Gummy Girls hit Kyrgyland!

The team together at last! But sadly not for long. L-R: Myself, Libby, Hannah, Imelda, Carol.

Oddly, I’ve been struggling somewhat to find the right things to say about our Kyrgyzstany jaunt. This is a bit strange as it feels like I’ve done nothing but talk about it for the past 5 days! For a first expedition and first time as an expedition leader, it was a pretty big learning curve. But in spite of my current exhausted state, I feel a lot tougher for experiencing it. The time we spent in the Tien Shan was amazing and unforgettable; definitely my best alpine trip to date, all the difficulties made me savour the mountains more than usual I guess.

Negotiating the weird shrund near the summit of Night Butterfly. Seeing through it and down the entire north face was disconcerting!

At last! A glacier! The end of uphill load carrying is in sight... Although it only actually too us 4 days of carrying to get here from the Soviet road 20+km away.

When we eventually had ourselves set up on the glacier, Imelda, Libby and I completed four new routes and I soloed a fifth.  Our first route, to be honest, was more of a snowy walk than a climb. On the other four we were glad to have a pair of axes each. Sadly, as an Austrian team beat us to the basin by a month, there aren’t a great number of unclimbed summits left to be had! The first, easy ridge that we climbed may have featured virgin summits but they are non-entities in our opinion! For four of the five routes we can claim first female summits, however we don’t entirely agree with this distinction. How often do you hear about ‘First Male Ascents’?!

We had planned on doing challenging, technical Alpine routes, but had to reassess our aims somewhat! Losing two members of the expedition and the discovery that the Sat phone didn’t really work meant that we erred on the side of caution. We chose lines that were quite aesthetic, generally involving scrambly ridges and/or snow couloirs. I was pleased that my recent experiences on Chamonix snow routes came in useful!

Nearing the top of Pony, a small peak being only 4700m!

The highlight of the trip was definitely the East Ridge on Night Butterfly, and also our first 5000m peak. The ridgeline is definitely THE line of the valley and dominates the vista. We presumed that it had already been climbed but we were that inspired by the line, that we had two attempts on it. The first ended before we even got beyond the bergschrund, as Libby was suddenly very unwell.

Our route up Night Butterfly, surely it had already been climbed?

Time to run away before the cloud clears.

The second and successful effort was a bit of a battle. A cloud of mist hung over the approach slopes at 3:30am, meaning the snow hadn’t refrozen. I was also struggling to figure out whether we were even in the correct couloir! Fortunately the snow became much more manageable once we pulled above the frustrating mist. Sadly a front came in with the dawn and the weather became positively Scottish. Luckily we are quite used to Scottish style weather! The snow showers were only short bursts anyway, so we decided to continue to the summit. Rather than completing the intended traverse of the mountain we reversed our route in case the weather deteriorated further. Instead, the weather cleared and the sun came out, great! That is except for the fact that we were descending an east facing narrow snow arête! Spurred on by the terribleness of Imelda’s anti-balling plates we legged it down, managing to reach camp just six hours after we left it.

Summit selfie!!

Other than the significant health related problems our expedition had, we were a bit unlucky with our transport. Although we loved our little grey soviet van, often marveling at its ability to negotiate the ‘roads’, we unfortunately couldn’t be dropped off or picked up anywhere near the point we had planned. This gave us an extra 11km of unexpected load carrying each way, and a lot of frustrated rage!

To add some excitement to our journey, our driver Sasha, spoke no English and our Russian is patchy at best. None of us, including Sasha, had ever been to the area before and consequently he missed the turn off towards Kyzyl Asker. After a three-hour detour to the wrong military outpost, we were back on track.  At least we hoped we were. Trying to explain to Sasha that we were going to Plan A glacier (Dzhirnagaktu) rather that plan B glacier through mime, was traumatic for all involved.  We did thankfully end up in the right area, (after the van got stuck in the notorious mud overnight) but without enough petrol to drive the whole way in. 

