone walls. There were plastic toilets (long drops, but with buckets and water for flushing). Even solar lights at the tent sites.

Sunday 11 July

We woke slightly later than arranged (05:20 instead of 05:00) which caused a bit of a hiatus with our porters hanging around trying to help with the packing and wanting to get going with their loads. All a bit too rushed and slightly aggravating. But it was a beautiful clear morning and a pleasure to get away at about 07:00 after a good breakfast. My upset tummy was feeling much better, but I did ask Cecilia to give me a plaster for a blister that had started forming on the ball of my left foot (from wearing my tyresoles walking up from Askole). It was really pleasant walking in the early morning shade, going back down into the Braldu valley on an easy path (not much up and down) and with an exciting view up the Ching Kang valley of a nice looking snow peak called Honboro (6 459m).

View of Honboro (6 459 m) from the Braldu valley

Going on up the Braldu valley the path for the most part stayed quite close to the river and was easy, finally coming out at various tiny camp sites, the last one tented, called Bardumal. Ya Ya stopped us for tea at the stream shortly after Bardumal - we had been walking for three hours from Jola. It had now warmed up significantly again and we got quite hot sitting in the baking sun on the moraine slope. On the way to Bardumal we found some fresh fox spoor in some damp sand. Anthony also saw a Pika (a type of rabbit that lives in a rocky environment).

After our tea stop, we got going again at about 11:30, a rather tedious section with the path first meandering up and down across the moraine slope then going down right next to the river to finally reach the Paiyu camp site rather higher above the river.

When we were walking before tea my feet had been getting progressively more and more sore from blisters that had now developed on the balls of both of my feet. Ulrike had helped by giving me some extra plasters just before tea, but what helped me most was swopping my tyresoles for Cecilia’s light boots at the tea spot. They seemed to provide a firmer fit and were definitely more comfortable to walk in. My blistered feet and the very hot conditions were quite trying on this section of the walk in and I felt sore and tired, so was really pleased when we finally reached Paiyu.

Snout of the Baltoro glacier and the array of incredible saw shaped teeth above Paiyu

The camp (at ± 3 500m) was in a really beautiful setting and seemed to be well organised with tent platforms built under quite large established trees. We made some more green tea and then Ian and I used the Aquamira (chlorine dioxide) to treat about 20 litres of water that we drew from what looked like a fairly clean stream source close to our tents. Tasting the water later it seemed that the treatment was successful – the water tasted sweet with no marked residual taste of the iodine left in the water. It was exciting getting our first glimpse of Broad Peak from down the valley below Paiyu – it has such a distinctive profile.

First Aid for a gash in the leg of one of the porters

At the biggest stream crossing near Jola before dropping back down to the Braldu river, one of the porters (not from Vista) had slipped on the river boulders and gashed his leg. When we reached Paiyu Cecilia looked at the wound and decided it needed some attention, which elicited much chaffing from the other porters. And of course the patient simply loved being doctored by Cecilia – enthusiastically watched by about twenty of his mates!

There was quite a strange porter “thing”as we were leaving Jola in the morning. The camp is fenced and nearly all the porters were waiting inside the camp gate when we were leaving and just as we walked away there was a vcociferous altercation – presumably between our Vista porters and others (there were lots of Italians in this camp too). We couldn’t make out what it was all about.

In the late evening as we were going to the mess tent, we were treated to the most fantastic views looking upstream towards the Trango Towers – serried ranks of incredible saw shaped teeth glowing in the late evening sun. Ya Ya organise a couple of our porters to watch our tents while we were eating.

Late evening view of the last sun lighting the rock towers above Paiyu

Sometime later after it was dark two groups of porters sang and danced until quite late. I had gone to my tent, but hearing the singing came to listen – many of the songs that the group sang were very sad and quite beautiful. It was lovely to share the very special moment of this large group of rugged men standing/sitting and singing/clapping.

Earlier in the day we saw large flocks of Red Billed Choughs wheeling above us, when we were walking up the Braldu valley and also at our Paiyu camp.

Monday 12 July

This Paiyu camp was also upgraded shortly after Jola (May/June 2003) and we could see it was really well organised with decent loos, washing facilities and really good clean water. It was especially good having the shaded platforms for our tents under the trees. As this was to be a rest day we could wake later. Ya Ya asked us what time we wanted breakfast and got replies ranging from 08:00 to 10:00 – eventually everyone went to the mess tent at around 08:30. It was a nice warm day so a bunch took off up the mountain above the camp, but got themselves rather entangled in the local version of “fynbos” and came back to camp all scratched and a bit frustrated. What they did discover was that the water running from the pipe next to our tents, was actually piped for a long way down the mountain and should therefore be quite clean. I took the opportunity to use the day to rest my feet (harden the skin over my blisters) and to wash myself and a whole stack of dirty clothing, all this made easier because everything from my clothes to my hair dried in a ridiculously short time. We also dosed another 20 litres of water with the Aquamira. I suppose because we had the time, there was a long debate about how to accurately measure the dosage of Aquamira – in the end we used a hypodermic syringe that we borrowed from Linda and it worked very well. Everybody got ready for the long day going on to Urdukas on Tuesday and we all crept off to bed quite early. Ya Ya and Hussain moved the mess tent to a more convenient position during the day.

Tuesday 13 July

I did not have a good night – I spent the whole night tossing and turning and hardly slept at all. It was warm and my tummy bug seemed to have returned - I didn’t feel up to eating any breakfast at all. We got up at about 04:15 to get everything packed, which went quite well and we got away from Paiyu at 06:00. There was a slight niggle at breakfast with Marian discovering that one of her walking poles had been nicked!

Typical walking terrain on the rubble covered ice of the Baltoro glacier

The path going on to Urdukas continued to traverse across the slope on the glacier’s true righthand bank for about an hour, then it dropped right back down to the valley floor to where it was possible to climb back up onto the rubble covered ice of the glacier’s snout, an impressively large river issuing forth from under the ice. On the glacier the going immediately got far more difficult, slipping and sliding on the dirt covering the ice and the path going up and down all the time. The path took a line angling across to the glacier’s true leftand bank and with my absolute lack of energy and the horrible hollow feeling in my gut, I found myself making very slow progress and getting very tired.

Closer view of the rock towers beyond Paiyu from the glacier

Great Trango (6 286 m)

Nameless Tower (6 251 m) Reflections in the small lake at Lilligo

We joined the lefthand bank close to Khobutze, the path then following the broken valleys and crests of the glacier’s lateral moraine – again not easy going, mostly scrambling over rounded river boulders. This last section seemed to go on for a very long time, the path eventually crossing the snout of the Lilligo glacier coming in from the side and then traversing around a small lake formed in the moraine to reach our lunch spot at Lilligo camp.

Uli Biaho (6 109 m)

It had been a long grind of about six hours to reach Lilligo and I was still feeling very poorly, to the extent that I had not been able to fully appreciate the incredible views of Great Trango, Nameless Tower, Uli Biaho and Shipton Spire that one sees on this section of the walk.

Incredible rock fortresses, many of them unclimbed

We used the mess tent that had been erected for a group of Italian trekkers for lunch, but I didn’t feel like eating anything, just tried to drink as much green tea as possible. It was strange weather – by 12:00 the beautiful warm day that we enjoyed so far deteriorated into drizzle with snow clearly falling on the peaks and then it got very hot again in the afternoon.

After lunch I walked on up the glacier for another half hour and found a shady spot under a boulder where I could catch a nap and then finish the second stage of the walk in slightly cooler conditions. Unfortunately this didn’t seem to help very much. When I started walking again, I felt absolutely robbed of any energy and had to rest frequently. It was consequently a very slow walk crossing the snouts of two large glaciers coming in on Baltoro’s true lefthand side and climbing steadily (with a lot of ups and downs on the lateral moraine) to finally reach Urdukas (4 095m) after about a three and a half hour walk from Lilligo.

Urdukas

Urdukas is historically an interesting camp because the tent sites used today are those excavated when the Duke of Abruzzi camped there during his epic exploration of the Baltoro glacier in 1909. It is attractively sited on a steep slope with some enormous boulders on it, many of them adorned with old writings from these historical expeditions.

Arriving at the camp I felt absolutely spent and was very relieved when Hussain kindly took over erecting my tent – no sooner was this done than I crawled into my sleeping bag and went to sleep. A little later Cecilia gave me some more anti nausea pills to take, based on the fact that, although my tummy was quite “omgekrap”, I didn’t (yet) have rampant diarrhoea. I again gave supper a miss and then crashed – but I did have a far better night’s sleep, albeit with lots of bizarre dreaming!

Wednesday 14 July

Any hopes that my tummy might be on the mend, were dashed when I had to make an emergency dash first thing in the morning. My tummy now seemed to be revolting and was very loose. Based on this development Cecilia finally felt it would be wise to start me on a course of antibiotics. We got up at 05:30 and managed to get away from Urdukas at 07:15. Not a very nice day – all the high peaks were shrouded in opaque cloud. From Urdukas the path again took a long diagonal line across a fairly complicated section of the glacier. We had to contend with interminable climbing up and down, here more on dry ice covered with quite a thin layer of stones and dirt.

There were two further interesting notes from our night at Urdukas. Firstly that there was another army camp there (together with the ever present telephone line), with lots of mules and donkeys that must be used for transporting military stuff further up the glacier. On this section of the walk in, we passed several caravans of animals returning to Urdukas from higher up the glacier.

The other point of interest was a discussion that we had with an English trekker who had come down onto the Baltoro over the Gondoghoro La. He said their crossing had gone quite well as there was only a light snow cover, but there was still some avalanche danger. His guide also noted that he had met up with three members of a small Spanish expedition in Hushe, who told him that they had successfully climbed Chogolisa, he thought by the northeast ridge over snow dome.

Going on up the glacier, the path followed a line close to the glacier’s true righthand bank (more parallel to the glacier’s axis) and the going got a bit easier with less climbing up and down. I was finding the going a little easier than the previous day, but my tummy was still very uncomfortable and I still had very little energy. It seemed that Harry had also succumbed to a tummy bug and was finding the going very tough. We were eventually thankful when we reached our lunch spot on the glacier about three and a half hours from Urdukas (just beyond Goro 1). I again didn’t feel like eating, but did have some green tea and a little cheese. By now the weather had quite clagged in again, so we missed seeing Masherbrum, Lobsang Spire and the other impressive pinnacles on the glacier’s true righthand bank.

Beyond our lunch spot, the path continued passing a lot of rock “tables” perched on the ice as well as many attractive white ice pinnacles rising above the brown stones covering the glacier, some of them up to 30 m in height. This section was also easier following a more constant gradient. So we were pleased when we arrived at Goro Two camp (4 330m) about a one and three quarter hour’s walk from the lunch spot. At this camp you are no longer on moraine dirt, but on stones lying on top of the ice.

The weather was now rather threatening with rain starting to fall so Hussain and the other kitchen staff members, hurried to get the tents pitched. When this was done I crawled into my tent and slept, Ya Ya bringing me a mug of soup and some green tea a little later on. Cecilia gave me another antibiotic to cover the possibility of a giardia infection as well as some other pills that she said would help re-establish the “good bugs” in my tummy!

Goro 2

This was the first camp that we had come to that had not been provided with the plastic toilet structures and one could see that as a consequence the whole camp area was littered with faeces – Ian described the camp as “turd city”. I also thought the water source looked highly suspect.

In the late evening the clouds lifted revealing Masherbrum standing out in the last sun. Earlier in the day we had just caught a fleeting glimpse of Gasherbrum IV appearing out of the clouds at the head of the valley.

Thursday 15 July

It was a rather more relaxed start in the morning – we woke at 06:00 and got away at about 07:45. It was still rather cloudy so we missed getting decent views of Masherbrum and the Muztag Tower, but Gasherbrum IV loomed at the head of the valley above a bank of cloud for at least a part of the walk to Concordia. The previous evening I had taken half a sleeping pill so had slept a whole lot better - I was also feeling much better when I woke in the morning. Everyone else except Harry and Marian seemed fine tummy-wise, but Linda still had a bad cough. I was taking so many pills, I took a photo of them all lined up!

It was a relatively much easier walk going on from Goro 2 to Concordia, even stopping for tea along the way (about four hours walking time with quite a few photo stops). Along the way we saw quite a lot of helicopter activity – a big Russian helicopter flying very high (5 500m) cargo slinging loads to the upper Baltoro glacier past Baltoro Kangri and two Alouette III helicopters operating together, making three sorties to the K2 basecamp, according to Tarig to evacuate some sick German climbers. We enjoyed spectacular views of the big mountains you see along the way, the weather now much improved. When we were getting close to Concordia, one of the Italian trekkers got pretty sick and had to be carried into the camp.

More rock spires on the walk up to Concordia

First good view of Broad Peak (8 047 m)on the walk up to Concordia

When we all reached Concordia Yay Ya and Hussain immediately set about getting everything organised, pitching the tents on decent platforms – so nice to have more time to get everything in order. After lunch we lolled around enjoying watching the clouds playing around Broad Peak, K2 and G4 – fantastic vistas.

K2 (8 611 m)and Broad Peak (8 047 m)from near Concordia

I used the afternoon to send a message to Jenny asking her to contact Greg and distribute the message and also put it onto the web page.

“14:15 Thursday 15 July : Hi Jenny, This SMS sent from Concordia 4 600m with whole party well apart from minor ailments. All well driving Skardu to Askole then walking Askole/Jola/Paiyu/Rest Day/Urdukas/Gora 2/Concordia. Mostly good weather. Please let Greg CT know and ask him to distribute. Can you put on web? K2 towering over us. All best to family/friends Andre’”

Concordia camp

Some thoughts I recorded in my diary about plans for setting up basecamp on the Vigne glacier and ABC beyond

1. It will be very important to get the porters to carry to the best BC site. It needs to be as high up on the Vigne glacier as we can reasonably easily carry. It also needs to be suitable wrt space for BC and MUST be selected to be quite safe from avalanche danger off both sides of the valley (the Vigne peaks we can see on the Vigne glacier’s true RH bank look very steep and may pose a real avalanche risk to BC if the site is on this side. BC should be at or above 5 000m.

2. The establishment of ABC will involve carrying our heavy gear to a known position, hopefully not too far above BC, though the terrain may be more difficult/there may be snow. We should consider keeping enough (say 4) porters to stay over at BC for the time that it takes to set up BC plus a rest day, and then carry heavy stuff eg fuel, fixed rope and the ABC and Camp 1 tents to a cache near ABC.

Ulrike and I spoke to Hussain about these ideas and he was quite happy, both with the position of BC at the major spur (or preferably just above it), he thought about one and a half hours above Ali Camp, and the idea that four or five of the best porters should push on the next day with some of the expedition members to carry stuff up to a cache as close as possible to ABC.

Coming up the latter stages of the Baltoro we had been travelling in an easterly direction. At Concordia the summit of K2 was virtually due north of us. To get to the Vigne glacier we would therefore have to go in a southerly direction slightly offset from the line of the Godwen Austen glacier.

There was quite a lot of indecision/uncertainty at the end of the day, I think because Harry, and to a lesser extent Marian, are still under the weather from being sick and also Robert and Cecilia are tired and somewhat apprehensive about what lies ahead. We eventually settled on a plan that Harry, Marian, Robert and Cecilia would spend Friday with Tarig as a rest day at Concordia and follow us up to BC the next day. Based on this decision I gave Tarig a radio and a spare battery and asked him to communicate with me at the agreed times set out on the radio briefing sheet I had prepared (19:00 on Friday and 06:00 on Saturday) and to inform the people staying at Concordia accordingly.

