Life Upheaval and Pre-Match Nerves

Learning how to ice climb with Ally

I've spoken to a lot of friends recently about why they write blogs: to record conditions or keep sponsors keen are obvious reasons but I realised that writing for me is a therapeutic process. It's a way for me to sort out the often jumbled disorganisation of my brain! Writing and telling stories helps me process events. I've realised that's why I often write about disasters rather than days when everything goes smoothly. I need to be in the certain mood to blog and this past 6 months I just haven't been in the right frame of mind for it.

Team rainbow hanging out in Ogwen! So warm for March!

Summer or is it winter?!? Scrambling anyway! 

As much as I hate to admit it, getting dumped at the start of the year sent me into a full blown tail spin. Whilst things between Dave and I hadn't exactly been rosy for quite some time, I was in denial about it and avoiding the situation. Dealing with rejection is never an easy thing to do but it also made me question what the hell I was doing with myself and why I was still in Chamonix. I've had bouts of very self -destructive depression, body dysmorphia and eating disorders since my early teens, but I'm a pro at putting up a wall, hiding my emotions and scars. Unfortunately once I get comfortable being around people I become less guarded and those who are close to me have had to cope with dark mood swings! Dave hadn't exactly had an easy few months and dealing with me too just became a little too much for him to bear. I don't blame Dave at all for calling it quits but I was pretty scared about having to deal with myself on my own again. Whilst we didn't get on in the hills he is exceptionally good at diffusing my panic attacks and dragging me back into the real world. Being featured briefly in the 'This Girl Can Climb' campaign video was actually amazing for me, as it's Past Emily giving Present Emily a 'C'mon Get On With It!!' pep talk.

One of Jen Randalls many lovely photos! This one is a still of me from our "Patience" video shoot.

Since I was in hospital getting chemo, I've developed a fear that I'm frittering my time away. I feel that I need to have no regrets in my life and that's probably why I'm always cramming too much in! For quite some time, I've been uncertain about what I want from life. What do I want to be when I grow up?! Actually being forced to confront this on my own was a blessing in disguise. I know a lot of folk in Chamonix have said that they are worried about me, this upsets me quite a bit as genuinely I'm the happiest I've been in a long time. So many good things have happened to me over the last few months! I got my climbing mojo back, learnt how to water ice did some cool routes, made some truly amazing friends, got some recognition (and possibly validation...) for my life choices and found several career paths that I'm really psyched on. No walls being put up here anymore that's for sure!!

Climbing with a very good (though not new) friend.

Being silly with some newer ones!

And here I am... ready (ish) for another set of expeditions! The build up to this summer in the Stans was so much less stressful than in the past. Third time lucky maybe?! Although I was starting to doubt whether doing back to back trips was a good idea financially, not working for two and a half months was feeling like quite a commitment. But then my Kosmos 2015 Expedition got awarded one of the Gore-Tex Shipton-Tilman grants. Not only was it suddenly financially viable but someone else was as inspired by a lightweight Alpine trip to the face as I am!

Lots of mixed cragging up the Midi, yahooooooo!

Everything has come together for me this summer, including finding several amazing people to sublet my room in Chamonix when I haven't even been looking. Though as ever there are always those pre-trip expedition nerves: am I fit/strong enough? What will 6000m feel like this year? Have I packed the kitchen sink? Why won't the Sat phone work?!? (it does now...) Have we got the right sort of food/gas/battery chargers?? WHERE IS OUR TRANSPORT??? (Going to have to go through these last two stresses three times this year.... YIKES) But all this starts to evaporate when you get off the plane. Now I'm just happy and psyched to be out here again with not one but two groups of my good friends. The next couple of months are going to be super fun, I can feel it in my bones!!

Matt survived his first alpine extravaganza in spite of my best efforts!

Jus' chillin' after finally doing the Tour Ronde north face!!

If you want to keep track of my progress you can follow our website here: British Muzkhol 2015 Expedition I've promised George I'll stop putting fake GPS points into the twitter feed though... (Kabul, Hawaii etc....) but hopefully we will return in a couple of weeks as 'Master Mountaineers'!

LOVE this photo of my main objective this summer... Pik Kosmos!