The van sank in the mud to it's wheel arches, a hunting party (complete with matching van) were able to help us lever and push it out the next morning. Roads in the Western Kokshal Too are interesting....

Our first night in the Trango 3 was not quite in the planned location. (wildly leaning van in background!)

To be honest, I didn’t quite appreciate just how remote our location was before we got to Dzhirnagaktu, or how few other people and vehicles would be in the area at the end of the expedition season! The hardest thing for me to do during the expedition was making the decision to send Hannah home a few days into the trip. With her mystery illness of persistent vomiting complete with inability to keep down water, I had major concerns about taking her up to basecamp. This decision was vindicated by later events and the nature of our location.

Beginning of the end for Hannah.

I had this strange feeling that organizing a helicopter rescue would be a bit trickier than getting one in Chamonix/Scotland… This turned out to be very true unfortunately; getting Carol off the hill when she developed HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) was a bit of a nightmare. The mountain rescue wanted her insurance to contact them to confirm payment, her insurance told us we needed to arrange it and then they would pay later. This stalemate combined with our broken, credit less Sat phone meant that we had a stressful day straining our ears for the helicopter, pretty skeptical about whether it would actually show up! Fortunately in the late afternoon the day after we initially phoned it appeared to collect Carol, leaving only three of us able to climb on the expedition.

Just a walk really, but what a view! Heading up to our first 4500m peak.

It Wouldn't Happen on A Lads Trip: No. 6, Afternoon Tea with Saucers.

I think it will be a while before I can fully process the trip mentally. There were moments when it felt like the expedition was descending into a catalogue of unfortunate errors. Load carrying off the glacier in a big storm, separated from Libby and Imelda felt like the final straw but sadly wasn’t! The news the following day that we couldn’t be picked up from boulder camp was semi-soul destroying for all of us. However we had become a great deal fitter during our time on the glacier as the three of us (plus Carol who we were reunited with) only took 6 hours to ferry out the kit that had taken a day and a half on the way up.

Load carrying, second river crossing.

After bringing food for five we narrowed it down to this; enough for 12 days but mainly powdered. Though it wasn't as bad as we were expecting!

I am amazed at what Libby, Imelda and I achieved on this trip considering all the setbacks and lost time. We were exceptionally lucky with good weather and snow conditions, meaning that we attempted routes every day that we spent on the glacier. It is disappointing that we didn’t get a proper attempt on the iconic Monolith; we decided that it looked like a manageable objective the three of us after all but we ran out of time to fully acclimatize for it.

The final icing on the cake was coming home to discover that our route up the East ridge of Night Butterfly (Flutterby) was in fact unclimbed after all! Neither the Irish or Austrian parties attempted it; the Polish 2010 expedition tried it but turned around on the false summit due to poor cornice conditions. Psyched!!

Me on our first summit? At least it seemed to be the highest point on a very gentle ridge.

It Wouldn't Happen on A Lads Trip: No. 8, Cheese platter (also No. 2, Constant Collecting of Pretty Rocks)

The glacier wasn't really crevassed on the whole, but these glacial streams have carved mini gorges that needed to be negotiated. Not so much fun with a 25kg pack on!

The ridge between Rock Horse and Butterfly's Leg. You can thank the Polish exped for the names!

You don't get more Highball than this!

A holiday without some bouldering would be a total failure. Imelda agrees....

Typical morning view at Boulder Camp!

Every expedition should get invited along to a local celebration feast when they get back to civilisation! This definitely contributed to my weight gain.....

"Look strong Girls!" Most of the kit that we carried up with us. Load carrying with duffle bags like the red one was not the wisest idea we had and fortunately they got left down at Boulder Camp.

Reunited with van and Carol, we get a final look into our basin. Kyzyl Asker next maybe?!?

A massive thanks to our sponsors: the BMC, MCofS, Meers-Grey Award, Blue Ice, Mountain Hardwear and Nora's Noms, without your support the expedition probably wouldn't have got off the ground!