We packed in preparation for an early start for the next part of our approach to BC. There was a bit of a search we had to make to find three of the radios (there was uncertainty about which of the drums they had been packed in). To be certain there would be no confusion using the radios, I wrote a short transmission briefing for call signs “Ulrike”, “Harry” and “Andre”.

Friday 16 July

Eight of us got away from Concordia at about 07:00 plus the full number of porters, less five who would stay with Harry et al and go up with them on Saturday.

Early morning view from Concordia of K2 coming out of the clouds above the Godwin Austin glacier

View of Broad peak with the Vigne glacier branching off to the right from the Upper Baltoro glacier

Our route traversed to the junction of the Baltoro and Vigne glaciers going up and down a bit and all on the moraine to a point where we got onto a long white ice tongue coming down the Vigne glacier, which we followed curving round to the right for a long way.

View of Mitre peak (6 025 m) at the bottom of the Vigne glacier

Ulrike, Linda and the main group of porters pushed on ahead leaving Ian, Anthony, Fran and myself somewhat further behind, to a point where we found we were having to spend some extra time working out the best route to follow. Just as we were getting onto the Vigne glacier’s ice, Ian fell into a small crevasse up to his middle, letting out a startled screech – of course much to everyones’ huge merriment. To his disgust everyone rushed over, not to help him, but to take some photos of his dilemma! Our long toil up the glacier mostly followed longitudinal bands of ice before crossing a glacial torrent to get onto a shelf in the lateral moraine. At this stage after another long section going up the moraine with some soft snow patches on it, we caught sight of Ulrike and the porters a long way ahead, what looked like stopping and starting. What we later established was that the porters would sit down because they didn’t want to go any further and Ulrike would walk on for another section to make the porters follow her. Of course this only worked for a while until a stage was reached where she did finally decide that she had found a suitable site for basecamp (GPS N 35⁰ 39.390’ E 76⁰ 31.154’) at an altitude of 4 900m, slightly lower than we had hoped.

Start of the walk to basecamp up the Vigne glacier

Incredible views looking back at Mitre Peak and K2

Finishing the last more even, but snowier section of the glacier leading up to the basecamp site, at about 13:00 we were passed by the porters returning to Concordia (some 60 of them) – it had taken us about six hours to reach basecamp from Concordia (Ian and I going quite slowly). But what a stupendous site for our basecamp – set right in the middle of the Vigne glacier in a cirque of beautiful steep rock and snow peaks, with the Gondoghoro glacier branching off a short way down the valley and our views still dominated by K2 and Broad peak at the bottom of the valley.

Walking up the Vigne glacier on the way up to basecamp

Ya Ya and Hussain set up a lunch table in the open and we sat down and enjoyed a real al fresco meal just drinking in the incredible beauty of the mountains around us. We then also got organised in the afternoon setting up the tent platforms and pitching the tents before arranging for five of the porters (from the approx. 90 who had done the carry up to basecamp) to remain in basecamp so that they could help ferrying loads up to a cache positioned as high up the glacier as possible on the way to ABC. As they would be spending the night in basecamp, they set about building themselves a decent shelter with stone walls and a tarpaulin for a roof cover. I savoured being able to pitch my Moss basecamp tent and the prospect of being able to enjoy true basecamp “hotel” luxury in camp (including digging out a more comprehensive wardrobe of clean clothes from the drums).

A couple of our Balti porters

In the late evening after they had eaten, the porters who were staying in basecamp all congregated in their shelter and it was so nice to hear them singing to themselves – in quite a high pitch, but very softly almost like girls. Very evocative and rather soulful songs that brought back good memories of my companions’ singing on my Hunza recce.

At 19:00 I radioed Harry in the Concordia camp and Tarig answered, rather indistinctly at first, later much more clearly after I walked around trying to get better reception. Tarig confirmed that Harry, Marian and the others were all much better and that they planned to leave Concordia to come up to basecamp at about 07:30 on Saturday. After this good news I filled Tarig in with our own progress - that we had been able to set up basecamp in a good position and that we would expect the others at about lunchtime.

What was not apparent to me from the radio call (that we only learned after the others spoke to us after arriving in basecamp) was that Tarig had never conveyed any of this information to them or discussed the plans for them to go on up to basecamp, because he had slept at the army camp after complaining that the sleeping mat we had issued to him was “inferior” and he reckoned he wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping at Concordia. They couldn’t track him down in the morning either, so made their own plans, getting away from Concordia at about 07:00 with the five porters who had also stayed at Concordia. Tarig’s news conveyed to us on the radio about their wellbeing was therefore his own fabrication because he hadn’t even seen them!

Saturday 17 July

A quiet and restful night getting used to the altitude. For what we originally thought would be a rest day, the day turned out to be quite eventful again, starting off with a light snow dusting on our tents early in the morning. I enjoyed watching a little bird hopping around in the snow and on top of my tent. When I made my 06:00 radio call to Harry, Tarig answered again. He said the others at Concordia were all well and that they would be leaving at about 07:30, though the weather wasn’t very good. What I didn’t know until the others told me, was that Tarig was still at the army camp and had not even spoken to the others, so they had no idea what was going on. He apparently sauntered back to where they were getting ready to leave at about 06:55, five minutes before they had intended leaving! When Robert tackled Tarig about his lack of communication , taking the radio calls and not liaising with them about the arrangements agreed with me, he apparently again came out with the story that he couldn’t sleep with them because of his poor sleeping mat. Nevertheless Robert made the strong point that Tarig was not fulfilling his duties as our appointed liaison officer iro the expedition’s basic logistics and failing to ensure that Harry and the others knew what arrangements had been made for them. If he accepted responsibility of being the radio contact (which I had asked him to do), I should be able to expect him to fulfil this duty honourably. Later when Marian tried to get Tarig to hand the radio over to their group, he at first refused to do so and only later complied, but then still didn’t provide them with the spare radio battery or my briefing sheet which confirmed the required radio frequency as well as the times for the radio transmissions.

Responding to Robert, Tarig again harped on our “illegal” GPS and satellite phone, notwithstanding the fact that Harry had been to see the army specifically to ensure there were no problems about our using these items of equipment and to sort out the code we would have to use in the case of an accident necessitating rescue by helicopter. Tarig ended his list of complaints saying that we would not be able to return over the Gondoghoro La from our basecamp because it didn’t say so on the permit!

Anyway the others did finally manage to get away from Concordia at about 07:30. Back in basecamp we sorted out the loads that the porters would carry up to the cache on the way to ABC and duly saw them on their way together with Ulrike and Tony. By which time the morning had turned out somewhat brighter. The rest of us set about the various chores waiting to be done in basecamp – Ian and Linda trying to get our MSR stoves to work with the “benzine” fuel that Bilal had managed to source in Islamabad, Fran going through the communal climbing equipment to decide the priority of what should first be taken up to ABC and also sorting out the locks and keys we had taken off the drums when we unpacked them at basecamp. Most of the rest of us prepared the additional tent platforms and pitched the tents that would be needed for the new arrivals, while I also recorded what equipment and food had already been taken up to the cache for transfer to ABC. I also adjusted Ulrike’s crampons for the new boots that she had bought and when this was done, sorted out the remainder of my own stuff – a bit of a panic doing this, thinking I had lost my GPS, fortunately forgetting that I had packed it together with the Zartek charger stuffed into one of my tyresoles. I connected up the charger to the solar panel so that we would be able to charge the radios when they needed recharging.

I managed to get good comms with both Harry and Ulrike on the radio at the set call time and Harry’s group arrived in basecamp shortly afterwards. Speaking on the radio, Ulrike told me that her party had gone up a slightly steeper section of the glacier before reaching a little depression below an icefall of perhaps 200 m that she thought would involve us in having to do some more technical climbing. She said that they had established the cache at about 5 200 m after doing a long but quite easy slog up the glacier’s true righthand bank in snow generally about 150 mm deep but with some deeper soft spots. She asked that we arrange for the five porters with Harry’s party to stay over in basecamp so that they could help carry the balance of the loads that needed to go up to the cache on Sunday.

Small icefall on the Vigne glacier above the cache established on Saturday 17 July

I made these arrangements with Hussain and all seemed to be in order until we found Tarig talking to the porters, apparently asking them what they felt they should be paid and suggesting that they should demand payment according to HA porter rates! I was very angry when I heard this had been happening, because the LO had no authority to deal directly with the porters, an issue that Ulrike and I would have to take up with Tarig after Ulrike returned in the afternoon. Hussain was also completely fed up with Tarig trying to flex his muscles where he had absolutely no authority to do so. After discussing the issue with Hussain I reassured him that the five extra porters who had gone up to the cache would be paid at fair rates based on what Ulrike’s five reported to us on what they had had to do. We also arranged that Harry’s five would go back down to Concordia (where they had left their sleeping stuff and food) and would return to basecamp at about 07:30 on the Sunday to do the next carry up to the cache. Hussain confirmed that he was quite happy with these arrangements as well as with our acknowledgement that the porter costs for the carry beyond basecamp would be extra over the original agreement made with Bilal.

In the meantime Ian had had no success trying to get the MSR stoves working with the benzine fuel bought in Islamabad. In fact Hussain nearly burned down basecamp’s kitchen tent when he tried to us this benzine in his MSR XGK stove. So the fuel situation was a bit of a problem :

a) We had a spare 2-burner Primus stove burning kerosene that we could use at ABC

b) We would also have the MSR XGK stoves at ABC and above that could burn kerosene

c) If necessary we should try to forage some extra gas canisters from Concordia, possibly even the K2 basecamp.

6 000 m Vigne peaks above basecamp

Ulrike arrived back in basecamp at about 15:00, possibly a little disappointed that they hadn’t been able to establish the cache a little higher up. She said the icefall looked quite straightforward, but had reckoned that climbing it would probably require technical climbing equipment beyond what the porters had with them. They couldn’t yet see the northwest ridge from the furthest point that they reached though playback of a video that Tony had taken showed Chogolisa’s southwest ridge and the obvious col on it with the approach to the col from the Vigne glacier going diagonally to the right up the steep snow to the right of the icefall below the mountain’s main southwest summit.

After Ulrike had caught her breath, we organised two meetings to resolve our immediately pressing issues :

a) A meeting with Ulrike myself and Tarig to define the role we expect Tarig to play in the expedition. For the climbing we will now do above basecamp, I first thanked Tarig for the role he played on the approach. I said we would be happy for him either to stay in basecamp or to go back down to Concordia – we would facilitate what he chose to do. I cautioned that basecamp was a dangerous place and he should not venture onto the glacier on his own.

I said there were two specific issues that we were unhappy about :

Firstly the communication issue and the fact that as LO he did not fulfil his responsibility in the communication between myself and the party that stayed the extra night at the Concordia camp.

Secondly I said it was unacceptable that he had tried to get directly directly involved telling the porters what payment they should demand. I specifically asked that in future he should not involve himself in any of the contract issues between the expedition, Vista and the porters. The only situation where we believed the LO could become involved would be in a situation where there was a declared dispute. And that had never been the case.

I asked Tarig if there were any concerns that he had on his side, specifically mentioning the issue of his sleeping mat. He said this was no longer a problem as he had been able to scrounge a better mat. Tarig confirmed that, while the expedition’s main porterage would return down the Baltoro (as he said he would himself), he would no longer have a problem with the expedition’s members and some of the porters returning over the Gondoghoro La.

b) Ulrike, Hussain and myself then went on to discuss the porterage for Sunday.

We confirmed that we would have ten loads available first thing in the morning with the balance to follow later – if possible we would like to have a second carry to the cache ie making up 20 loads. On the issue of porter wages, we agreed that porterage to the cache should be a single stage @R500(Rupees).

We also asked Hussain to identify two of the best porters to stay on with us to help carry the loads from the cache up to ABC. We said we would equip them with boots and sunglasses and that they would sleep at basecamp in their own tent all as agreed with Hussain who would also organise sleeping bags for them. Lastly we agreed that they would be paid R800 (Rupees) per day.

Hussain, who had a radio in basecamp, had been listening to the Radio Pakistan weather forecasts and he mentioned that there was some bad weather forecast for the region probably on Monday. It would therefore be important for us to get as much of the portering done on Sunday and have everyone return to basecamp so that they could hunker down there if the weather did turn bad. Hussain asked us to provide him with an estimate of how much personal baggage would have to be portered out at the end of the expedition. He confirmed the scheduled date that we had given him for us leaving basecamp then was 10 August.

After Hussain left, Ulrike and I discussed the decision making on the expedition. I said I was very happy to accept the leadership responsibility for the expedition dealing with the authorities, etc (where there was probably an expectation by the Pakistanis that the leader should be a male), but again said I felt that Ulrike should accept the role of expedition leader for the climbing. Ulrike said she was happy about the way that we were working together at the moment and suggested that we should just go on that way.

Not much else happened in the late afternoon but we did enjoy some more singing by the porters. We were in bed straight after supper. We agreed that Linda, Fran and I would rope up with the first party of ten porters at about 07:30 in the morning to do a carry up to the cache. Cecilia started a project to build the loo for basecamp with stone walls and using one of the drums (also keeping the toilet paper separate in a plastic bag to burn later). We thought we would keep the original loo tent for people to wash in.

Sunday 18 July

In line with what Hussain had told us about the forecast bad weather coming in, we had quite a fierce storm at basecamp during the night, very strong winds blowing the spindrift around and in the quieter spells snow falling. The porters’ shelter had its tarpaulin roof ripped off (later reinstated with huge merriment, laughter and shouting among the porters), the mess tent completely collapsed and the kitchen tent partially too. I did a round of basecamp at 06:00 with the spindrift sifting around the tents and found that everyone seemed to be coping. Obviously our carrying plans for the day went out of the window (and the porters from Concordia never arrived). Although the bad weather continued without respite all day long we were able to sort out the basecamp problems, reinstating the tents and shelters (also filling in the chinks in the walls of the porters’ shelter) and doing a general cleanup of the camp. The wind eventually subsided in the evening.

We used the late morning profitably by going through the HA food lists and checking where everything had been stored. After lunch most of us got together in the mess tent and physically packed food into small plastic bags (eg nuts, sultanas and the dates we had bought in Islamabad as well as the dried mulberries we had bought in Shigar) and then what we could of those into bigger plastic bags for 20 x 4 man day HA packs – great hilarity during the packing of the sweets and chocolates. This was somewhat marred by Tarig, the ever present LO, trying a new ploy to go back on the agreement that had been reached with him, Vista (Bilal) and the expedition in Islamabad about his payment and his food. He complained that he had not been able to eat the food that the expedition members and Vista staff had been eating because it was too bland for him (not proper spicy Pakistani food). We told him that any problem he may have in this regard would be a matter entirely between him and Vista and that as far as we were concerned, the food that the expedition was providing was Pakistani food and most certainly not Dutch, British or South African. He mumbled a bit and said it was a matter he would have to take up at the debrief! Everyone got a bit heated having to deal with these constant complaints! Tarig confirmed that he would go down to Concordia with Hussain on Monday and then on eventually to Skardu, because he was still experiencing medical problems and wanted to see his army MD. We agreed that, since he had not had to use and would not need some of the items in the kit the expedition had issued to him, he would return them to the expedition when he left basecamp, eg his tent, plastic boots and inners, ice axe, crampons, climbing harness with its carabiner and a figure of eight and his helmet and sleeping mat. The tent issued to him would remain at basecamp, because he would be able to stay at the army stations going down the Baltoro on his way back to Skardu.