The Courtes Mis-Adventure; Dancing About

The North faces of the Courtes, Droites and Aiguille Verte. Inspiring stuff!

This is not exactly an up-to-date conditions report of a blog post, but then when is my blog ever that?! I was going to write about this unfortunate day straight after it happened but I decided to leave off publishing this until news of our mishap trickled down the Chamonix grape vine. Though I'm not embarrassed about being helicoptered off a mountain (well, when it ISN'T my fault anyway...) other people can be, especially when it breaks their 100% no rescue record! As there were two other people on a rope with me that day, it didn't really feel like it was my place to tell the world about our rescue.

Starting the ski down on our bluebird climbing day! (J. Williams)

I enjoy first bin alpinism (though we were on the third bin for our Courtes day). For some reason all the big routes I've climbed or attempted involve cutting down on bivvy/hut nights. I do suffer from pretty bad pre-match nerves every time I approach a route the day before and sleep underneath it. This often results in me walking in at midnight and getting straight on the route without bivvy kit (the North Face of the Piz Badile and Peuterey Noire being the two prime examples...) The Swiss Route on the Courtes has been in my head a lot this season, more than in previous years. I've skied in to climb it before from first lift before but always turned around before the bergschrund. When I remembered this fact, that climbing the route from first lift when it's cold enough, is very much possible and that staying in the hut isn't always necessary, my levels of psyche became infectious. So infectious that Jonnie and Polly immediately decided that we should go for it the following day.

Jolie's amazing video of Saul, Harry and I dancing on the bar in Munster at midnight. Good training for something?!?

Unfortunately it was St Paddy's Day and we were already a couple of beers in when this decision was made. Whilst Polly and Jonnie were sensible, I proceeded to stay up way too late, drink a bit too much cider and dance on one too many bars... Still my bag was packed and I was in the zone so I dragged my sorry self to Grand Montets for breakfast the next morning. Admittedly not the best preparation for an 800m north face, but I knew the climbing wouldn't be difficult?!?

Polly's psyched at least! (J. Williams)

Glacial ice is never the best way to start your day...

Skinning up the glacier, I felt pretty ropey! Still even with a ski down in difficult conditions, we were at the bottom of the face and geared up an hour and a quarter after leaving top station. We left our skis on the far left hand side of the face and meandered up through scoured glacial ice steps and massive crevasses... Top tip - approach the route from the right hand side of the face.

Me faffing about as per usual... and saying farewell to the skis! For a while I thought this was the last time we would see them... (J. Williams)

Someone had dug this in as a belay before the schrund.... nailing on all the extra bits of wood shows true belay building dedication!!

By the time we reached the bergschrund I was feeling spooked, hungover and very much out of my depth. I could see the sun on our skis at the bottom of the face and just wanted to be back down there taking a nap... Still Jonnie and Polly convinced me that I was capable of climbing that day and suddenly I was on the end of the rope and crossing the large double crevasse at the bottom of the route. As soon as I had my Nomics in my hands and was actually climbing upwards, I knew it would be alright. I was firing on all cylinders again and the day was going to be cruisey, time to start dancing up the mountain.

Is this really a good idea?!?.....

....Yes it is! Me five minutes later LITERALLY dancing up the first pitch... (J. Williams)

Most of the rest of the day was fairly non-descript to be honest. The mountain was in stellar condition; amazing, cruisey, plastic névé covered everything. 'Thonka' solid axe placements made the near total lack of gear seem almost irrelevant - though we were death-roping we knew no one was going to fall off. We were storming up the face, climbing much faster than I had thought we would. By the time we reached the first crux pitch, we had already caught up with the next party in front of us. Jonnie led the true crux, with just about enough rope left for Polly and I to move together, then I got to lead the second steep section. I was obviously still in a solo headspace as I placed 2 ice screws in 45m... This season I've miraculously become a bold and confident ice climber!

Starting up the steep gearless but perfect névé slopes. (J. Williams)

Pretty special place to be... (J. Williams)

Perfect, bluebird, non windy/spindrifty weather woooot!