A lesson in failing (and route finding!)

Giving a new Choucas harness and lanyards a whirl; liking the ice screw holders.

Its easy to get used to mountaineering success. A couple of summers ago I had a very unsuccessful Alpine summer, although it did mean that I got a lot slicker at abseiling! This spring/summer in Chamonix has been an extremely succeson a route, we haven't backed off it. Although a few times we have changed to plan Bs, once we've started a route we haven't backed off. Until the South Ridge of the Peuterey Noire that is!

With Hannah developing food poisoning we were a man down and a day later than planned. So Sam and I went for our classic 'single push from the car' approach to alpinism... But this time we took enough food and kit for an (uncomfy) bivvy. We also took more than 1.5l of water between us! Finally learning from past mistakes and all that!

The walk in, complete with scrambly via ferrata, went well and fairly fast. We were gearing up for the start of the climb, by the fixed rope, just afterw the sun reached the bottom of the face. The climbing was pleasant and easy, although the grassy ledges were more numerous than we had reckoned on. We were climbing really fast, simul soloing as there wasnt a lot of gear to be had. 

Turns out we were climbing a little too fast though as suddenly we pulled up over the ridge and had a lovely view onto the Freney glacier. Definitely not where we should have been! We had been following tat and had made the terrain fit the guide description, we had totally missed the rightwards traverse under point gamb! Some fantastically sketchy downclimbing abseiling followed as the tat anchors definitely werent good enough to fully weight! It was 10am by the time we were back on route; too late to start again and not bivvy. Although I had accepted the inevitability of an uncomfy bivvy, Sam was more psyched for a single push so we wisely decided to head back down rather than pushing it.

From a distance, we stopped to figure out where we had gone wrong. Turns out that the 'triangle feature' described in the guide wasnt a pinnacle but a HUGE white shape on the cliff! In full daylight it was so obvious yet in the pink dawn light we missed it completely! Least we will know where not to go next time!

As I wanted to leave Chamonix on a high note, I went up the midi the following day to get in some pre-work soloing. As I got stuck in queues and nearly killed by falling rock on the Lachenal (avoid the last chimney/couloir! !!!) I decided against doing the Grisolle aafterwards and finished up the Cosmiques arete instead. Even though I once again got stuck in queues, I did the route surprisingly fast. I didn't feel particularly restricted by having 2 nomics, crampons and 120m of rope in my bag! Can't believe I have been scared of soloing this route all winter. I also got to test out some of our lovely new Blue Ice kit, so all in all an amazing final day in thelp Chamonix mountains!

Too high On point Gamba!

Confused?!?!!

Red is where we went, green where we should have been!

Back to the french side and the good old Lachenal.

An impulsive day hiking..... up Mont Blanc!

First time to Mont Blanc summit!

Monte Bianco.... The most popular mountain to try and climb in a week long trip to Chamonix. Being the highest in Western Europe and not too technically challenging, it's easy to see the appeal! Normally people put in a lot of planning and training for their first ascent. I impulsively decided to join Joel on his solo, first bin, Mont Blanc traverse at 9.30pm the previous night...

Perfect morning on the Col du Midi.

Walking under the big serac, I had a super bad feeling in my gut. I was sad to hear about the fatalities when it collapsed the following morning. Just goes to show that quite often you should follow your instincts.

As I was pretty tired on Sunday evening and wanted to get some none mentally challenging expedition training in, Mont Blanc seemed like the perfect solution! Going from the Midi over the 3 Monts seemed like a fairly mellow day, and we completed it fairly fast. Snow conditions were good making the ascent pretty forgiving. That is until we became exposed to the 'moderate to strong' winds on the final summit ridge. As we both knew the suffering would be short-lived, we pushed on. As we were unroped we could just could deal with our personal misery in silence, not having to stop and start when the other person did. Foolishly I only had thin liners and powerstretch gloves which weren't so amazing in -20 degrees of windchill. My nose and cheek weren't very impressed either! Somehow, I avoided frostnip again and the numb-ness soon went away.