It continued snowing and was very cold all day in basecamp right up to the time we all dispersed to go to bed. During the afternoon Hussain confirmed that the “benzine” fuel that Bilal had got for the expedition in Islamabad was also not working in Vista’s kitchen primus stoves, so we asked him to please arrange for two extra drums of kerosene to replace the benzene (of the three drums of kerosene already at basecamp, at least one will be sent on to ABC now). We also agreed with Hussain that the enforced rest days for the five porters who had stay over in basecamp due to the bad weather, would be paid for at half the normal rate. The masses of equipment that Ulrike had calculated would have to be taken out by the porters when we left basecamp on 10 August, were 200 kg over the Gondoghoro La and 300 kg down the Baltoro to Askole.

In the end I felt everyone was very relieved about the LO leaving to go back to Skardu – the expedition’s formal consent for him to leave was based on his own stated wish to return to Skardu on medical grounds. Tarig had also asked that the expedition should try to make a day available when it returned to Skardu to sign off various formal papers. Although this was not a requirement in terms of the conditions applicable to the expedition and as we would be returning over the Gondoghoro La and Hushe to Skardu and time might be a problem, I said we would do our best to comply, otherwise he should do the signing on the expedition’s behalf.

Monday 19 July

It was not a good morning to start with – all the tents were buried under about 200 mm more snow that fell during the night and it was still snowing when I poked my head out of the tent at 05:00.

Heavy snowfall in basecamp overnight

. . . . . . . and getting the camp sorted out in the morning

I had not been sleeping well at all and put the reason for this down to the conscious effort I had been making to breathe through my nose and breathe deeply when awake. But sleeping at night I had been tending to breathe more shallowly (also through my nose) and was clearly not getting enough oxygen causing me to wake up often with a claustrophobic feeling. It had been especially bad waking up in the morning with the whole tent pushed in under its load of fresh snow. When I talked to Cecilia she knew exactly what I was talking about and suggested that taking a Diamox tablet at night might help me with my acclimatization. Anyway when I got out of the tent, I brushed the snow off it and went back to bed! The mess tent’s ridge pole, which had broken in Sunday’s wind storm and had been repaired then, looked as though it had broken again under the weight of snow. All night long we had been treated to the rumble of fresh snow avalanches sloughing off the nearby peaks. Tarig and Hussain who were about to go off on the start of their walkout to Askole, came and greeted me in the tent before leaving at 06:00. Contrary to our expectations (the weather forecast had predicted that snow would continue to fall during the day) we were delighted to see the cloud lifting and the freshly snowclad peaks around us coming out of the clouds. After coffee in bed, we all pulled up chairs, sitting in the snow for breakfast and delightedly watched the mist lifting and the newly snowclad peaks around us coming out of the clouds. A little later basecamp was basking in the sun under a blue sky.

Basecamp breakfast in the snow

Despite the newly fallen snow, the improvement in the weather prompted us to organise another carry up to the cache camp. Of the five porters who were in basecamp first thing in the morning, two went down with Hussain and Tarig, but would return to basecamp in the afternoon, so that, with the remaining three, together with ourselves, we could carry the equivalent of another five loads up to the cache. It took us four hours to do the walk up to the cache breaking a trail in the snow cover over the glacier’s white ice and higher up having to cope with deeper snow on the moraine on the glacier’s true righthand bank. We roped up for safety’s sake and it proved to be a sensible decision because there were quite a lot of small crevasses and in the end we nearly all managed to fall into one, Harry doing so only about five metres before we reached the cache (5 160m)!

From the cache looking up the glacier beyond the icefall we could see the 1200 m high snow and ice face leading up to the prominent col at the bottom of Chogolisa’s southwest ridge, climbed in 1983. Examining the icefall, it looked as though it should be possible to get past it quite easily by traversing across the snow slope and a couple of minor rock ridges on the left side looking up. An old avalanche cone at the start of the traverse indicated we would have to be careful doing the traverse after a fresh snowfall. We couldn’t yet see into the Vigne glacier’s top basin where we intended setting up ABC, nor any part of Chogolisa’s northwest spur above that.

The snow and ice face leading up to the prominent col at the bottom of Chogolisa’s southwest ridge

which then continues up to the mountain's southwest summit (7 668 m)

We decided that on Tuesday we would have to do a recce of the route past the icefall and around the corner into the upper reaches of the glacier to decide on a suitable site for ABC. At the same time we would have to use our five porters to best advantage to bring the remaining loads up to the cache. Depending on what we might find in the upper reaches of the glacier above the icefall, we felt it might be more practical for the porters doing the carry up to ABC, to also sleep there.

Getting the newly arrived loads sorted out at the cache camp

After spending about another hour sorting and packing everything at the cache, we all roped up and headed back down to basecamp – about a 2½ hour walk along a now well established trail. We arrived back in basecamp just in time for tea, the weather taking a turn for the worse with the cloud closed right in and snowflakes falling. Whereas I had previously suggested to Ya Ya that I would cook supper for everyone, I cried off this offer, saying I’d prefer to do it on Tuesday night seeing it was already quite late and Ya Ya had started cooking supper anyway. Also because it was going to be Harry’s birthday on Wednesday, we decided my cooking supper the night before would be more appropriate.

After supper Cecilia gave me one Diamox tablet to take and I also changed from wearing my old thermal underwear to wearing the new Cape Storm expedition thermals. Despite it being the coldest night until then (-5⁰ C measured inside my tent), I was toasty warm inside my bag and slept very well. My lips were still giving a bit of a problem – despite putting on lots of lip ice I was finding that they were still cracking badly.

Late evening view from basecamp of K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum IV coming out of the clouds

It cleared almost completely in the late evening and we had wonderful views of K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum IV in the soft evening light with the clouds playing around them. I measured -5⁰ C inside the tent during the night.

Tuesday 20 July

We had wanted to make an early start from basecamp, but somehow it just didn’t work. Ulrike, Marian, Cecilia, Fran and myself planned to stay in basecamp for the day while Harry and Anthony would go back to cache camp to recce a route bypassing the icefall and if possible also into the upper glacial basin to select a suitable site for ABC. We wanted to know how far it would be to ABC and how long it would take to get there. Also Robert, Linda and Ian got away from basecamp at 08:00 with five porters to do another carry to the cache. We planned to all sleep at basecamp on Tuesday night. On Wednesday we wanted some people to go back to the cache camp and ABC to carry out two new tasks – to ferry the first loads up to ABC and also to do a preliminary recce of the northwest spur to determine how we must tackle it (assessing what equipment would be needed in the way of fixed ropes, etc). To help ferrying loads between the cache and ABC we also wanted to use two of the best porters and decided we would discuss this with them when they returned from the cache. Just about all the carries for the loads that needed to go up to the cache had now been completed. Fran went down with a bad cold and was put onto a short course of antibiotics by Cecilia. I was happy that I was feeling quite good - I intended spending the day organising stuff around basecamp in readiness for “moving house” up to ABC. When we made the radio call at 12:00 Robert responded saying the porters had dropped their loads at the cache and were already on their way back to basecamp, this time on their own, because with the colder conditions the snow condition was firmer. He said he and the others would be returning shortly. There was no response from Harry or Anthony at 12:00 or 14:00, but Robert indicated that they did not seem to be making much progress. The porters who had done the cache carry arrived back in basecamp at about 12:30, by which time the weather had deteriorated with the dull conditions persisting and light snow falling. Somewhat later Robert and the others also arrived back, saying they had moved the cache higher up to the start of the route through the icefall, the start marked with a saucy dog ice formation! They also commented how much easier the trail had become after they re-routed the bit at the top onto snow instead of the moraine rocks on the previous route.

The start of the route bypassing the icefall

When Harry and Anthony arrived back in the late afternoon they told us that the route they had followed was not as easy as they had expected – they encountered several transverse crevasses going right up the slope they were traversing. Also the snow on the avalanche cone they had to cross was very soft and they found it also overlayed a crevasse. The furthest point they had been able to reach was more or less in line with the rock ridge coming down on the glacier’s true righthand bank and they reckoned a further two ropelengths would be needed to complete the icefall bypass. They voiced some concern about the route being safe for the porters.

On Wednesday it was going to be Harry’s birthday so I, together with Cecilia, organised the evening’s supper. Ya Ya cooked a nice soup and this was followed by spaghetti with a sauce made from a few cloves of fresh garlic, some onions and ginger with a tin of chicken cut up, two packets of pasta sauce and a tin of tomato concentrate all finished with a tin of cheese cut up finely and spread on top. For pudding we had one of our Christmas cakes decorated with birthday candles served with a big pot of custard with fresh dates and walnuts cut up and mixed into it. All this done in the kitchen - an absolute nightmare with too many people trying to do too many things and breathing the toxic fumes from the temperamental Primus kerosene stove. Notwithstanding these tribulations, the evening was a big success and a very happy way to celebrate the birthday, the mess tent decorated with streamers. The evening was again cold and clear with more fabulous views of the peaks.

Celebrating Harry’s basecamp birthday party

Wednesday 21 July

Another day of mixed weather, but better fortunes because Ulrike and Robert got away quite early (06:00) and radioed back at 12:00 to say they had managed to get all the way past the icefall and reach a suitable site for ABC. They said they had found the route above the cache nowhere difficult and that it would be suitable for the porters, though they should be roped up because of the crevasses. Ulrike said it had taken them three hours to reach the ABC site from the cache and two hours to return. It was so good to receive this news after the disappointing progress on Tuesday.

Back at BC we organised loads for the two porters who would be doing the ferrying up to ABC and after breakfast saw them off on their own at about 07:00. It was another cold morning so we were happy about them going up to the cache camp on the hard snow on their own and unroped. Quite early in the morning the biggest fresh snow avalanche that we had yet seen roared down the cwm on the glacier’s true righthand bank about one km below basecamp. It was really impressive with snow dust billowing a long way across the approach route to basecamp.

I was also really pleased a little later in the morning when Harry and I got the Siemens solar panel connected up to charge the satellite phone. Harry had been worried that the phone’s low battery warning light had come on so we were delighted when the battery indicator confirmed the battery was already two thirds charged after only two hours charging on the solar panel. When it was fully charged we used the satellite phone to send another SMS to Jenny updating her on progress, to which she later replied that she would put this latest update on the web.

Connecting up the Siemens solar panel to recharge the satellite phone and the radios

A little later in the morning we were astounded to see our porters had already returned after completing a 2½ hour return journey to the cache. In the afternoon they completed another trip to the cache which meant we had been able to ferry four loads up to the cache in the day.

The route bypassing the icefall on the glacier’s true righthand bank

In the early afternoon Cecilia briefed us all on the contents of the four similar HA medical kits and I briefed everyone on the procedures to be followed in case of an accident. Just before these briefings Marian had come to talk to me about the concerns that Cecilia had confided to her about staying in BC on her own - mainly concerns about being on her own in an environment that was completely foreign to her, particularly the possibility of BC being overrun by an avalanche. Our response to these concerns combined with Marian’s positive encouragement, later persuaded Cecilia to agree to continue up to ABC to be with everyone there.

Speaking to Ulrike we agreed that she and Robert should sleep the night at the cache camp and carry the first loads up to ABC on Thursday. The rest of the party (including Cecilia) would pack all the remaining gear that we required (including the primus stove that was at BC), do the carry up to the cache camp on Thursday morning and then, after re-sorting loads there, would continue up to ABC in the afternoon. We would arrange for the porters at BC to assist with the carry to the cache camp and then to continue up to ABC with more loads from the cache. We spent the afternoon sorting the loads to be carried up the mountain the next day and after that had quite a long and delicate negotiation with the porters about the logistics of getting everything up to ABC. The situation was that the porters didn’t have the sleeping gear to sleep at ABC (5 500 m). A suggested way around this problem was for them to continue sleeping at BC and to compensate them for going backwards and forwards between BC and the cache camp each day. The porters said that they wanted to keep the equipment that the expedition had loaned to them, but we again confirmed that this would not be possible. It seemed that the reason for their request was mainly that they were concerned about having to do the route from the cache camp up to ABC on their own, so we assured them that Ya Ya would accompany them up to the cache camp (leaving basecamp at 06:00) to meet Ulrike there and that she and Robert would then stay with them carrying the loads up to ABC. We discussed and agreed all these proposals with Ulrike in our 18:00 radio call and also told her that the rest of us would follow the porters up to ABC and help set up ABC in the afternoon. We also agreed that final negotiations would have to be carried out with the porters and Ya Ya once they had seen what was involved doing the carry between the cache and ABC. We told Ulrike that we would confirm our departure time from basecamp when we talked to her in the 06:00 radio call the next morning.

Tuesday 22 July

Again not a very nice morning – overcast with snow spitting down on BC. As a result the porters only got away at about 07:00. Ya Ya decided he would not accompany them, probably because they clearly did understand the arrangements that had been made and Ya Ya had to organise breakfast for the rest of us departing rather later.

After final packing we got away a little after 08:00 – a bit later than we hoped. Our party rather straggled out over the glacier, but despite our big loads the track going up the glacier seemed a bit easier, probably mostly because, being colder, the snow was firmer. I was concerned that Cecilia did not seem to be coping well, she seemed to be emotionally extremely depressed. We made our 10:00 radio call from near the flat rock where we all rested – this a feature that we all recognised. Beyond this the track over the moraine had been changed, now going over the next door snow fields making the going much easier. It finally took us only 2¾ hours to reach the cache where we found some biscuits and energy bars after scratching around through the food drums already there, also making some Game with water collected from the nearby small lake.

Cache camp

Speaking to Ulrike in the 12:00 radio call we established that she, Rob and the porters who had already done a carry up to ABC, were on the way down to the cache. In fact we had hardly moved off from the cache when we saw Ulrike’s party on the traverse heading back down. At this stage Cecilia had completely given up, overwhelmed by her surroundings, sitting in Ulrike’s tent and crying. So that she wouldn’t be left alone with everyone already on their way going up to ABC, Fran and I stayed behind at the cache camp to be with her and help comfort her. When Ulrike and Robert arrived there was a long confab between Robert and Cecilia and Fran and I waited for perhaps an hour to hear what they wanted to do. Talking to the porters at the cache camp before they went back down to BC, we learned firstly that they were quite happy with the trail between the cache and ABC and secondly that payment for a half stage for the return journey from the cache to BC each day would be perfectly acceptable. After looking very threatening, the weather cheered up a little during the afternoon.

Considering the problems we would have carrying 16 loads up to ABC somewhere near the base of the northwest spur (and later carrying everything down again), and taking account of Ulrike’s description of how bleak the ABC site at the bottom of the spur seemed to be (she described it as a huge open expanse of ice with the only redeeming feature the huge rock where the loads had been dumped) and the fact that we might not have access to water, in comparison with the cache camp where there were good tent sites on the moraine and the possibility of building a communal cooking shelter with water close by, we had to ask ourselves if it might not be better to rethink our strategy. To rather site our ABC at the cache and set up Camp 1 at the bottom of the spur with a couple of tents erected there to support the parties equipping the spur and eventually moving on up it.