Jonnie getting stuck into the crux and about to attempt a sneaky overtake

We are just that efficient that we climb in time.... (J, Williams)

Polly did a pretty good job of leading the simul-soloing for the first section of the face so took over once again, with Jonnie in the middle and me on the end of the rope. After a couple of hundred metres of gearless snow plodding, Jonnie stops and starts swearing. He's blown a crampon. This happens to me quite often - having tiny feet apparently makes fitting crampons and keeping them on pretty difficult?! We wait for him to put it back on, but he can't. He yells to us that it's broken, Polly and I both think it's bodgeable; it's always bodgeable! After 10 minutes of fixing Jonnie's good to go. For all of 20 metres... Then the bodge fails. Cable ties apparently don't last very long on crampons! Polly builds a high belay and Jonnie stops by the last piece of gear. As two heads are better than one I solo up to him to see how bad it is.

The consensus is, it's pretty bad. The bolt holding the plastic front bail onto his Black Diamond Serac crampons has totally sheared off. Now these aren't old decrepid crampons, they are more or less brand new! You can see how sharp they are in the photo. It would seem that the bolt lines up with the dynafit insert perfectly and this has worn away the bolt... in just four hours! We conclude that there isn't a whole lot of bodging that we can do. As the plastic toe is needed to create tension to attach the crampon, we need to get creative. Luckily I had the powerstrap from my skis in my pocket, with that and some jiggery pokery we manage to at least attach the crampon onto his boot again.

Bodge o clock!! (J. Williams)

Group meeting at Polly's belay... We've gone from a happy singing team on a cruisey day out to being stressed and in a pretty serious position within about 20 metres. With the total lack of gear on the bottom 150m of the face we all make the decision that we couldn't abseil it. It was steep enough that I would have second thoughts about downclimbing it with two crampons let alone Jonnie with only one. Oh, and we dropped the abolokov threader on the first ptich of the route... No phone signal. Upwards is the only way!

Over the next two hours we manage to cover a few more ropelengths of easy terrain. Polly leads ahead trying vainly to find gear so there's at least one piece between us all to hold us onto the mountain. Jonnie is at the back making constant adjustments and checks to crampon, trying to get it to stay on for a bit longer all the time. Meanwhile I'm in the middle of the rope having a total meltdown. I know that if Jonnie's crampon blows suddenly causing him to fall whilst Polly is struggling to find gear, all three of us are going to fall the entire length of the face. Chances are that a single bit of gear would rip under the weight of three people anyway. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it or to stop the fall should it happen. Stressful!!

Questing about trying to find gear/belays AGH! (J. Williams)

We went slightly off route at this point as Polly was chasing and struggling to find rock belays. The last 60m of climbing that we climbed had absolutely no gear and was by far the steepest and thinnest ice pitch of the day. Much trickier than the normal crux much lower down! When Jonnie reached the final screw, 60 metres below Polly's high point, he refused to move until we could find a belay. Probably a good shout really but instigated a massive shouting/swearing argument at our respective 30m intervals on the rope. Basically, all three of us were very scared and battling our own personal meltdowns. Though I was in the middle and attached to two good friends, I don't think I've felt that alone in a very long time.

Pulled myself together though and put my sketchy-scottish-winter-climbing head on, I started digging around in the névé... With the very little gear I had on my harness I made us a mediocre belay from a good camalot and a terrible sling. Good enough though to bring Jonnie up and for Polly to climb back down to me.

With darkness approaching very quickly and the sudden realisation that we had climbed into signal, we debated whether to phone for a helicopter rescue. Whilst we could have kept slowly crawling up to the summit (risking the gearless névé and high potential that if Jonnie slipped unexpectedly we'd all die) we had no idea what condition the North East slope was in. Could Jonnie kick his ski boot in hard enough to down-climb it safely? We did briefly consider 'Joe Simpsoning' him - lowering him 120m past the knot on the ropes and then Polly and I could down climb to him. But this had epic written all over it. At this point in the belay meeting the crampon bodge failed AGAIN, Jonnie's brand new sharp edges just kept sawing through the cable-ties! So the vote was unanimous -  helicopter ride!

There's truly nothing like the noise of a distant helicopter engine when you're scared and near the top of a North Face!