We summited at lunchtime and still beat a lot of climbers to the top, easy day done! Shame I didn't take into account the potential for 4000m of descent back to Les Houches. Which we walked the entire way! I wondered what the Grand Couloir fuss was all about, we saw very few rocks coming down it as we were descending the left bank, until we were about to cross it that is! Some fridge sized blocks came down the far side followed by some more chunks just as I was about to make the final dash across the middle. Trainers and a helmet were definitely much appreciated.

Positively Himalayan!

Doing the last 2000m without any water between us was the final straw. Not helped by our failure to secure a lift back home from Les Houches. Fortunately Bella came to the rescue with juice and snacks, I don't think I would have managed the final few kilometres back to Chamonix.

One of the many huts on the Gouter side, we have definitely left out mark on this mountain!

I'm pretty happy about how good I felt at 4810m. It means that the altitude in Kyrgyzstan shouldn't be a problem especially with several days gradually moving kit up to basecamp. Unfortunately we won't have Bella to drive us back home at the drop of a hat!

The view from the top of Europe! Mont Maudit is surprisingly far away.

Six years of Alpine Dreaming - Forbes Arete on the Aiguille du Chardonnet

My first night ever in Chamonix was a night of classic Alpine thunderstorms. On the transfer in, we saw nothing of the stunning mountains, just an occasional glimpse of the snouts of the glaciers. The weather was so bad that Mr Bernard allowed us to bivvy in his garage rather than have to put up our tents. When we were turfed out at 6am the next day, the first mountain that we saw was the Chardonnet, looking exceptionally wintery! It was truly awe-inspiring, I really wanted to reach it's summit one day! But the sight of it also made me wonder if we had bitten off more than we could chew...

Time moves on and I guess I've gotten used to Alpine walk ins! The wander up to the Albert Premier was no where near as bad as I remembered it being on our Conville Course in 2007, the hut seems nicer too! Getting up at 2am was quite traumatic though, I guess that never gets easier!

Josh and Hannah ahead.

The snow and ice is in really nice condition just now and we romped up it, having two ice axes definitely helped though. For some reason I thought that the snow was the meat of the route and was feeling pretty smug that we had gained the ridge at 6.30am and the summit was so close. Easy day out! Or not.... The ridge is actually quite engaging climbing with a lot of ups and downs interspersed with dubious snow traverses. Generally if you follow the polish your in the right place!

Good snow conditions before the sun hits the slopes

Trine on the summit, AT LAST!

The descent surprised me as it wasn't anywhere near as epic as I thought it was going to be! Although luckily Hannah and Josh found the abseils and we could just follow them, I don't know how quickly we would have found them ourselves. The snow slopes beyond were a bit sketchy, having been in the sun for a while they were rapidly resembling a slush puppy. All the large crevasses and rimayes seem fairly avoidable just now at least.

My main problem on the descent was that I was wearing a pair of G20s, which kept balling up extremely badly! I would know the snow off on the first step, take a second, faceplant on the third. After a couple of hundred metres Trine wisely suggested that I take them off completely. Life got significantly easier, although jumping crevasses crampon-less was a bit scary. At least now I know not to take them to the Tien Shan with me!

Safely down! I gave up wearing crampons about half-way down the central snowslope....

Manning up

After chickening out on Ex Libris, Ally said I needed to get some determination again. Alongside speed and fitness, my mental psyche is definitely a big weakness in my climbing. So being back home and in Snowdonia, where I learnt to climb, it was time for some manning up! I decided to try and lead a route that intimidated me. However standing under Suicide Wall, I decided that was a bit too scary so Dave led that un!