Siting ABC at the cache would certainly provide us with a better place to relax and recover from the climbing on the spur. It seemed that Ulrike supported this alternative, but when we talked to Harry on the radio (after he and the others had got up to the big rock in the upper glacier basin) he was less enthusiastic and obviously still favoured our original plan more. We finally agreed that we should first do a really thorough recce of the glacier where we had originally planned to site ABC to see if we could find a more suitable site for the tents and if we could find water (to save the fuel necessary to melt snow).

Back at the cache Robert and Cecilia eventually emerged from Ulrike’s tent and told us that they had decided to go back down to basecamp. They said that they would talk to us again on the radio on the 08:00 radio call and tell us what they would do – Cecilia go back to Concordia and down to Skardu (with or without Robert) and stay there or go home. We all encouraged Cecilia to make the most of her time in Pakistan, suggesting she should perhaps use the time to explore/hike around Skardu or even perhaps to come up to Hushe to meet us there when we walked out. We accepted that we must just see how this works out. She and Robert packed up and set off back to basecamp after saying goodbye.

Cooking supper at the cache camp was a bit of a disaster (trying to use the kerosene that Vista had brought up for us to burn in the MSR XGK stove), to the extent that we spoke to Harry on the radio and asked him to use the satellite phone to contact Bilal and ask him to change the arrangement we had made with Hussain (to send two more canisters of kerosene to basecamp), to rather send up 36 more gas canisters for us to use for cooking at ABC as soon as possible. Cooking on the MSR with the kerosene that had been brought up had proved to be an absolute disaster – it generated clouds of horrible black smoke and everything turned black. It would be impossible to cook inside a tent using the kerosene. Later Harry came back to us and said he hadn’t been able to get hold of Bilal (his mobile phone didn’t seem to be working), but would try again later. However we did persevere trying to cook supper (including retreating to the top of the big rock to do so) and did in the end manage to dish up a reasonable meal. The evening turned cold and we went to bed quite early after speaking to Harry on the radio again – he said they had managed to find a better site for ABC higher up the glacier and right under the rock spur. He promised to report back later on the availability of water at the site. Ulrike told us about the adventure she and Robert had had pitching Ulrike’s tent at the cache camp the previous evening. Apparently they left the tent unattended for a few moments and were horrified to see it blow away rolling several hundred metres across the glacier before they could catch it! Her story elicited much hilarity!

We established that the cache camp was at 5 069 m and its coordinates were N 35⁰ 37.524’ and E 76⁰ 31.012.’

Friday 23 July

This turned out to be an enforced rest day as we had snow dumping on us for most of the morning and only a slightly better afternoon. With the bad weather extending down to BC, the porters didn’t venture out either. The guys at ABC also spent the day resting up. From our radio comms it seemed that Cecilia was a bit more positive, to the extent that Robert said that he was keen to get back up to ABC so that he could help starting to equip the spur. From what we were told from ABC, it sounded as though Ian and Anthony had taken huge strain going up to ABC the previous day, “practically crawling the last few metres to set up camp”. So much so that in the morning radio transmission Ian said that they both wanted to walk out! There were no reasons given over the radio – we just said that they needed to talk this over with us to explain why they felt this way. I could hear that Harry was not impressed!

I managed to get the MSR XGK going (after a fashion) with the lousy kerosene earliesh in the morning so we were able to have some Milo and rusks in our tents. In fact the whole morning was so dismal we lay in our bags, wrote up our diaries and read. I had grabbed the “Da Vinci Code” after Harry had finished it and was starting to read it. It got a bit warmer in the afternoon and I was forced to start progressively shedding layers. We had a good supper of soup followed by one of the freeze dried meals we had been able to find in South Africa – beef, rice and vegetables, which we found a little bland and had to :ginger up” a little with a couple of packet soups. I don’t know if it was the meal or a lingering bug I had brought up from BC, but I had a disastrous night with explosive diarrhoea, so much so that I had to abandon all my thermal under garments outside and nearly got frostbite trying to save the situation! One of the worst episodes of all my expeditions! It really was a very cold night and after miserably crawling back into the tent and my sleeping bag, I just couldn’t warm up again, my tummy still doing its washing machine thing! Earlier in the evening we chatted with Ian who said that he and Anthony had decided to hang in at ABC for a few more days and see how things went. He admitted that their earlier reaction had been triggered by their experience going up to ABC before properly acclimatizing.

Saturday 24 July

After a slowish start this was a much more positive day, perhaps the main reason for this being that, despite experiencing the coldest night to date (even the water inside my Coleman thermos freezing inside the tent), we woke to the first clear morning in about ten days. We had real hopes that this might be the harbinger of a spell of better weather. Unfortunately I was still feeling absolutely miserable and was undecided whether I should make the most of the good weather and get my life sorted out at the cache camp, or bail out back to basecamp to rest and get better.

When I spoke to Robert on the radio at basecamp, he clearly had had a change of heart, saying he was all set to go through to ABC. He told us that one of the porters was ill, so we were later pleasantly surprised when both the porters arrived at the cache camp a little way ahead of Robert. We got everything organised for the porters to go on to ABC with two loads, followed a little later by Ulrike and Robert with their own loads. By this time the sun had become quite warm and there were plenty of avalanches – the mountains shedding their newly fallen snow. Feeling somewhat better, I decided I would not return to BC and instead took myself off to the lower end of the lake with a bucket and had a very successful and satisfying washing session, the day perfect for warming up and getting washing dried.

Fresh snow avalanche peeling off Chogolisa’s huge northwest face above the cache camp

Impressive cornices on the beautiful peak (most likely Prupoo Burakha 6 870 m) above cache camp

At about 11:30 the climbers who had gone up to ABC on Friday arrived back at the cache camp, followed some time later by the porters and Ulrike who had gone up earlier on Saturday. They all helped sort the priority food and equipment that had to be taken on up to ABC and after eating some food set off again to take their new loads back to ABC. A few of the porters who had come down grumbled a bit about having to do a second carry and some persuasion was necessary to get them going. But it had turned out to be a good day for getting the loads up to ABC, there were only 10 left that still had to be taken up.

Fran seemed to have been stricken by the same tummy bug from which I had suffered – we would have to see if she would be well enough to help do a carry up to ABC on Sunday. The porters returned from their second carry later in the afternoon and went straight on down to BC taking a medical kit back to Cecilia as she had requested. Linda had taken her MSR stove up to ABC, so mine would be put into service for the cooking at the cache camp.

Sunday 25 July

In our 06:00 radio call to Cecilia we established that the porters had already left BC to come up to the cache camp and do another carry to ABC. In fact they arrived at the cache camp at about 07:00, we immediately organised their loads and they steamed on to ABC. We were amused later when we met them coming down and we were on our way up to ABC, that they clearly indicated the whole of ABC was still fast asleep when they got there! This was another stunning day – not a cloud in the sky. We packed up everything we needed to carry up to ABC, but when we went to take down the Mountain (TNF) Tent it refused to budge, its guys anchored around stones were completely frozen in. Also with the warmer days there had obviously been a lot of melting and the tents were sitting in pools of water in the middle of the day which turned to ice in the night.

After we had sorted out these problems we got away at about 08:00 and were delighted to find that the snow at the start of the slog above the cache camp was still really firm, though later when we were higher up, it became much softer. The first part of the route (bypassing the icefall) traversed across quite steep snow on the glacier’s true righthand bank and then beyond this continued to climb all the time on the gently sloping glacial ice. The whole of this section of the route was overshadowed by Chogolisa’s huge northwest face, the mountain’s twin summits looming over you all the way. When you “turned the corner” the whole of the northwest spur came into sight. A huge triangle of shattered looking brown rock at its base leading up to a quite low-angled snowy crest, beyond which the ridge steepened again (bisected with intermittent rock bands) until it leveled off, where it most likely reached the large snowy plateau that extended right across the mountain’s west side. The continuous band of seracs on Chogolisa’s northwest face stretched right across to here with a final chaotic jumble of seracs in the scoop just to the right of the northwest spur.

Climbing over one whaleback after another, ABC eventually came into sight, just as the porters who had followed us up from the cache camp doing their second carry of the day to ABC, passed us – they truly did seem to be superhumans! By now it was already very hot and our heavy packs were starting to take a toll, so it was with some relief that we staggered into ABC to a big welcome. The camp was in a fantastic position in a true cwm surrounded by steep snow and ice slopes (with some rock) leading up to jagged summits. Chogolisa’s northwest face still dominated our view, but being so much higher, we could look right along the whole length of the southwest ridge past Prupoo Burakha to the very impressive peak of Tasa (6 700m), a huge wall of ice and hanging seracs.

First view of Chogolisa’s northwest spur

We got organised at ABC erecting the additional tents (the TNF Aerohead tent and the fuel had been left at the big rock marker further down the glacier, so we erected Harry’s TNF Mountain in the meantime).

ABC looking more organised

We spent the afternoon resting and getting everything in place (we found it got incredibly hot in the cwm during the day (30⁰ C in the tent dropping down to 5⁰ C in the tent during the night). We organised lunch on a tarp spread on the snow and did the same in the evening for supper. The kerosene seemed to be working reasonably in the MSR XGK so we abandoned the idea of bringing in the extra gas canisters. Preparations went ahead for Harry and Rob, followed by Ian and Anthony, to start working on the northwest spur on Monday. A thin moon rising over Chogolisa at sunset seemed to be an appropriate welcome for the start of our real climbing!

ABC was at 5 488 m with co-ordinates N 35⁰ 37.515’ and E 76⁰ 32.617’. It had running water and even quite a civilised “bathroom!”

Monday 26 July

Rob and Harry made a 05:00 start to get up onto the snow face bounding the northwest spur’s base on the left. Unfortunately Anthony had now also succumbed to the tummy bug that had been doing the rounds so he and Ian decided that they would have to stay in camp. By the time everyone else had got up, Rob and Harry were hidden behind the rock ridge at the bottom of the spur. I made an early start too and dashed down to the big rock that we passed on the glacier on our way up to ABC, to collect the fuel canister that Ulrike and Rob had left there when they first came up the glacier with the porters – a heavy carry to bring it up the rest of the way to ABC. We were blessed with another perfect day. After breakfast Ulrike and Ian set off to follow Rob and Harry to help equipping the spur – we watched them so long as we could see them quite low down.

After we had given up hope that the porters might still be doing another carry from the cache camp, they arrived at ABC with another two loads.

Illustrating the scale - looking down on ABC from the spur

There was a bit of a mix up with these loads coming up from the cache camp, as there were still a few fairly critical items that we needed that we discovered had not been included in the loads. I pitched the TNF Aerohead in place of the Mountain tent we had put up on Sunday, because it did provide me with more space and headroom, then went down to the “bathroom” to have a wash and bring up a drum of fresh water. The girls opened up all the food drums and spent the morning sorting out the food so that there was a proper order with all the breakfast, lunch and supper food stored separately and the HA packs similarly dealt with.

Getting the food sorted at ABC

Harry and Rob had in the meantime progressed to a high point about one third of the way up the rock on the spur installing fixed ropes as they went. Ulrike and Ian caught up with them close to their high point carrying the tent and a few other items that we wanted for establishing Camp 1 at the top of the spur. They all made a quick descent from their high point back to ABC arriving at about 12:00, happy to be off the by now quite soft snow – everyone quite pleased with the day’s progress. We all spent the afternoon trying to escape from the sun – we found it became incredibly hot in ABC’s reflective snow bowl. Robert had an adventure in the bathroom when he had to make an unexpected nude dash to escape a couple of huge rocks that came down after being loosened in the melting ice!

Tuesday 27 July

Ulrike and Anthony got away on their own at about 05:00 to push on equipping the spur as far as they could. We planned that Ian and Linda would follow them when the porters brought up the next load which would include a second 200 m of 10 mm static rope that Alard Hufner had given us. They did arrive at about 09:00 and they did bring the rope. Cecilia also sent up some sugar, peanut butter and other food items we had requested from BC. It seemed that the porters would not do a second carry in the afternoon – rather two carries on Wednesday (to bring up all the last of the outstanding food and equipment to ABC). Ulrike and Anthony pressed on passing Monday’s high point, Ulrike finally getting right up to the narrow saddle at the top of the rock spur with Anthony belaying.

Another indication of scale - two climbers on the snow next to the rock spur

Ulrike described the position she had reached as being a little way above the top of the rock ridge with a shallow angled snow ridge (she thought probably corniced on the Chogolisa side) continuing above her. She felt it should be possible to hack out a small platform for a tent where she had stopped, as she estimated the slope was only about 20⁰. Unfortunately she did not take a height reading when she reached the top of the rock ridge. She said that above her, the snow ridge was quite low angled at first and then climbed more steeply to a series of small rock steps, at which point she felt it might be possible to traverse to the right, as the rock towers at the top of the ridge were probably somewhat higher than the snow plateau where we wanted to establish Camp 1.

Ulrike put in a couple of snow stakes at her high point on the saddle and fixed the 9 mm static rope to them, which meant that at there were then fixed ropes all the way up to the top of the rock ridge (though obviously when we installed fixed ropes above this point, we would have to take out some of the fixed ropes lower down). Ian and Linda left ABC at about 09:30 carrying the static rope that the porters had just brought up to ABC with the idea that they would cache this together with a TNF Mountain tent at as high a point as they could reach on the way up to the top of the rock ridge. Ulrike turned around from her high point, re-joined Anthony and then descended with him reaching ABC at about 12:00.

I spent the morning in ABC fitting anti-balling nylon reinforced PVC sheets onto Fran’s crampons and then started sorting the additional gear that the porters had just brought up from the cache camp. While we were having lunch, Ian and Linda arrived back from the spur, very hot and pretty tired after caching their loads at the bottom of the long snow section on the spur.

In the late afternoon while we were cooking supper, Ulrike suggested that each of us should say what we hoped we could achieve on the expedition, taking account of the way the expedition was panning out. It was really interesting to hear some of the expedition members’ aspirations. For instance Marian obviously felt strongly that her ultimate goal was to reach Chogolisa’s summit and that if it didn’t work out that way, she would reckon the expedition had not been a success. Robert felt that he would also like to summit, but he was overawed by the mountain and ultimately it would be more important to him that everyone returned from the expedition safely.

This issue of safety was clearly paramount in Tony’s and Ian’s view to the extent that they felt they might wish to withdraw if they reckoned the risk was too high for them – they were particularly concerned about risk, having young families. Ulrike was ambivalent – I think she realised that Chogolisa was a tougher proposition than she had at first thought and also that our party was not really strong enough to have a good chance of success climbing the peak. She mentioned that the installing of the fixed ropes on the spur was a case in point – she had hoped that people would be quite happy soloing that sort of terrain. I made the point strongly that when we chose to attempt climbing Chogolisa, we accepted that it would have to be a team effort. In my case agreeing to the Chogolisa option, I had no special aspiration to summit myself, but was prepared to put everything into getting one of our expedition members onto the summit.

Wednesday 28 July

Robert and Harry got away at about 04:00 to climb up to the saddle and start establishing the route up to the plateau from there. Fran, Ian, Tony and I would then help to get the tent and the additional fixed rope up to the saddle too so that we could get Camp 1 established. We got away from ABC at about 05:00 – another perfect morning. The climbing on the spur was made quite easy with the fixed ropes now installed all the way – really nice to be on firm steep snow.

