The Challenges Of The Indian Himalayas
Our jeep is packed to the roof as we stop by the side of the road to unload the many heavy bags and boxes and get them to the other side of the torrential river. One of the porters quickly climbs on top of the roof and starts unstrapping the luggage and that's when it happens: he drops one of the bags off the roof, which instantly rolls down the slope and into the torrential river. At first we are all stunned and speechless and it takes us a few moments to get past the shock. Then Josie runs towards the bank with a rope. For a moment the bag bobs on the surface where it fell into the river but by the time Josie reaches it, it has been carried out into the middle and is gone. This moment seems to signal the end of the expedition before it has fairly begun because inside the bag is Josie's entire climbing gear, her shoes, clothes and our climbing hooks.
We are on our way to the Kishtwar region in northern India near the border to Pakhistan, and this is just one of the challenges we have to overcome.
I am travelling together with my friends, Whitney Clark and Josie McKee: we have big dreams and ambitions here in the Himalayas; we have put a lot of energy into the organisation of this trip and are highly motivated.
But what happened to the bag? Me, the driver of the jeep, our female liaison officer and some of the porters hop onto the jeep and we begin to drive downstream along the river and indeed, we do see the bag emerge from the water every now and then. The mass of water is so awe-inspiring that I cannot imagine ever retrieving our equipment. But the incredible happens - 10 kilometres down the river the bag is driven onto a rock island, disappears and then reappears in a basin by the shore where we manage to pull it out. Everything is drenched, but we got it back! Now our journey to base camp can begin, together with 18 porters and several horses.
However, the next challenge awaits us just one day later, when the porters don't want to go on and explain to us that our bags are too heavy. It is not easy for four women to talk to the 18 savage looking porters, but we know exactly what we want and refuse to budge. So, after a long discussion, we finally continue on our journey. A few hours later, the next challenge: a torrential river with neither bridge nor crossing opportunity. This, according to the locals, is our base camp, but we are still miles away from the glacier and 'our' mountain. Again, we negotiate, until we get them to agree to build a bridge all together the following day.
By the time the porters arrive, Josie has already made her way through the icy water to the other side and we have constructed a pulley which allows us to then move the logs that the porters fetch across the river and build a bridge. The next day, we climb up a steep path and finally make it to base camp. Now, we need to acclimatize and find a path to the foot of the wall, which turns out to be much harder than expected. There are hardly any opportunities to acclimatize because the sides of the valley are so steep, and the path to the foot of the wall runs through two remarkably steep icefalls. Never in my life have I seen such a craggy glacier. Vast crevasses run through the ice and tower above us like a labyrinth. To get to the glacier we have to cross steep grassy ledges and then abseil. This way, we bypassed the first icefall, but the second posed a much larger challenge. For days, we search for a viable path, while rain or fog often force us to turn back because we cannot cross the glacier with bad visibility. Everyday it either rains or snows. At times, somewhat frustrating.
On top of that, our liasion officer back at base camp keeps bitching and insulting us and generally behaves like a princess. She is so far out of her comfort zone that she has completely lost it! She barely managed the walk to base camp.
She is actually being paid to be up here with us and make sure everything goes according to plan, but, unfortunately, she is hopeless. She can't even descend on her own and thus presents us with yet another challenge. We solve it by telling her and the cook to descend together and do the cooking ourselves.
When Raptan, our cook, returns, we finally, after three weeks of almost constant bad weather, get the forecast of a few days without rainfall. Heavily laden, we set off towards the glacier plateau, through the icefall, where we have to climb a rope length of steep ice. But the glacier plateau, too, holds new challenges: huge crevasses run through the flat glacier and we have to walk up and down their edges to find a way across. To us it feels like we are getting nowhere. In the evening, we build our tent between two crevasses. By now, we have realized that way too much snow has accumulated on our wall to even consider any rock climbing, especially given the small weather window we have.
So we pick an as yet unscaled summit which is lower and faces south-eastwards. It takes us some time the next morning to agree on a line. But then I start to make a track up a snowy couloir and this leads us to the best possible granite. We exchange crampons for climbing shoes and climb pitch after pitch in brilliant sunshine. I am happy to lead the ten pitches and after all this bad weather we enjoy finally touching this rock. Our heavy backpacks are the only inconvenience. But we need these to pitch our small tent on a ledge in the evening.
The next morning we continue to move up the rock, pitch after pitch. But then, suddenly, we run out of luck, because a heavy blizzard surprises us and we find ourselves in a cloud of thick white flakes which forces us to abseil down. Another night on our ledge and then head out to base camp, where we arrive late at night. Thankfully, because the next day brings a violent blizzard which forces us to set an alarm to go off every two hours so that we can free our tents from the snow load. This makes it clear that there will not be another opportunity for rock climbing and so we descend the following day in good weather, after three and a half weeks of almost constant rain and snowfall.
We are glad to reach the small village that was the starting point of our trip, but soon after we realize that the challeges are not over yet. Some of the mountain passes are closed due to snowfall, which threatens to bring our return journey to a halt. So, we have to go around. But even there the roads have been destroyed by flooding. After much searching and negotiating, we find a driver who takes us back to Manali.
An expedition that involved little climbing but held many challenges, adventures, new experiences and encounters, and for which we were supported by the Grit and Rock and the Cutting Edge Grant.