The PGHM lads were amazing, as ever! My slightly suspect belay stood up to inspection, which is good as there were now 4 of us attached to it! Jonnie was winched first and then it was my go. We'd stuffed all of the ropes, gear and ice axes into one bag which was suddenly hanging off my old super skinny, light-weight ski touring harness. This made being swung out off the face bloody terrifying! We were actually much closer to the summit ridge than we had realised. Going from the ground to 1000m above the Argentiere glacier (in a matter of seconds) whilst suspended by a thin piece of webbing, is not an experience I want to repeat anytime soon.

Jonnie and I were deposited on the roof of the Argentiere hut with our winchman whilst the chopper went back for Polly and the other PGHM rescuer. From here we had an amazing view of all the other headtorches in the basin, most of whom I later found out I knew ha! EMBARASSING! Back down in the PGHM station in Le Bois, Jonnie got an admonishment from one of the captains in French (translated by yours truly...) for taking inappropriate equipment into the mountains. Every one seems to think that Serac crampons are aluminium, they actually made out of stainless steel but the 'Strap' version are apparently incompatable with dynafit touring boots! Otherwise we had a good old chinwag with the guys who rescued us, we were feeling somewhat sheepish about the whole thing but all the guys who actually attended our rescue seemed in good spirits. They declared that it was in fact 'a beautiful rescue'. We were even offered a lift back home, amazing service there! Sat in MBC later we were all slightly shellshocked but pretty happy that we had been extracted from a pretty scary situation without serious injury or even losing any gear! For me it was definitely a good lesson in why not to be complacent in the mountains.

CHOPPER IS COMING! You can almost feel my relief...

A massive thanks obviously goes to the PGHM who risk their lives on a daily basis to rescue punters like us, but also to Bella who rescued us from Le Bois that night and deposited us in MBC. Even more of a thanks to Matt and Hannah who went and somehow found our skis at the bottom of the face in a white out...

Solstice Party with a spot of Cosmiques Icefall Climbing...

Life happened... This blog post has just been sitting on my computer since before Christmas. Since then I've been mainly working... Making more beds than I can remember in nearly 60 different flats combined with a dose of self-inflicted food poisoning and Cham-plague all took it's toll on me actually finishing this post. But here it is at last! Pat and Hannah can now see some photos from the trip too!

It was so cold in the hut that the (regularly) spilt water froze into 3D blobs!

 Pretty windy night and morning made leaving the hut pretty difficult!

What better way than to spend the longest night of the year than in a high mountain, freezing cold, unmanned alpine hut?! Settling down to 12 hours of potential sleep is always a satisfying prospect, especially when your alpine climbing alarm won’t be in the middle of the night. Arriving in the Abri Simond, with my skis, as the sun set was pretty magical. Though my arrival was probably more magical for Pat and Hannah. As I had failed to answer my phone on the ski down, they decided that I (and the stove/dinner) hadn't made it up so ate all their hill food for the next day. A couple of benighted alpinists also joined our hut party and were glad of the extra food and a couple of litres of water we dontaed to them. Quite the exciting solstice party!

First turns since my latest ankle injury... Skiing off the Midi probably wasn't the best test run!

Hannah and Pat snowshoeeing whilst I embraced the powder wade...

With Pat’s snowshoe needing some fixing we decided not to climb on Point Lachenal but to do something closer to the lift. The Cosmiques Icefall looked in fairly good condition (said Pat, I forgot to look into it) and is about 200m from the hut so became a very appealing alternative! Although I’d done most of the route a couple of seasons ago the crux hadn’t be in condition so I was happy to have another go.

For our team, the route and crux pitch were in pretty good condition. For the party of three directly beneath us it wasn't so good. We knocked a significant amount of ice down on them, including the thin bit of the crux pitch... As we had caused them so much grief we decided to wait for them to finish the final crux pitch rather than abseiling onto their heads. Good job we did as there was so little ice left we had to chuck the following party a top rope, oops!

Hannah throwing some shapes on the crux pitch.