Going up to the saddle

View of the upper section of the Northwest Spur from the saddle

Looking across to Chogolisa’s main Southwest summit from the saddle

On the fixed ropes Back in ABC after coming down from the spur

The fixed ropes were mostly anchored with pitons driven into the rocky sections of the ridge (some old French rope with separate anchors too), but because the rock was so shattered some of the placements looked quite dodgy! However clipping the jumars onto the fixed ropes was really only for safety and even when we were later descending we were down-climbing rather than abseiling.

Fran and I picked up the extra fixed rope and the TNF Mountain tent on the way and took them up to the saddle together with another 110 m x 9 mm dynamic rope and a gas stove that we had brought up from ABC. We were slightly surprised to find Harry and Robert still there waiting for us because, according to the original agreed plan, they were going to take out the top 200 m of fixed rope below the saddle and start fixing that above the saddle.

Anyway, after leaving the gear we had brought up at the saddle, we went straight back down to ABC getting there at about 11:00, followed quite a bit later by Ian and Tony. The views from the spur (including of our porters making two load carries), were impressive – giving one a much better perspective of the scale of the mountain. We learned that Marian and Linda had gone down to spend a day and a night with Cecilia at BC.

While the morning had been clear and pretty hot (especially the last bit coming down the spur), the afternoon changed to quite cloudy with very mixed weather conditions. We found these incredible fluctuations in the temperature at ABC, from baking in our tents during the day to very rapidly cooling down by the time we were having supper in the evenings, quite trying. Robert and Harry reported disappointing progress going on up the spur. They reckoned they had climbed up to close on 6 000 m, but this didn’t seem to correspond with what we could see from ABC, because their high point above Camp 1 that we had seen from ABC had appeared to be only about one tenth of the height they would have to gain above Camp 1 to reach the rock towers at the top of the spur.

We had cous cous with a pasta sauce for supper after which I crawled into my tent and finished reading the De Vinci Code by candle light. As we expected quite a lot of snow fell during the night. Harry and Robert slept at Camp 1.

I guess to frighten us a little, on the spur Tony took the trouble to photograph some of the rock piton anchors installed for the fixed ropes! We thought it would be interesting to compare them with what the anchors would look like after more warm days with the melting of the ice and snow!

Ian gave us his interpretation of what he thought high altitude climbing was like – “going up very slowly and feeling sick and coming down very slowly and feeling unsafe.”

Waking up in ABC to what the good days were like and later to what the bad days were like

Thursday 29 July

Unfortunately some concerns we had had about a change in the weather seemed to have been realised – we woke to find fresh snow on the tents and snow reported too by radio at BC and at Camp 1. It didn’t seem a very cheery prospect for the day either with cloud and more snow forecast. It was a morning with seemingly different perspectives interpreted from our radio transmissions with Harry and Robert at Camp 1. First of all in the 06:00 call, they said that, despite feeling very tired, they would push on establishing the route up the spur when they were ready. This seemed to be confirmed from what Ulrike said she understood from a later radio call she made to them from ABC – that they intended staying on at Camp 1 to do this and would therefore need some more food to be taken up to Camp 1. Ulrike accordingly set off from ABC at about 07:45 with a load of extra food for Camp 1. But then in a radio call I made at 08:00 it transpired that Harry and Robert still hadn’t set off from Camp 1. Instead of pushing on they said that they intended to rather descend back down to ABC, expecting to get there by about 13:00. None of this seemed to make much sense in terms of what we had previously discussed – the need to push on with the route up the spur above Camp 1 so that we could establish the final camp we would need on the snow plateau.

With our remaining available time on the mountain dwindling fast, I jotted down what we had achieved so far and what actions I felt were going to be necessary for our expedition to still have some hope of achieving success.

Current Status

We had successfully established ABC as a suitable operating base from which to climb the northwest spur and set up our Plateau Camp on the ice plateau

We had set up Camp 1 at the saddle on the northwest spur. This camp had been stocked and should serve as a suitable staging camp to complete the route up to the top of the northwest spur and to establish the Plateau Camp on the ice plateau.

Future Planning

Getting to the top of the upper snow spur above Camp 1 and establishing the Plateau Camp would be the critical elements in providing the expedition with any chance of success climbing the peak. I had always reckoned that establishing the Plateau Camp should be the team effort required to provide the platform for suitably fit, able and motivated members of the expedition (probably two climbers) to make an alpine style attempt to climb the peak. The critical question that had to be answered at this stage was who among our expedition members was going to be fit, able and sufficiently motivated to make an attempt to summit from the Plateau Camp.

All these plans had to take into account the very limited time available to the expedition. We were in fact already running out of time. We had to be back in BC with the mountain completely stripped and ABC dismantled by 9 August, which meant we only had about a week to set up the Plateau Camp and summit the peak.

We needed to have a frank discussion and make some critical decisions how we intended putting this planning into practice! We expected that Harry and Rob would get back to ABC at about lunchtime, bringing all their personal gear, like their sleeping bags, down with them and in fact they were back at about 12:00, pretty tired because they said the snow conditions weren’t good. We also expected that Marian and Linda would probably also come up from BC during the day. I felt it would be good therefor if we could all get together to review where the expedition stood at that time and consider the way forward (along the lines I had sketched out in what I had written about our future planning), with everyone having the opportunity to have their say.

Discussions about the way forward

The ensuing discussion we had with Harry and Rob went very much along the lines I had expected – Harry and Rob feeling that they had done pretty well reaching a high point about 200 m above Camp 1 and caching the ropes and other equipment there. They emphasised that this represented only two hours climbing above Camp 1. But the real problem was that in reality this was the sum of the progress that had been made over a two day period. The fact of the matter was that we were running out of time and the only solution for us to use the remaining time to best advantage would be for the climbing above Camp 1 to be done without any fixed ropes. That would mean a pair of climbers climbing on from Camp 1 to the top of the spur with as light as possible loads to set up the Plateau camp with only a light (Bibler) tent and then to see how far they could get pushing on beyond that. Ulrike and Harry were the only members of the expedition who said that they felt they could do this, though Ulrike expressed reservations about being able to climb what would most probably be the technically most difficult sections we expected at the top of the spur, carrying a heavy pack.

Marian and Linda arrived back at ABC in the late afternoon, tired but happy after a 7½ hour walk from BC. They told us how dramatically BC and the route from BC to ABC had changed due to the melting of the snow and ice.

Based on what had come out of our discussions, we agreed the following proposed detail programme with Ulrike and Harry :

Friday 30^th and Saturday 31^st – Rest days for Ulrike and Harry and preparation for going up to Camp 1 and then on to establish the Plateau Camp

Sunday 1^st – Ulrike and Harry climb up to Camp 1 and sleep there

Monday 2^nd – Ulrike and Harry climb up to the top of the spur and establish the Plateau Camp

Tuesday 3^rd – Rest day for Ulrike and Harry at the Plateau Camp

Wednesday 4^th – Ulrike and Harry try for the summit and return to sleep at the Plateau Camp

We would plan our activities at ABC accordingly.

Diagram showing our planned climbing on the Northwest Spur and above

Robert, Ian and Anthony said they would go down to BC for a night leaving ABC on Friday.

More snow fell at ABC in the afternoon and evening, but a parting in the clouds suggested that there might possibly be better weather on Saturday. Marian and Linda brought up the solar panel to charge the radio batteries when they returned from BC and we intended seeing if we could get that to work at ABC. I wrote a series of SMS’s to Jenny on the satellite phone for her to update the web.

I felt really pleased that, after our difficult discussions in the morning, everyone seemed to be in quite a positive frame of mind about the plans for Ulrike and Harry. We would need to provide them with the best support possible to give their effort the best chance of success.

Friday 30 July

As this had been designated a rest day at ABC, it appropriately looked like it was going to be blessed with more lousy weather! Robert, Anthony and Ian got away from ABC for their trek down to BC at about 08:00. They intended returning to ABC on Saturday afternoon. There wasn’t much activity at ABC – snow fell intermittently alternating with brief intolerably hot spells when the sun came out forcing us to shelter in the tents.

I tried to dry out my tent’s floor a bit – there was a lot of melt water from the snow melting and some of it had collected underneath the groundsheet. I passed on the Da Vinci Code to Ulrike who promptly went to ground with it in no uncertain manner! The afternoon passed in similar vein, but rather colder and with more snow sifting down. Because I made best use of the time to have a snooze, I missed a radio call from Rob at BC. I did later make amends talking to Cecilia at BC after supper, which was quite difficult to get organised as it was still snowing and had turned very cold. After supper we sorted out Ulrike’s and Harry’s food because Fran and I had said we would do another carry in the morning to take their food up to Camp 1, but then discovered that Marian and Linda also intended going up to Camp 1 leaving even earlier than us. When we discussed how we could rationalise the carry (there would have been no justification for four of us carrying so little), it transpired that Marian, apparently with Harry’s support, now wanted to make up a third in Ulrike and Harry’s party going up to Camp 1 and on to make the summit attempt! I was completely taken aback to be told this at such a late stage! There had been no discussion at all with me or anyone else before this other than the statement that Marian made at our general debate on Tuesday 27^th when she stated her view that for her the success of the expedition hinged on whether she summited or not. She was certainly not mentioned as a possible contender when we talked about Ulrike and Harry making their alpine style attempt to summit, in our detail planning discussions on Thursday. Marian had not been present when we held those discussions, but then Harry should have said something at the time, or Marian and Harry should have said something when Marian came back from BC on Thursday evening. Marian said it would be up to me to decide whether she should be a member of the summit attempt knowing her aspirations. I pointed out that none of us had really considered her a serious contender for going for the summit, because her performance on the expedition had been compromised by her continued illness – there was no indication that she would be fit and strong enough to go for the summit if she joined Ulrike and Harry at this stage. Responding to this concern, she said that she hadn’t gone down to BC because she was ill, it had rather been for her to test her physical fitness herself. She said that she had felt good walking back to ABC from BC (though it had taken her 7½ hours to do so). She also said she wanted to go up to Camp 1 to see how she felt at this camp's higher altitude.

At this point Harry said he found it strange that none of the other expedition members aspired to go to the summit. But while this was probably true, I didn’t really think Harry appreciated that they had gone along with the choice of Chogolisa as the expedition’s first choice of objective, probably accepting that they would in all likelihood not go to the summit, whereas if they had perhaps felt more strongly in favour of Sani Parkush and the other possible 6 000 m peaks in the Batura, which had also been suggested, they might have stood a better chance of climbing a peak. Harry was critical about the role they played putting up the fixed ropes on the northwest spur (most of this work was done by Rob and Harry, with Ulrike and Tony assisting), which I felt was also very unfair considering that they had carried a large portion of the food and gear up to help establish Camp 1 (including some of Harry and Rob’s personal gear) – carrying really heavy loads. Looking at all this critically, I think most of us reckoned it was really Harry and Rob who had failed to perform pushing the route beyond Camp 1 (only managing to do two hours climbing during the time that they were at Camp 1). In all this discussion it was clear to me that Ulrike must have felt terribly put out to see the expedition’s chances (and her own opportunity) prejudiced by Marian’s personal aspirations! But I felt that taking a hard line on deciding how we should go forward would probably result in Harry siding more strongly with Marian, so I reluctantly agreed that Marian and Linda should do their carry on Saturday and that we should judge from Marian’s performance doing the carry, whether her inclusion in the summit attempt would be justified. I also wanted to talk to Ulrike separately about these unforeseen developments and to tackle Harry to ensure that, whatever decision was made, it had to be in the best interests of the expedition and not any individual. I wanted him to understand what would be expected of everyone going for the summit – there would not be any more fixed ropes, they would all be carrying heavy packs (all their own gear and food to be completely self sufficient) and almost certainly they would be soloing steep ground on mixed terrain and rock, something I had grave reservations about Marian being able to do.

In my view this had all been a rather unfortunate and selfish attitude displayed by our Dutch friends! I just felt all knotted up about the way things were going! I saw my responsibility was to the whole group of people on the expedition as well as to all the other people back home who had supported the expedition. As such I felt it was my duty to promote a plan that would give the expedition the best chance of success in achieving its main objective, and it might be unfortunate if this did not coincide with the aspirations of some of the expedition’s individual members!

There was more snow that continued to fall all afternoon and a hefty avalanche came off Chogolisa’s northwest face during the night.

Saturday 31 July

I looked at my watch and saw the time was 04:15 shortly after I heard Marian and Linda leaving to go up to Camp 1. It was not a brilliant morning and there was still some snow sitting on the tents when we got up. In our 09:00 radio call to Marian we learned that the girls were still some distance below Camp 1, Marian complaining that she was going in up to her hips in the freshly fallen snow. After breakfast I sorted out the connections and set up the solar panel to charge the radio batteries – these are much larger than the satellite phone battery and would need a much longer charging time. In our next radio call from Marian, she confirmed that they had reached the tent at Camp 1 at about 10:00 – about six hours climbing above ABC.

Talking to Ulrike, she confirmed her unhappiness about the previous afternoon’s developments even expressing some reservations about partnering Harry with regard to her perception of his preparedness to “push things”. She said she wished Ian had expressed a wish to try to summit, because climbing with him she felt she would have felt a very “solid” support.

In a radio call made to Rob, Ian and Anthony at BC we learned that they would only return to ABC on Sunday. Ulrike also asked Ya Ya to try to get the weather forecast from Pakistan shortwave radio news for the next three or four days.

The two girls arrived back from Camp 1 at about 13:00 nearly nine hours after leaving ABC, Marian clearly the wiser (she told us that they had had to contend with deep fresh snow), realising that going up the fixed ropes to Camp 1 was her limit. After going up to Camp 1 she magnanimously accepted it would be unrealistic for her to want to go for the summit as there would be a real risk that she would hold up the others. In the end I felt very thankful that this provided a sensible, easy and very amicable solution to the hiatus we had been faced with after Fridays discussions.

In the morning I collected all six of the radio batteries at ABC and allocated identifying numbers to them, checked their charges and where necessary pumped some more ”juice” into them. They charged very well and I felt good too that we would be able to start keeping track on them with a more formal recording system.

It turned out to be another very snowy afternoon prompting me to sleep some more in my tent. It was later a bit of a mission getting supper going – lighting the MSR’s in the wind and with the snow still falling. We received an SMS from Jenny with some weather forecasts she had managed to pick up on the internet. It sounded as though the weather would remain variable until Wednesday, after which it might become more favourable – unfortunately it seemed that Ya Ya’s radio wasn’t working so we wouldn’t be able to get any forecast information from him.

We held a useful discussion with Ulrike and Harry about plans for Sunday from which we decided that Fran and I should do another carry up to Camp 1 to help get the last food and gear up there. We were concerned that Harry wanted to take the satellite phone up to the Plateau Camp with him – we felt this could be problem if there was an accident involving him.