But Left Wall, on Dinas Cromlech, is a route I have often considered. Although I was quite aware that I would probably bail on it if I tried it, just because it is so intimidating and long! I also get a bit confused by which British climbing grade I can successfully climb. My previous experience of the route involved belaying a strong friend during his 3 hour battle with the pitch. Remembering his hefty lobs off the final traverse concerned me somewhat! But the route actually went pretty well. The climbing is super fun, steady and well protected, I actually had to ration my gear! But then part way up the top crux I felt 'some' (turned out it was just one) small nuts fall off my harness. I panicked and jammed in a mediocre placement, then remembering that the previous bit was also pretty terrible, I chose to sit on it and calm down rather than fall and probably rip out both pieces... A little bit sad to blow the onsight but it's such a good route that I'm psyched to climb it again!

Dave also decided to get on a wish list route and gave Right Wall a go. It was going well and he was cruising up, but then he snapped a hold in the crux sequence. Unfortunately he ripped two bits of gear so took a good 60 foot of airtime, clipping the ledge on the way past. Good job he bounces well!

A week for plan B's and remembering how to play the Midi-summer-queue game.

So sometimes climbing ideas don’t quite pan out as you expect them. Even when you choose an appropriate objective, have good weather, the right partner and kit, sometimes it just doesn’t quite work out. This is why it’s always worth having a few extra plan B’s and C’s in mind! Fortunately there are many classic routes to choose from in the Mont Blanc range.

Ally Frison Roche. Not bad for a back up!

Chamonix is a popular place in the summer, that's a given; yet I find this popularity a bit unpredictable. One day we had to queue for our route on Pointe Lachenal, the following week, with a similar forecast, there were only 4 of us on the entire face! Ally and I suffered from a busy route queue on Monday when we went up to do Ex Libris, a trad route right under the Brevent cables. The party ahead was waiting until the first belay became free before leaving the ground. This was going to take a while… Good job there is a classic multi pitch sport route just around the corner!

By the time we negotiated the scree back down to Frison Roche, its queue had disappeared. This route deserves its reputation and the pitches get better the higher you go. It is pretty well bolted, not really run out by any stretch of the imagination…. But we had carried up a pretty huge trad rack up so we were going to use it! I just threw in a couple of bits on the crux corner pitch whereas Ally went full out and ‘Greenpointed’ the last pitch! Not too sure what the Finnish climbers behind us made of this but it was fun and Ally laced it with gear.

Apparently this is greenpointing... Shiney number 4 camalot gets christened!

Tuesday was going to be a rock climbing on the Lachenal day, but I had forgotten about the Midi summer queue… Which by 9am was already well out of the building. Be warned fellow lazy alpinists! It’s probably worth getting up early for first bin after all. Plan B was a shorter route off the Midi but soon we turned to Plan C; back up Brevent to do Ex Libris - totally queue-less today though! Although this time we didn’t have the size 4 camalot, which did mean a lot of gear hopping. All good and well whilst you have decent cam placements but if it fails when you fall, there’s a massive whipper on the horizon. I attempted to lead the two 6a+ pitches and gave up on both of them… Slightly annoyingly I was half a move from the end of the difficulties on the 3^rd pitch, oh well next time I may have more patience for figuring the moves out.

Felt like we had been below this corner before somehow... Ally found a hands free rest this time!

We completed the climb via the two pitches marked in the topo. You can run them together with 60m ropes but I would highly recommend finishing up Frison Roche instead. The ‘mediocre’ rock described on Ex Libris is actually very loose and grubby. The climbing is easier but unpleasant, nowhere near as good as the top out on Frisson Roche. Although by belaying on the fence, you do provide a good show for the sightseers on the Brevent viewing platform.

I had hoped to camp up high Tuesday night in order to retain my acclimatization (back in the UK for a week) and test out some gear for Kyrgyzstan, but unfortunately that fell through too. So I woke up at 5.30am with the intention of wandering up Mont Blanc du Tacul from first bin. The previous nights storm was still lingering a bit though so I soon gave up on that!

Missed the crowds for once.

Next winters setup, psyched!