As I had smuggly skied down to both the hut and bottom of the route (Hannah and Pat were snowshoeing) I knew the final return bootpack up to the lift was going to be pretty brutal... And it was! As the other two had long overtaken me and disappeared, I just had to get my head down and hope the gusty wind didn't catch my sail-like skis. Still I made it and blagged my way to the front of the lift queue, win! Getting home and weighing my pack (18kg...) I came to the conclusion that I need some lighter approach skis, because lighter kit is much easier than getting fitter!

Somehow the team following us managed to core shot their ropes right about now...

Navlikin (or Kotur!) Expedition.... Kyrgy Mark II!

I seem to have had a good old dose of writers block concerning the 2014 expedition… That and being kept pretty busy have delayed this blog post somewhat. Bizarrely, since we returned, I’ve found myself talking about and writing pieces on the 2013 expedition so maybe it just takes me a year to process the experience!

This second expedition was a lot tougher for me as a climber (not as a leader though!) as I was sick for quite a lot of it! Unlike the rest of the group I got off pretty lightly when it came to Dave’s Diarrhea… Unlike Emma et al, I experienced really bad stomach cramps and not much else. The cramps made the idea of a long van trip to Naryn terrifying enough to stop me eating for that first day of driving… maybe this fearful fasting did the trick! My smugness, that I could trust farts when everyone else couldn’t, came back to bite me when I got sick whilst everyone else was able to go climbing.

 

Since my chemotherapy treatment, I have found that my stomach is pretty tough but my immune system seems to struggle a bit, especially when I’m tired. During the 2013 expedition, I again avoided bad diarrhea but got a chest infection. On the 2014 trip I guess I got dehydrated and picked up a urinary tract infection. When we were load carrying up onto the glacier, I just tried to ignore it. My psyche for climbing/being on the expedition totally evaporated shortly after this.  A couple of days of stabbing pains through the right hand side of my abdomen and back nearly had Libby phoning me a helicopter… Being pretty confident that the pain was so specific, that it was my kidneys hurting, we phoned Simon’s doctor parents instead. A course of antibiotics was advised and I felt better and re-psyched within 12 hours! I am very grateful that good medical advice was a quick phone-call away; otherwise my trip would have been over. I would have also taken different antibiotics if left to my own devices, so chatting to Dr Tracey was definitely a massive help!

Dividing up fun food! Condensed milk in tubed-form is incredible!

Rubiks cube - the real expedition goal

Besides this blip in the middle, the trip was as amazing as the Dzhirnagaktu expedition, if very different. With 9 climbers on the trip, and a massive party tent along for the ride, this year was definitely more sociable! I took a chance with choosing the team in that Dave and I were the only two who had met all the other climbers prior to our arrival in Bishkek. Fortunately, I guessed the group dynamic fairly well and there were miraculously few disagreements. This was a bonus as the weather was distinctly mediocre this year with quite a few enforced rest days spent mucking about playing card games.

Getting water became more difficult as the trip progressed. But Emma was pretty good at finding it after snow!

NET BENZIN.

Logistically, the trip was almost problem-free, the total opposite to the Dzhirnagaktu trip! ITMC even gave us a free upgrade to their biggest truck (Ural)! The fairly standard confusion over Naryn accommodation happened once again but in the end we ended up in the right places. We did have one anxious, unexpected morning waiting in Naryn before we could leave for the mountains. The entire town was out of diesel – totally dry! What little petrol there was soon ran out too. It was distinctly reminiscent of a typical Sunday evening in the Chamonix high season… Still the weird weather that Kyrgyzstan had this summer benefitted us massively, we made it to our drop off point in 6.5 hours instead of the expected two days! The notorious mud flats and deteriorating Soviet road were bone dry (except where we went wrong and got stuck last year…) and the legendary Sergei managed to drop us much closer to the Kotur glacier than I had dared to hope. He even managed to meet us in the same spot bang on time for the journey home. Unlike last year, he didn’t have to feed me vodka for frost-nip prevention!

Sergei, the man, the myth, the legend!

We drove through a lot of snow showers along the Soviet road, thankfully it cleared as we approached the glacier!

First glimpse through a rattley window...

...and suddenly we are alone!