Sunday 1 August

It was really not a good night – there was more substantial snowfall. It seemed that the weather was playing the final card in our hopes to have a go at the summit. I felt we were all now intensely frustrated. The fact that there was so much new snow and that the upper sections of the mountain were clamped in under cloud made us decide to abandon any idea of going up to Camp 1 as previously planned. I feared that there was a reluctant admission looming that this continuing bad weather was wiping out any hope of a summit bid. About mid-morning we sat outside, counted the days we had left and itemized what we had to do if we had to abort our last effort to climb the mountain :

August 10^th the pivotal day that governed everything, being the day that we had to leave BC with all the porters coming up from Askole to carry our gear out, some over Gondoghoro and most of them down the Baltoro

August 9^th we would have to be available for the final packing and the division of loads at BC

August 7^th and 8^th the carrying down of everything from ABC in two stages – those of us at ABC ferrying from there to the Cache Camp and the porters coming up from BC, ferrying everything down from the Cache Camp to BC

August 6^th carrying down from Camp 1 and dismantling and carrying all the fixed ropes and other gear off the mountain

Which would leave the period from August 2^nd to August 5^th ie four days for us to climb the route to the top of the spur and to set up the Plateau Camp, to make the attempt on the summit and to descend back to Camp 1 – which just seemed too tight. Our main problem without any doubt was the continued unsettled weather and the fact that it had already deposited large amounts of fresh snow on the sections of the route that would be critical ie making it considerably more difficult and exhausting to climb and posing high avalanche risks both on the steep upper section of the northwest spur and on the whole of Chogolisa’s north face. The problem had been exacerbated by the fact that it has been quite warm and the fresh snow that had fallen had not been freezing.

From our first climbing day at BC (Saturday 17 July) to the present (Sunday 1 August), ie 16 days, we had only enjoyed five days of decent weather for setting up our lower camps and establishing the route up to Camp 1 at nearly 6 000 m, on the northwest spur. On nearly all the other days we had experienced continued unsettled weather often accompanied by fresh snowfalls. That is unfortunately one of the risks one faces trying to summit a big peak with a limit imposed on time by the amount of time working people can take as leave.

I sent the following SMS message to Jenny on the satellite phone :

“13:00 1 August ABC Snowing heavily – an intensely frustrated climbing and support team at ABC because we are experiencing continued bad weather and heavy snow. Of the 16 days since setting up BC, we have only had five days good weather which we could use to set up Camp 1 and push our route on the NW Spur to 6 000 m. We presently face unacceptable risk as the mountain sheds unconsolidated snow, if we try to push our route to the ice plateau and try to summit. We need a break in the weather, better freezing conditions and better visibility for any hope of summiting and this will have to happen very soon, because we have to dismantle the fixed ropes and take down ABC and Camp 1 to be in BC by 9 August. Still, everyone well and hoping for the best.

Love to all, Andre’”

What incredible extremes we enjoy with modern technology :

a) We have a satellite telephone with which we can talk at moment’s notice or send an SMS to someone sitting in an office or at home in South Africa from our ABC in the middle of the wild Karakoram mountain range at 5 500 m some 8 000 km away!

b) In the middle of a snowstorm we have a solar panel that will charge our satellite telephone, radio or other batteries very effectively as a source of power

YET If we want to go to the loo, we have to trudge 50 m through slushy snow and endure a few minutes of freezing hell doing our business – undignified, dangerous and physically miserable.

Where are our real priorities?

It continued snowing heavily all afternoon and it was quite a performance getting supper – this time Harry and Marian used the Dutch freeze dried rice supper and an excellent yoghurt and nut pudding. In the 18:00 radio call to BC Robert confirmed that the others who had gone down with him to BC, would all be coming up to ABC on Monday morning.

There was quite a lot of wind and more snow during the night as well as more big avalanches.

Monday 2 August

When I woke up the colour of the fabric on my TNF Aerohead’s front panel made me think that maybe our luck had changed, but when I looked outside I was greeted by the same old scenario of cloud and falling snow. In fact this morning must have been one of our low points weather-wise. With the wind, falling snow and spindrift making life so miserable, we didn’t even get out of the tents to get breakfast. We picked Robert up on the radio saying the party from BC had reached the Cache Camp and expected to reach ABC around 10:00. I climbed out of the tent to get the stoves going at about 09:15 – a really horrible job with the snow still falling, driven with the spindrift across the campsite by a blustery wind. I was quite impressed that it was possible to get the MSR’s going and to heat the water we needed for breakfast at all. And good timing because the hot water was ready just in time to greet the party arriving from BC. To our surprise it was Shiralee and Ya Ya who first loomed out of the murk, shortly followed by Robert who told us that in view of the lousy weather Ian and Anthony had decided rather to come up to ABC on Tuesday. Robert said that the section between BC and the cache was now quite treacherous. Also because he had been holding up the others, Shiralee had taken over his pack.

Lots of warm greetings on their arrival with tea and hot chocolate administered to help warm them up. What incredibly tough, resilient and cheerful people these porters are to come up on such an incredibly foul day! What was indeed good was to see Ya Ya again and be able to talk to him about the arrangements for packing up and departing from BC. He confirmed that everything had been arranged for our departure from BC on August 10^th – also that Shiralee and Hussain would help bring down loads from ABC to BC on 7^th and 8^th August and we would organise the porter loads for the walk out in BC on 9^th August.

In the meantime Harry had received an SMS from his Dutch friends, who had summited G1, that there was another expected window of better weather expected on August 5^th and 6^th that might offer us a last gasp opportunity to go for Chogolisa’s summit. This did seem to tie in with the earlier weather forecast that Jenny had managed to get for us which indicated there should be improving weather conditions from around Wednesday August 4^th. Taking account of the days we are already losing due to the continued bad weather, as well as the latest amended weather reports, we updated the programme for our “last gasp” attempt to get Ulrike and Harry to the summit as set out below :

Monday 2^nd – First porter load sent down from ABC to BC with Shiralee

Tuesday 3^rd – Ulrike and Harry climb up to Camp 1 and sleep there. Andre, Fran and Linda carry the Bibler tent and some of Harry’s and Ulrike’s personal gear to Camp 1, also bring down VE24, static rope, etc from the high point, take out snow stakes (giving the carabiners to Ulrike) and bring these down with all the excess equipment from Camp 1 to ABC. Ian and Tony come up from BC to ABC with a minimum of personal gear

Wednesday 4^th – Ulrike and Harry climb to the top of the spur and establish the Plateau Camp with the Bibler tent. At ABC the rest of us sort the loads to be carried down to BC. Erect the VE24 at ABC – this with one of the tents at ABC should be sufficient for all of us. Take down all the other tents.

Thursday 5^th - Expected good weather. Rest day for Ulrike and Harry. They must move the Plateau Camp to the best position to access the North Face. Rest of us start carrying loads down from ABC to the Cache Camp.

Friday 6^th Expected good weather. Ulrike and Harry make their summit bid, returning to the Plateau Camp Friday evening. Rest of us continue carrying loads down from ABC to the Cache Camp. If Ulrike and Harry have to abort their summit bid, they will start descending to ABC earlier.

Saturday 7^th If they slept at the Plateau Camp, Ulrike and Harry descend the top part of the Northwest Spur and sleep at Camp 1. The rest of us (if possible with the two HA porters) carry loads from ABC to the Cache Camp/BC. Maybe helpful for some of us to sleep at BC and do the carries from the Cache Camp to BC.

Sunday 8^th Ulrike and Harry descend to BC. Rest of us remaining at ABC go up the spur to dismantle Camp 1 and then also dismantle the fixed ropes on the spur in time for the porters to take them down to BC. Pack up all remaining gear at ABC and take it down to BC.

This had to be one of the most miserable afternoons we had spent at ABC – the snow continuing to fall and spindrift being whipped around the tents. The lousy weather continued until late and, not wanting to repeat the MSR saga cooking outside again, I dug out one of the MSR gas stoves and cooked some soup and smash inside the tent, then gave the stove to Rob to do the same. However, the others did eventually cook outside and managed to get the MSR’s to work (with kerosene). It was a bit of a problem that, with the bad weather, no-one had gone to fetch water.

During the night it worked up to another quite violent storm – lots more snow falling and very strong winds buffeting the camp with spindrift getting in everywhere. In the middle of the night there was also another big avalanche that came down in the cwm behind ABC. It sounded like a Boeing taking off when it happened – the prospects weren’t looking all that good for our plan of action!

The continuing bad weather at and above ABC

Tuesday 3 August

It was still very windy with more snow falling first thing in the morning, so we abandoned our plan to go up to Camp 1 early. Somewhat later Ulrike, Harry and I discussed our latest plans and the effect that the continuing bad weather would have on them. Ulrike felt that unless we had a clear day on Wednesday with the fresh snow melting and re-freezing and the unconsolidated snow being shed off the steep slopes, there would be a high risk of avalanches and we wouldn’t be justified pushing on. More optimistically Harry felt that much of the loose snow might have been blown away by the high winds that we had experienced and that it would be worthwhile going up to Camp 1 as planned to have a look anyway. We finally agreed to do this, but with only Ulrike and Harry going up. They would assess the conditions and also from what the weather looked like on Wednesday, decide if they should try to make the route up to the plateau, or not. If it looked like it would not be possible to push the route up to the plateau, they would start stripping everything off the mountain. After getting everything ready they got away from ABC at 08:00. At that stage the weather was still completely clagged in so everyone remaining at ABC crawled back into their sleeping bags until about 10:00 when we had our first radio comms with Ulrike. She said there was a lot of fresh snow on the spur and it was taking a lot of effort going up the fixed ropes. Meanwhile the rest of us at ABC (Robert, Linda, Fran, Marian and me) reorganised Anthony’s and Ian’s Sunseeker tent making it into a mess tent so we could do our cooking in it using the gas stove. This was far more successful than trying to cook communally outside.

Trying to stay optimistic at ABC

Anthony, Robert, Ulrike, Harry, Marian, Fran and Ian (Cecilia, Linda and Andre’ not in the picture)

Robert had brought up a pack of cards from BC and introduced us to a diabolical card game called “black bitch” which we played until lunchtime. Linda the clear “loser”, was told that she would have to “roll in the snow” as the forfeit for losing by so much! In the next radio call at 14:00 Ulrike confirmed that she and Harry were safely and snugly ensconced at Camp 1 and would wait to see how the weather and snowfall play out in the afternoon. We said we would discuss the situation again at 18:00. We also spoke to BC and learned that Ian and Anthony were coming up to ABC too to help start carrying stuff down to BC on Wednesday. We spent the middle part of the afternoon sorting out the food at ABC – establishing what food still remained at ABC, separating it into what would still be needed at ABC and making up packs of the rest that would have to be included in the loads going down to BC. There was an impressive amount of food that we had still not used!

At this stage the weather was still abysmal and a significant amount of snow was still falling, though the strong wind we had been experiencing, seemed to have abated. I got hold of the second half of Sara Wheeler’s book “Terra Incognita” from Linda and started reading it. We spoke to Ulrike again on the radio in the evening call, and agreed that if there was no improvement in the weather on Wednesday, she and Harry should strike Camp 1 and start stripping everything off the mountain. We had supper in the “converted” mess tent and played a couple of rounds of “black bitch” by glow worm candle light afterwards. It continued to snow during the night! The others didn’t get very far with the word puzzle “I don’t like it said the man in the black tie ………………!”

Wednesday 4 August

The same gloomy weather outlook greeted us when we woke in the morning – there was more snow that fell during the night and quite heavy showers after we woke up. In our radio call to Ulrike we confirmed that this was now the “final call” – acceptance that the on-going bad weather had finally sunk us! Talking to Cecilia in BC, she confirmed that Ian and Anthony would not be coming up to ABC during the day – apparently Shiralee’s snow blindness (from coming up to ABC with Robert and Ya Ya on Monday) was also still being treated. Intermittent snow showers persisted all morning. I used the available space in Ulrike’s expedition bag to pack in the radio charger and some batteries as well as some of my own excess personal kit. Just before 11:00 there was a HUGE avalanche that came down Chogolisa’s northwest face with the powder spilling right over as far as the glacier below us and swirling right up to ABC – avalanches like that would be likely to pose a real threat to anyone going down to the Cache Camp.

The afternoon was slightly brighter with a few spells when the sun even broke through, while we were starting to prepare loads to be carried down to the Cache Camp. One blessing we were happy about was that we found the dried apple rings (under the bag of energy bars) while we were sorting the loads, so I cooked some that we later ate with hot custard as a desert for supper.

On the 18:00 radio call that we made to BC, we learned that we would most probably not be able to use the porters to carry the loads down from ABC to the Cache Camp – Shiralee was still suffering from his snow blindness and Hussain had accompanied Ya Ya down to Concordia to organise the porters we needed for the walk out. This was a bit of a blow, especially as we had arranged with Ya Ya that there would definitely be porters available for this carry on 7 and 8 August. To help solve this problem, we arranged for Ian and Anthony to come all the way through to ABC to help with the carry, the motivation being that we had to get everything through to the Cache Camp by 8 August. We did feel happier that it would be us doing this carry because we realised that the ABC/Cache Camp section would be the one most critical in bad weather.

Talking to Ulrike she confirmed that she and Harry would strip the route, take down the Camp 1 tent and bring as much of this stuff down to ABC as possible. Discussing these plans at ABC, Robert said that he would go up to help Ulrike and Harry and I said I would do a carry with the girls to the Cache Camp (we agreed that me being with the girls would probably be a wise precaution) – unfortunately none of the girls seemed keen to go up with Robert.

Lo and behold it cleared completely in the late evening. The prospects looked promising for decent weather on Thursday!

Thursday 5 August

Our hope that it would be a good day weather-wise was realised – it dawned clear and it must have been our coldest night so far (I measured -8⁰ C inside my tent and Robert -10⁰ C). Robert got off to climb up the fixed ropes to help Ulrike and Harry strike Camp 1, also to bring down the ropes, tents and hardware as far down as possible. As we had arranged Marian, Linda, Fran and I did a carry down to the Cache Camp leaving ABC at about 06:30. We found almost no trace of our previous trail in the thick layer of fresh new snow that had fallen and had to expend quite a lot of energy breaking a new trail. We dumped the loads we had carried down in the Sunseeker tent that was still standing at the Cache Camp. Shortly afterwards Anthony arrived from BC too. He was on his way up to ABC and was going to do a carry all the way down to BC from there and then sleep there. It seemed a very long haul to us slogging back up to ABC. The snow was becoming quite slushy under the hot sun and I found it quite tiring ploughing through the slush. In fact we met Anthony again just before reaching ABC, this time carrying a drum on his way down to BC. Sometime after we got back to ABC, Robert arrived from the spur too leaving Harry and Ulrike to manhandle the large black bag (containing the tents, hardware and ropes they had brought down from Camp 1) down the spur and back to ABC. At this stage none of the fixed ropes below Camp 1 had yet been dismantled.

Earlier Anthony had told us that Ian was also coming up behind him, but quite a long way back – in fact just before turning the corner where, going up, one sees the spur for the first time, I saw Ian arrive at the cache. He had to complete the climb between the cache and ABC in the hottest part of the day and we were quite relieved when he finally arrived at ABC at about 16:00 feeling pretty exhausted.

After eating an early supper, we talked about the carries that we needed to do on Friday. In the 18:00 radio call Cecilia confirmed that only Shiralee would be able to come up to assist with the carrying from ABC. Ulrike and Ian would go up the spur to dismantle the fixed ropes, anchors, etc and bring them down to ABC. In addition Harry, Marian, Robert and Linda would be leaving ABC early to do a carry to the Cache Camp and hoped to return to ABC early enough to be able to do a second carry, before it got too hot. In order to obviate having to return to ABC in the heat of the day, Robert and Linda were considering striking their tents at ABC and taking them down together with their personal gear to the Cache Camp and to also sleep there after their carry.