Eventually it cleared, so I went for the traverse of Pointe Lachenal, which was actually a much better way of testing out my new Baturas. Getting to the ice cave at 8.35am I realized that I didn’t actually have much time before my flight in the afternoon. Four and a half hours before my transfer in fact! The route is really nice, definitely a soft touch for an AD, but I always really enjoy the scrambling to the final point. Condition wise, the snow slopes are all good with only a few small patches of harder ice and the rock is fairly clear of snow. Weirdly, I think there may even be less snow on the mixed steps than there was at the end of last summer! The final chimney isn't as loose as it looks, but then I wasn't pulling on holds too hard, just in case.

Definitely somehow missed the abseil the last time I did the traverse.

A matching pair of axes (in colour at least!) I think I actually prefer a Nomic on snowslopes.

I think fear of getting stuck in a queue to get back down the lift spurred me on a bit and I managed cave to cave in 2 hours 45. Not as speedy as all the lads I’m sure, but pretty good for me! I have been known to take an hour and a half to get from the Col du Midi back to the lift station. Quite a surreal day really, going from a glacier at 3500m to sea level at Liverpool airport in under 6 hours! 

Unnecessary squeeze underneath the jammed block! Extra fun this way though.

Summit! Quick chat to my Irish friends on top and then a fast turnaround to make my flight home!

Looks like a big serac had fallen off the Tacul on Tuesday, some of the chunks were as tall as me! In hindsight I probably shouldn't have run across this way.... It's a very active serac this year!!

Summer snow time! The Kuffner and Contamine-Mazeuad

So I wrote this a little while ago, but it has been trapped on my dying computer for the past week! I can only apologize for the lack of useful condition reporting; snow changes fast.

Sunrise hits the slope and at last we are clear of the initial gendarmes.

Good snow climbing in July seems like an unlikely pastime but this is an unlikely year! Although the daytime temperatures are much more like summer at last, the snow up high is still pretty climbable. Having heard reports that the Kuffner Arete on Mont Maudit was in super fun condition just now, I was pretty keen to get on it in the good weather last week. Heading up to the hut on Monday with John, we were pretty surprised to find only one set of tracks up the snow couloirs to the Fourche bivouac. Looks like we were definitely going to get beds for the night! We were even more surprised to find out that the other occupants of the hut weren’t going to do the Kuffner the next morning. We had a slightly odd conversation in French between the four of us before John and I made a poor attempt to be extremely quiet over dinner whilst the others slept. It wasn’t until the middle of the night when the other two were setting out, that we realized that we were all actually English....

Long way down! But a surprisingly long way horizontally too.

The route itself was pretty fun, although very long. We had to trailbreak for the first section, which resulted in climbing up into a few dead ends and then reversing. Eventually, at sunrise, we joined the tracks from the Torino hut and life got a bit easier! The tracks weren’t entirely accurate though as we followed them across a snow traverse that turned out to be very thin and fairly sketchy. This lost us a lot of time as we realized that we had gone off route and could have got around it fairly easily. Oh well, it was absorbing climbing! Once again the day ended with me being totally beasted and struggling back up the arête to the ice cave. It just doesn’t get any easier but at least this time we weren't rushing for fear of missing last bin.

Thursday was another fine day for adventuring of the Midi. Ally and I decided to do the Contamine-Mazeaud as a nice first summer alpine introduction. Ally is by no means a newbie to alpinism, he’s just never been here in summer! Once again we managed to get lost twice on the route somehow and had to backtrack an unprotected traverse that I hated! Fortunately, climbing it the second time felt a bit easier. Luckily the snow is in very nice condition on the whole, really solid and not at all slushy, just a bit aerated in sections. However, the calf-burn from front pointing the whole route was pretty bad! I enjoyed the mixed scrambly climbing at the top of the Triangle a lot more than the steep snow slopes. Still a typical Scottish mixed climber it would seem!

Ally starting up the initial ice slopes, surprisingly easy to get waylaid on this route!

Nearly topping out...