Going from Naryn to 4070m (instead of 3400m) was pretty brutal. As we had gained a day though, we decided to take a full rest day after Sergei left thus hopefully decreasing chances of HAPE. I, for one, was definitely feeling the altitude and was extremely relieved when everyone made it through the dreaded ‘second night’ unscathed! As is fairly normal for me, I suddenly became acclimatized, whilst load carrying. It always feels like shaking off a weird hangover!

A few photos from our acclimatisation trip to the Racek hut in the Ala-Archa Park

The initial plan was to go up the length of the Kotur glacier before crossing a col at the southern end to get into the top of the Navlikin basin. From here we would be perfectly placed to attempt the multiple 5000+m peaks to the south. Without over-exerting ourselves before we were acclimatized, we managed to move our base camp 4-5km up the Kotur glacier, but it did take us four days to do this. We found an almost perfect spot for this glacier camp; running water in two directions, no crevasses, the rocky moraine covering the glacial ice meant that we didn’t have to sleep directly on the ice and provided plenty of tent anchors. As it had also taken quite a bit of effort to get that far, we decided to use this camping spot as the main base for the trip.

Emma looks far too happy for load carrying...

 Load carrying got creative... and why anchor a tent with an ice screw when you can have a SNOW castle.

Packing up on the last morning of the trip.

From here we did lose momentum somewhat. Knowing that we didn’t ‘have’ to move the entire camp up to the Navlikin, that we would be going alpine light, we decided to wait for settled weather. We hoped to avoid a suffer-fest sitting out storms in single skin tents by waiting for a good weather window whilst getting acclimatized on the peaks around the Kotur’s snout. However the weather window never really arrived! Whilst 2 teams did make it up to establish a camp on the Navlikin col, they were pinned in their tents by a storm for a day and a half. The longer we waited, the harder it was to walk up the Kotur glacier. At the start of the trip, the glacier had been dry – we were walking on the ice. By the end of the trip, so much snow had fallen that it was knee-thigh deep wading around base camp and at least waist deep up near peak Judith-Brian. At this point I did wish we had stuck with the original idea and had our ski gear with us – that’s hindsight for you! The glacier was so flat we would have had to skin down it but at least probing crevasses/sinking in the snow wouldn’t have been so time consuming! 

The weather pattern had another annoying feature… the storms would generally last a day and a half, laying down a lot of snow that would then be blown somewhere (we weren’t entirely sure where in the basin as the wind direction changed so often!) the day immediately after would be crystal clear, the following day mediocre before the next storm hit in the afternoon. With an obviously high avalanche risk, good weather days didn’t always mean good climbing days!

When it was bluebird... it really was bluebird!!

Jjin on left, Tonnik centre

Still, the team managed to get a fair number of routes done (about 12 completed routes is my current count…). As we expected to climb on the Navlikin glacier, we didn’t have an awful lot of information on the Kotur peaks. We noticed a lot of map discrepancies for the basin, including an entire mountain that isn’t marked on any map! As it’s right next to Pik Jjin we predictably named it Pik Tonnik… James and Libby managed to get within spitting distance of the 5100(ish) metre summit on the final day of the trip. I think that all of the peaks and many of the routes (including Tonnik!) have been climbed before but the fact that we didn’t know this at the time retained that feeling of exploratory adventure!

 

Sadly, a large part of the trip for me has become a disorganized, delirous, confusion. In my notebook, I managed to completely write out the events of one single day three times and not notice. Getting the series of events in the right order for the report has only happened thanks to the date of photos on my digital camera! Still, there are two good days of mountaineering with the girls that stand out for me. FINALLY getting to a summit (Lyev) with Cora and Libby felt amazing. We were rewarded with stunning views of the massif, storms hitting the Borkoldoy range and what may have been snow leopard prints along the summit ridge! Though the ascent was little more than a walk, the tottering pile of choss forming the summit tower was exciting – it almost felt like it was swaying in the wind!

Stanage?? Sedimentary rock crag complete with fossils!