Amongst the things we discussed, there was quite a heated exchange I had with Robert (with Harry joining in too) about the rubbish at ABC. I felt it would be acceptable to burn all the paper and cardboard at ABC (the bulk of the rubbish), but to carry down all the plastic and tins to BC. Whereas Robert was adamant that everything should be carried down to BC, even getting quite excited and voicing his concern about pollution from the fumes from the printers’ ink if the burning was done at ABC. I felt that this would be carrying his ideals to the extreme since it was Vista,s policy to burn all the rubbish at BC, in an environment little different from where we were at ABC. But Robert felt that even more should be done - that we should hire porters to carry all the rubbish from ABC and BC all the way back down the Baltoro, which I felt would be extremely idealistic and not very practical.

In all five loads were carried down from ABC to the Cache Camp and one load from ABC to BC. At least a start made getting everything back down to BC.

ABC again in pristine weather, after our prolonged spell of bad weather

Late afternoon sunshine bathing Chogolisa’s northwest face above ABC

Friday 6 August

On this, another good day weatherwise, Harry, Marian, Robert, Linda, Fran and I did the next carry down to the Cache. It took us an hour and five minutes to go down, appreciating the difference that the snow was nice and crisp. Robert, Linda and Harry did a second carry later in the morning and Shiralee, who had come up from BC, also carried two loads. We found the conditions were so much better managing to return to ABC earlier – it was not nearly so hot and the snow was much firmer. Each round trip took about four hours including the time spent at the cache.

I spent the rest of the morning sending a long message to Jenny by SMS :

“10:00 Friday 6 August ABC : Hi Jenny, Well, the weather has played its fateful cards with a bitter twist at the end. From my SMS on 1^st to the day before yesterday we had continued heavy snowfalls every day combined with strong winds and only yesterday, as forecast, clear weather once more. In a last ditch effort Ulrike and Harry went up to Camp 1 on Tuesday 3^rd hoping weather/snow conditions might allow them to get up to the ice plateau to establish Camp 2 to use the good weather forecast on 5^th and 6^th to make a summit attempt. But the weather on 4^th was terrible with the top of the spur still under deep snow and consequently this last plan also had to be abandoned.

The bitter twist is the beautiful weather we have had since yesterday and knew was coming.

Today we are bringing down all the ropes and gear from the mountain. Everyone is also carrying loads down to the icefall cache and BC in preparation for striking BC on 10^th.

We made as much time available for climbing on this expedition as we could, but always accepted success might be dictated by the weather. All the same we do feel the weather has played a more significant role than we anticipated, both in the amount of bad weather and snowfall and the timing of the good weather spells in relation to our programme. Of course there is big disappointment that we did not achieve our main objective, but the exoedition has achieved a lot in other areas, principally experience gained trying to climb a big mountain like Chogolisa. All well here Love to all Andre’”

As usual when we had fine weather, the afternoon in ABC turned very hot again. Anthony likened ABC to one of those parabolic reflector cookers – it really could get hot there. In the afternoon Harry, Marian, Robert and Ian all freed their tents from the ice and packed up in preparation for going down to BC. Ulrike too, but she would leave her tent for us to take down later. Ulrike went up the fixed ropes on the spur quite early in the morning, followed much later (when she was already at the site of Camp 1) by Ian. They spent the morning very successfully taking out all the fixed rope anchors and dismantling the last of the fixed ropes. As Ian amusingly later described it, they kicked this “mess” down the mountainside with Ulrike giving Ian a hard time because she was worried that the snow was getting too soft! Anyway the “mess” was duly dragged into ABC wher Marian, Ulrike and I spent a profitable time getting it straightened out without knots!

Everything got into order for making an early start on Saturday, including getting confirmation from Cecilia that both Hussain and Shiralee would be coming up to help making the last carries from ABC to the cache. 11 more loads were carried down from ABC to the Cache Camp and four from the Cache Camp down to BC.

Rope “salads” in ABC – getting them sorted out without any knots

Saturday 7 August

Although there was some high cloud around early in the day, possibly indicating that there might be another change in the weather coming, at least this looked like being another pretty nice day. Our plan for the day was to get all the remaining loads at ABC down to the Cache Camp, but a concern we had about this was how much this part of the trail had deteriorated due to the huge amount of melting of the snow, rock falls and lots of snow slides. We would just have to be careful. The great carry started off with Harry, Marian and Robert striking their tents and setting off together with Ulrike at about 06:30, Ian getting ready to follow them somewhat later. They intended going down all the way to BC. Fran and I got away also carrying another two big loads and caught up with Ian some way down the trail. He told us that one of his tent poles had “escaped” and gone on a journey down the glacier and he had had to spend an hour chasing after it! Apart from this light interlude we were pleased to meet Hussain and Shiralee on their way up to ABC – in fact this intrepid pair, who were amazingly fit and strong, ended up each doing three carries between ABC and the Cache Camp during the day, the last one including all the remaining hardware and Ulrike’s tent which we had struck before leaving ABC. Shortly after we dropped our loads at the cache Anthony, Linda and Cecilia also arrived – they too would be carrying loads down to BC.

Going back to ABC to bring the last loads down, my tent, the last one and all that was left there, looked really lonely! I sorted out the last remaining chores we had to do to clear ABC – pulling out the snow-filled plastic bags we had used to anchor the tent guy ropes and also using the opportunity to have a last good wash in the “bathroom”. Talking to Robert at BC in the 18:00 radio call, he confirmed that everyone would be coming through to the Cache Camp on Sunday to carry the remaining loads down to BC. He also said that BC had been favoured with a “Choucard” visit while everyone was away – they managed to get hold of a plastic bag containing food outside one of the tents and had gone to town distributing food packets in all directions around the camp. Fortunately they must have been disturbed by someone coming back to the camp, because very few of the packets had been torn open. I struck my tent and dried and re-pitched it so that it would be easier to pack in the morning. 13 loads taken from ABC to the Cache Camp and 10 from there down to BC.

Sunday 8 August

At last all the remaining tasks were finished so that we could close down ABC, the least pleasant one burning the loo paper in the loo hole and filling it in! It was not a bad morning, but it seemed there was still so much to do – after packing the tent and sorting out and packing all the cooking gear, we made some Milo and eventually bid ABC farewell at 07:00. Heavy packs and doing the traverse past the icefall it seemed the track had got that bit dicier each day.

After meeting up with the others at the cache, there was a simply huge effort made by everyone to get all the remaining loads down from there to BC in one go (Hussain and Shiralee each carrying double drum loads and the remaining 16 loads at the cache all being taken down in this one carry to BC). The Cache Camp looking strangely empty after we took down the Sunseeker tent that had been there for the whole time we had been at ABC. Doing the long walk down to BC it was quite amazing to see how the landscape had changed, especially as we neared BC Almost all the snow that previously covered the moraines had gone so that BC itself stood in the middle of a huge rocky wasteland. Even the mountains seen from BC had changed their character significantly, on some of them almost all the snow had melted.

Although we had some snow showers in the afternoon, we were able to dry the tents brought down from ABC somewhat and also to start sorting gear and food according to the split that we had planned - the bulk of the loads going back down the Baltoro and all of us going on to Hushe over the Gondoghoro La. With the odd snow shower, it was a bit of a scuttle having to get the drying tents under shelter, but the weather improved in the late afternoon, allowing us to virtually finish the sorting and packing that we had to do. We were back to BC food and I couldn’t say that excited me too much! But Ya Ya did cook some of the dried apples and apricots and we enjoyed eating them with lots of hot custard! We had a bit of light relief after supper regaling each other with mostly rather improbable stories about encounters with African animals!! Ya Ya told us that there was another Vista trekking party (of four South African girls) at Ali Camp when we were at BC. He said that they were scheduled to go over the Ghondoghoro La that night.

The glacier melt had changed BC so much – all the magnificent stone walls that the porters had built for their shelters were in a state of ruin and the tents we had left at BC were all perched on “mounds” standing high above the surrounding ground.

Monday 9 August

There was another quite heavy fall of snow during the night, almost transforming BC to what we remembered previously and there was more mixed weather during the course of the morning with the sun only coming out intermittently and at other times more snowflakes sifting down. It seemed the trekking party at Ali Camp did not go over the La. We saw them later in the morning walking some way up the glacier, presumably to see how much snow had fallen on the La. Early in the morning a “Subcontractor” came into BC from Concordia with five porters to carry the first of the loads that will go down the Baltoro to Askole and Skardu.

We spent most of the morning reading and escaping the snow. I organised some hot water and enjoyed having my first bath since Payu (a month previously). It felt so good washing ones hair and getting properly clean once more, though even this landmark event had to be performed with some dexterity dodging the snowflakes coming in through the semi-open door! Our thoughts dwelled a bit wondering what the weather would be like going over the Gondoghoro La as we listened to several massive avalanches rumbling down the mountains around BC during the night!

More snow falling at Base Camp as we prepared for the walk out

Ya Ya became progressively more agitated as the day wore on as it looked as though the porters he had been expecting to arrive both from the Hushe side over the La and from Concordia hadn’t pitched up and the weather was still lousy. He used the satellite phone to talk to his younger brother in Skardu – a highly animated conversation with Ya Ya getting very excited. In the afternoon Ian, Ulrike, Linda, Cecilia and Shiralee paid a visit to Ali Camp to talk to the four South African “girls” waiting to go over the La. Besides finding them “at home”, they discovered that there was also a group of 30 Italians at Ali Camp who were also waiting to go over the La. Ian described the Ali Camp site as totally overpopulated and horrible – “a stony slope full of turds”. For all this the South African girls gave a great welcome to our lot, pulling out a couple of bottles of KWV brandy, which made the return journey to BC a whole lot more entertaining, leaping across glacial streams and for some reason just outside BC, everyone having to rugby tackle everyone else, which understandably descended into mayhem!

Ya Ya’s concerns were to an extent resolved when some of the porters pitched up in the late afternoon. In absolutely miserable conditions they managed to partly resurrect one of the stone shelters that had previously been built, while another group that arrived a little later, gathered some of the drums and pulled a tarpaulin over the top, anchoring it all with some of the VE 25’s guylines “borrowed” from Harry and Marian. Ya Ya said he now had too many porters to take the loads down the Baltoro, but still too few going over the La! However, we heard that the Italian group might possibly change their plans and go down the Baltoro instead of going over the La, in which case Ya Ya would be able to negotiate some sort of “swop”. At suppertime we agreed with Ya Ya’s suggestion to send some of our porters over the La in advance during the day on Tuesday carrying the kitchen equipment, so that they could still accompany us carrying loads when we went over the La that night. With all these quite complicated arrangements, we only hoped that we would have better weather when we did the crossing.

I got up to have a pee at about 02:30 to find the weather had completely cleared, the whole of the glacier bathed in moonlight from a sickle moon lying on its back.

Tuesday 10 August

In the morning my hopes for better weather were dashed when I opened the tent door to Shiralee for my early morning coffee to be greeted by the same old dismal scene of the snow sifting down outside. Lighter cloud cover offered some possible hope that we might see some clearing later.

The tent platforms exposed after striking the tents that had stayed at BC for a long time

Ya Ya getting the porters organised for the carry down the Baltoro

Ya Ya organised the porter loads that would be going down to Concordia – these porters were carrying double loads (ie two drums, preferring this to having to do two trips during the day). He told us that both the South African and the Italian parties that were at Ali Camp, did go across the La the previous night. Both Anthony and Ian struck their tents in readiness for them to be taken down to Concordia for the carry down the Baltoro and it was incredible to see the exposed tent platforms, still covered in ice, projecting some 500 mm above the general “ground” level. Ya Ya gathered all our ice axes and ski poles and put them in the kitchen for safekeeping – with the porters coming up from Concordia, he didn’t want to take any chances about stuff “disappearing”. During the course of the afternoon the weather improved markedly and we were again treated to some wonderful evening views of K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum IV.

K2 (8 611 m)

Broad Peak (8 047 m)

Last views of K2 and Broad Peak packing up BC ready to go over the Gondoghoro La

Gasherbrum IV (7 925 m) playing hide and seek in the shifting mists

We ate supper in the mess tent but on a tarpaulin on the floor, since the table and all the chairs had already gone. After supper most of us completed our final packing in preparation for being woken at 23:30 for going over the La.

Wednesday 11 August

Disappointingly, contrary to what we had hoped for, we woke during the night to the sound of more snow pattering down against the tents. However looking out when I woke at 23:15, it looked as though it was clearer. Rather mechanical functioning at this dreadful hour to pack the last items to take with us, my sleeping bag, thermorest and of course also the tent, this last made more difficult because the fly was dusted with ice. Brilliantly, Ya Ya organised Shiralee to bring us green tea and a little later porridge oats at our tents. Meanwhile there was a lot of last minute activity and negotiation going on with the porters and the sirdar weighing our packed expedition bags to make sure that the porter loads were not more than 20 kg. For the number of porters we had organised to go over the La, these checks were strictly enforced and some of our party found that with the adjusting of the loads, they had to take back items they had packed into the porter loads, so they ended up carrying heavier packs than they had hoped! All this seemed to take a long time and it got pretty cold waiting for it to be done, so we eventually only got away from BC at 01:15 instead of 12:30 as planned. Just before leaving BC, we watched a sort of ritual with Ya Ya and all the porters making a chanted incantation, like a prayer offered for their safety crossing the La.

Our route first took us across the glacier to Ali Camp. Quite a strange procession, because as Ulrike was concerned about the fresh snow possibly covering crevasses, she had insisted that we all rope up, but not tying in conventionally – rather just hanging on to a figure of eight wrist loop with us spaced about 2 m apart. Quite a strange procession thus wended its way across the glacier with some hiccups jumping across three glacial streams we had to cross. You could smell Ali Camp before you reached it! Arriving there Ya Ya had to “sign” the party in crossing the La – because there was apparently a “station for rescue” there that monitored and controlled parties crossing the La. At this stage more confusion erupted on the porters’ side because some of the porters were apparently not coping with their loads and Ya Ya had to borrow a spare torch from Cecilia to go back to BC to try to organise alternative porters, all this resulting in about another half hour delay. Eventually we did get away again, first going up over snow patches on the moraine (awkward in our plastic boots), on the Biarchedi glacier’s true lefthand bank, then a long trudge to cross a tributary glacier on really good firm snow following a well-marked trail (both footprints and wands). Before we started climbing on the far side we stopped for a welcome rest.

Climbing up to the Gondoghoro La

As the trail grew steeper we found ourselves climbing up quite a distinct “trench”, but still on very firm snow/ice which prompted us to stop and put on our crampons, most of the porters pushing on in their plastic “tackies” except a few who covered their “tackies” with socks. All this time we used our Petzl “tikka” headlamps to augment the dim light shed by a thin sickle moon that rose a short while after we left Ali Camp. In the silence only broken by the rhythmic scuffing of our boots and crampons in the snow, almost a dream-like mechanical trudge across this huge snowy landscape.

Shortly after putting on our crampons we came to a cache of drums and the start of the fixed ropes installed all the way up to the La. The route followed a fairly steep, but easy line on good snow zig-zagging through seracs – technically very easy climbing and most enjoyable. Sadly our hopes that it would clear were not realised – K2, Broad Peak and the Gasherbrums all remained wreathed in shifting clouds. 05:45 – everyone excited and happy to reach the La and find the weather more promising looking down towards Hushe.

The Gondoghoro La (5 530 m)

Looking across to the 6 000 m Biarchedi peaks from the Gondoghoro La

On the Hushe side our descent involved tramping down incredible deep bucket steps that had been cut in the hard snow and ice with more fixed ropes going a long way down. It seemed all this “infrastructure” must have been looked after by a wild-looking character wearing a big hat who apparently lived in the blue tent we saw pitched on the col.

Below the last fixed rope we had to grate and skid down a steep slope of frozen gravel and loose stones interspersed with more patches of hard snow. For the most part the descent followed a well-marked trail, but, because it was so steep and loose, it was pretty tiring and everyone was glad to get off at the bottom. Beyond this we followed a further rather tedious switchback trail along the crest of the moraines passing a small glacial lake with several very scruffy looking porter shelters (together with lots of rubbish and “spent” porters’ socks!) The trail finally dropped down to a stream below the moraine on the valley’s true righthand bank, a marked feature we noticed, the change in the character of the rock to a clean looking granite with smooth looking faces and intriguing towers!

And then, wonder of wonders, there appeared the first tufts of green grass and further on lovely alpine vegetation with quite a show of flowers, even some birds singing (what sounded like a type of lark). Wooed by this wonderful “descent into paradise”, I just spent some time enjoying it and drinking it all in once again. But the weather was still not being co-operative, with more snow sifting down, so I pushed on along a quite different path going through meadows next to the stream and bounded by large granite boulders and lots of vegetation, finally arriving at the large, rather unattractive (but more organised) campsite called Xhuspaiang (10:30 4 650 m).

Xhuspaiang camp with Laila prominent in the backgound

A mate of Ya Ya’s had already erected the mess tent so we had something to eat, at the same time wondering whether the loads left at the La would in fact be brought down before evening. But we need not have worried – the porters did go back up to the La and brought everything down, so we found that we all had tents and sleeping bags! In fact after leaving us on top of the La, Ya Ya went all the way back to BC and cleared everything from there, before climbing up to the La again and then descending to Xhuspaiang to join us.

Thursday 12 August

We had decided this was to be another rest day, so we had a really relaxed start with coffee brought to us in our tents at 08:00 and breakfast served in the mess tent at 09:00! Great big floppy snow flakes drifting down on our tents seemed to herald it being another pretty lousy weather day. During the course of the morning more parties with porters bringing loads down from the La arrived in our camp, the biggest one from Austria. We ate a latish lunch to which we invited Tony from Cumbria in the UK (who helped feed us before our second lot of porter loads came down from the La the previous afternoon) – an excellent pasta with a meat sauce and potatoes, black beans and cheese together with substantial sort of deep fried spring rolls.

After lunch it seemed brighter with more sun and with more of the peaks coming out of the cloud, so Ulrike, Linda, Fran and I went off to explore the side tributary coming in to the Gondoghoro glacier from the north. We found the upper reaches of the stream ran into some big moraines with talus slopes of granite blocks that had tumbled down from the contorted granite spires above (the donkey’s ears that we could see from camp). Lower down the stream flowed down the ablation valley we could see above Xhuspaiang. Ulrike and Linda continued up the moraine hoping to see a little further around the corner, while Fran and I were satisfied staying put and simply enjoying the “green stuff” all around us. Then we traversed along a series of terraces below the talus slope to reach the rounded ridge above Xhuspaiang (adorned with lots of tall stone beacons), stopping along the way to watch a big ice avalanche coming off the hanging glacier on the opposite side of the valley.

Ice avalanche coming down onto the Gondoghoro glacier

On the terraces where we walked there was a lot of dung that we thought was probably yak dung as well as droppings probably from rabbits or marmots, maybe even ibex! With the sun coming out in patches and highlighting different parts of the view, we just had to take a few more photos, obviously Laila being the favoured subject!

Early morning view of Laila (6 096 m) with the sun and shadow outlining its dramatic form

Friday 13 August

We woke to a perfect day and got going taking down the tent and packing quite early. After breakfast we left Xhuspaiang at 07:15 and headed down the path next to the glacial stream heading for Shaishcho. After climbing over a moraine, we got onto clean white ice on the glacier close to the glacier’s true lefthand bank, all the time drawing closer and closer until we were almost directly beneath Laila’s impressive snow arête leading up to the sharply pointed summit.

One of the many rock and ice “tables” encountered on the glacier below Laila

As we were approaching Laila we had quite a lot of fun with some of the guys climbing on top of one of the many rock and ice “tables” we found on the glacier with Ya Ya digging away at the stem. When our strip of clean ice petered out we continued along the moraine for a further distance, before thankfully finding another long section of similar clean ice – again providing much easier walking. This took us a long way further down the glacier to a point where we could see a prominent green vegetated corner where the valley started to curve to the east and a heavily crevassed section of dry ice with a very steep and broken icefall came in from the right (apparently flowing down from the Masherbrum La). At this point our path climbed up onto the green vegetated corner and traversed across some wider terraces where there were a whole lot of Dzos (a cross between a yak and a cow) grazing. The path then continued mostly on the crest of the lateral moraine on the glacier’s true lefthand bank, though sometimes also in the short and quite narrow ablation valleys next door, until, about three hours after leaving Xhuspaiang, we reached a greener meadow, also in a narrow ablation valley, which Ya Ya told us was called Daltsampa (4 300 m), apparently sometimes used as one of the campsites going up to the La from Hushe. The valley was a bit closed in there, but still offered nice views of a “spiky” ridge and the previously mentioned icefall on the other side of the valley.

After a short rest and a drink, we went on through more ablation valleys before coming to another long straight section of the glacier, where the ice was covered in rubble. At this point the route became a little more difficult, descending to the level of the glacier where a strong clear stream came in from the side (the first good water that we had encountered for some time). We continued to traverse along the slope at the bottom of the moraine “cliff” bounding the glacier, sometimes down in the “trench” right next to the glacier. This went on for some time until the path climbed up again to get onto another “shelf” above the moraine. Not long after this, we met the others who had pushed on ahead a bit, as well as another South African couple of trekkers who were walking in the opposite direction up to Xhuspaiang.

Crossing the river over a traditional bridge of Juniper logs with a deck of transversely woven willow saplings

Balti Peak (6 050 m) above Gondoghoro Camp

We had only walked a little way on from there when we found lunch was waiting for us next to some boulders (which I deduced must be Gondoghoro camp – a couple of clear streams, some caves in the nearby cliff face and a nice view of the impressive spire of Balti Peak above us). Harry and Marian arrived with Ya Ya while we were eating – it seemed they had lost their way a bit some way before reaching Gondoghoro.

After lunch we got going again at about 12:30, first having to wade across a strong glacial torrent coming in from the side, before making a long gradual descent to a goatherders’ kraal on a wide open flat area. Beyond this we descended more steeply down a beautifully wooded (mainly Juniper) series of dry watercourses before climbing up onto the crest of the lateral moraine again. The whole area here was filled with flowers including some prolifically flowering rose shrubs. What a delight to be among trees again and to smell the sweet scent of Juniper wood.

Our day ended at 14:30 after a last long, now hot, descent down to Shaishcho Camp (3 450 m) where the major Charakusa glacier comes in to join the Gondoghoro valley from the west. We revelled being able to rest in the shade provided by some quite decent sized trees – after I got the tent set up I went off to have a good wash in the river, drying off in the sun. It seemed that Shaishcho was a whole lot more developed than most other camps we had used – it even had a “restaurant” on a terrace just above where we were camping. After supper we went to investigate both this and a big sing-song that was getting under way beside the restaurant – the entertainment provided by about 20 of the porters, accompanied by a big drum and two small timpani drums. This developed into a simply wonderful evening with the porters putting everything into their singing, clapping and dancing – an evocative setting with the dancers lit by two gas lamps in front of two pairs of Ibex horns decorating the “stage” and the muted roar of the river in the background. The singing was moving with one young porter singing especially beautifully.

Of course we all were pulled onto the dance floor to dance too, but the undisputed “star” of the evening was one of the old porters who performed magnificently eliciting rapturous encouragement (and money in his hat!) In the end we were persuaded to contribute too and gave a fair rendition of the Lion King song!

Saturday 14 August

This was designated another rest day, so we were able to make a latish start. After breakfast some of the more energetic souls set off to walk as far as possible (in terms of the time constraint) up the Charakusa glacier to have a look at the big granite walls beyond where the first glacier tributary (the Chogolisa glacier) comes in on the glacier’s true righthand bank. Going up the Charakusa valley, from the hill that one can climb about a kilometre from Shaishcho, there is a magnificent view up the valley of the granite towers and spires arraigned above the true righthand bank of the glacier culminating in two large rock and ice peaks, K6 and K7, at the head of the valley. The path that goes up to these peaks’ base camps follows a more-or-less continuous lateral moraine going up the same side of the valley. At a bend in the valley the glacier steepens and there is quite an impressive jumble of crevasses and big ice blocks. Walking up onto the hill to have a look up the valley, the rest of us were especially fortunate to put up a big bushy-tailed red fox that ran across the path and remained in view for perhaps another half a kilometre running up the mountainside between the trees. We could see it would be a long walk going up the valley before one could see much more, so most of us chose to settle down under the trees in one of the many shady spots next to a clear strong stream coming out of a gully just beyond the hill and were happy to spend the greater part of the day just enjoying this relatively lush environment.

K7 (6 934 m) at the head of the Charakusa valley

One of the many intriguing rock spires around Shaishcho – lots of attractive climbing potential

We wandered back to Shaishcho in the mid afternoon in time for tea, taking a few photos of the beautiful Juniper trees on the way there. Some of them were quite large and simply magnificent. Sadly the way that many of them had been scarred by people hacking off branches indiscriminately (presumably for firewood), seemed to indicate that the locals/many visitors probably have scant regard for the environment. Shaishcho is a truly beautiful camp, but is to an extent spoiled by what we saw had been done to some of the Juniper trees, the large amount of rubbish lying around and the fact that the porters (and quite possibly some of the visitors too) just seem to crap everywhere!

In the evening after supper the porters (this time a completely different group that had come up from Hushe with a party of Spanish Aid Workers) put on another musical offering. Although we went to have a look, we thought the evening lacked the spark of the previous one. This time it was mostly the guests that danced (we thought the Spaniards seemed quite a dour lot) and there was much less good singing.

Sunday 15 August

It was a perfect day again for the last stage of our walk out from Shaishcho to Hushe. After packing up we got under way at about 07:30. About a quarter of an hour’s walk from Shaishcho the path crossed the river again over another locally constructed footbridge and then stayed on the river’s true lefthand bank all the way to Hushe, the walking for the most part on fairly level terraces with lots of nice trees (mostly Juniper and willow) just above the level of the river. We passed quite a substantial shepherd settlement, obviously used when the flocks of animals from Hushe are taken higher up the valley for the better grazing during the months from May to September. There was also what appeared to be a quite recently constructed irrigation canal (that Ya Ya said had been funded by the Aga Khan Foundation to serve Hushe) which could no longer be used because of quite extensive landslide damage.

Masherbrum (7 821 m)

A little further on we came to the path leading up to the Masherbrum basecamp that went up a major tributary coming in on the true righthand side of the valley, fed by melt water from the Masherbrum glacier. And looking back from some way below this junction we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the peak itself.

More granite spires above Hushe

As we came closer to Hushe the valley’s character changed with the quite extensive cultivation we could see (fields of wheat, barley and potatoes) and the impression of lots of irrigation water being led around in furrows. We reckoned there must also be a small hydro-electric plant nearby, because there was a powerline that we saw on the upstream side of the village. Coming to the outskirts of the village, we came across a mother and her two small children, all carrying huge loads of green fodder towards the village and a little further on children playing in a stream in which their mothers were doing the family washing. And it didn’t take much longer before we were accosted by a horde of young children begging for sweets or chocolate – we had arrived in Hushe!

We were soon directed to “Camping Hushy” where the porters had already dumped their loads and we found Ulrike and Linda already ensconced sitting on chairs under an apricot tree. After putting up the tents, getting organised and having a bite of lunch to eat, we sat down and had a long session with Ya Ya to agree on the final payment due to Hussain and Shiralee for the portering that they did above BC – the final resolution probably rather more meeting their expectations than we previously thought we would be paying them.

It had turned out to be a very hot afternoon, but after catching our breath a little in the shade and drinking a cup of tea, we set out to explore Hushe. The village is not large (apparently around 150 families) mainly living in small and rather unattractive new concrete block and mortar houses along the main street. The few shops similarly constructed. One had to explore the narrow alleys in the older parts of the village to find the more attractive traditional buildings. Ulrike and Linda were looking at the school when what must have been one of the village’s leading citizens started talking to them and invited them back to his home for tea. Among the many things he talked about, some of the more interesting ones were the fact that there were still ibex that came down into the valley as well as snow leopards (four of them taking many of the villagers’ sheep during the previous winter). He also said there had been a rock climbing accident that occurred a couple of weeks previously in a side valley just downstream from Hushe in which two climbers were killed and one injured (we surmised this may have been a party of Spanish climbers).

One of the disappointing aspects of Hushe was the chronic begging you see among the children, demanding sweets, chocolate, etc, the little boys being more persistent and therefor particularly irritating. This was so different from the many villages I visited during my 2001 recce where there was no similar problem – it would seem likely that the problem is greater in a village like Hushe, because there are so many visitors and most of them are young rock climbers and hikers who would possibly be more likely to accede to the children’s demands. I was quite irritated when Anthony and Ian wanted to photograph the children and offered them chocolates to pose for the photographs.

Winding up the expedition

Reaching Hushe and our return to “civilization” shortly after that was for all intents and purposes the end of the expedition. Our return journey took us to Skardu and then the long drive back down the KKH to Islamabad, all of which was pretty uneventful. We didn’t stop for more than a night anywhere along the way.

The only “formal business” winding up the expedition in Pakistan that I felt should be placed on record, was the formal debriefing meeting that we had to attend at the Ministry of Minorities, Culture, Sports, Tourism and Youth Affairs in Islamabad. Whereas the meeting would normally be a pure formality, it was clearly going to be necessary to sort out the outstanding financial issues with Tarig, the expedition’s Liaison Officer appointed by the Ministry. We also wanted the opportunity for the expedition to formally register its disappointment about the often disgraceful way that the LO had conducted himself.

This was altogether a highly frustrating meeting with Tarig shamelessly making highly inflated financial claims against the expedition and basically setting out to screw as much money out of the expedition as he could. However, we had foreseen the likelihood of this happening and had prepared a detailed statement to clearly set out the expedition’s standpoint. Trying to arrive at what we considered were reasonable resolutions for all these claims involved endless discussion, but ultimately Tarig did accept everything that the expedition was prepared to agree to. In conclusion I made the expedition’s points of view very strongly that it was an embarrassment for the expedition to have to take such a strong stand with the Ministry on the issue of the LO’s bad faith and also that the expedition would wish to submit the statement it had issued to the Ministry, to the President of the Alpine Club of Pakistan with a full report registering its disappointment about the way the LO had conducted himself.

Acknowledgement : Title Photo by Andy Fanshawe reproduced from Himalaya Alpine Style

by Andy Fanshawe and Stephen Venables

Part of Sheet 1 of the Karakoram Orographical Sketch map

Published by the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, Zurich Switzerland

Map 1 from Askole on the Braldu River to Goro 1 on the Baltoro Glacier

Part of Sheet 2 of the Karakoram Orographical Sketch map

Published by the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, Zurich Switzerland

Map 2 from Lilligo on the Baltoro Glacier to Hushe below the Masherbrum Glacier