The second standout mountaineering day was going up Metel with Libby. Both of us were pretty un-psyched walking up to the route, 2-3km of wading through snow on a flat glacier tends to have that affect on me! Still, once we got off the terrible steep moraine slope (poor route finding choice there…) and on to the snow ice life got much more fun! The crux of the route turned out to be a 60-65 degree slope featuring some of the most aerated snow-ice that I’ve climbed on! It was pretty terrifying to be honest and I was glad that we were soloing, if one of us slipped at least we wouldn’t drag the other climber off too! The worst part about it was occasionally going through to bullet hard water ice underneath… and also knowing that we wouldn’t be able to down climb it… But I actually really enjoyed it, I felt completely in the alpine zone for the first time on the trip. Libby also felt much better when we got into the sun on the ridge and she could rub some feeling into her toes. Climbing on a north- west facing slope at 4600m is pretty cold!

At night we could hear the ice cracking as boulders, like this one, fell off their ice pedastols.

Heading towards the steeper section...

We found the lads track from a week before, shows how windy it was up high!

However probably one of my favourite ever alpine days out was the final day of the trip. With a run of good weather predicted for the Friday and Saturday before our Sunday departure, half the party decided to have one last go at climbing. I decided to have a solo outing and with an extremely alpine start (about 9am…) I headed across the glacier and onto the western rocky ridge. I was just going to follow this ridge south as far as I could, but instead impulsively dropped down the other side of it to a hidden glacier. From here I climbed a small, easy peak (Macciato) that looks down onto the Navlikin glacier, sadly the closest I got to me objective! 

Kyzyl Asker was seldom clear! The storms and clouds often got stuck on it.

Peaking into the Navlikin

Obligatory selfie on the first peak...

Feeling like I had a bit more juice in me I climbed another rocky peak (Lvitsa) on the way home. Taking the most direct and hardest line up the chossy south ridge was super fun if slightly scary. I was also in for a shock when I pulled over the last bit of rock and found myself looking straight down the north west face. I’d been expecting a summit plateau not a knife-edge ridge! A quick scree run down for tea and white Russians was a satisfying end to the trip.

Some actual climbing (if you avoid the scree!)

Part of the corniced summit ridge.

Van surgery

To take advantage of the weather, we had pushed our time on the glacier for as long as we possibly could, meaning that we only had a day to move down to the pick up spot. Joel, Emma, Dave and Sam had thankfully carried a load down the day before, so we only had to do one heavy load each on that last day. Feeling creative, Dave made a sledge to get the unpackackable final items down. He and Emma did a wonderful job of adding this extra 40kg to their packs to get it across the final morraine slopes. Arriving back at our first camping spot, talk turned to when Sergei might arrive - how fast could he get there from Naryn? Then we hear the engine, perfect timing! As the weather was closing in (another storm was predicted) we decided to leave there and then. Suddenly it's over and we are heading home! We barely have time to process our departure, it all happened so fast. We camp just off the soviet road that night, with the amount of snow that fell vindicating the choice to leave the previous afternoon.

Final night on the glacier deserved a party! The vodka was definitely better when made into 3 litres of White Russian...

Here comes the weather... Dzhirnagaktu is hiding on the right of the photo.

Back to civilisation!

PEOPLE!

After last years trip, I couldn’t really relax totally until we were nearly back in Bishkek. Then I knew that we had managed a whole trip without major incident or a helicopter rescue! Having lost two climbers to illness last year, I was very aware of how easily things could go wrong. There are always silly minor things that could end someones trip early, like Joel puncturing his shin to the bone on a rest day, but that, fortunately, cleaned up nicely and was the worst incident to report! We all made it back safe and sound this time, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Coming back to the very sad news that our good friend Liz Daley had died in an avalanche on her expedition, gave our trip quite a bittersweet end. RIP Liz, you’ll be missed!

WE MADE IT! Sergei found us! L-R - Libby, Simon, James, Cora, Joel, Dave, Sam, Me, Emma

Thanks mostly goes to the 8 of you who came along on the trip, (Here are the other bloggers: Dave, Emma and Joel) I couldn't have wished for better banter! Especially when lying around feeling sorry for myself. More formal thanks to the BMC, Mcofs, MEF, Rab and Mountain Hardwear as well as Adrian Nelhams, Peter Bajec, ITMC and Shane at RGS whose information allowed the trip to happen!