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Solo in the Khumbu LOCATION: Solo Khumbu, - Nepal
Having not received the Alpine Club Journal for 2007, I had no idea that the Bracy-Bullock team had already climbed the summit via Snotty's Gully. I had talked to John Bracy about ideas for climbing in the Khumbu region as I had never paid a visit to Sherpa country before. He mentioned possibilities and I thought they had climbed on what must be the eastern summit. Ian Wall, who now lives in Kathmandu, also mentioned the fact that the north face of Phari Lapcha looked good from Renjo Lha. This was all I had to guide me in choosing a suitable objective for my first ever visit to Sherpa country, the famous Khumbu region of Nepal. Fearing too many trekkers and expeditions I chose the winter season. It's colder, the days are shorter but if you like it real then it’s the time to go. I wandered up, with a couple of porters, to Gokyo village, 4800m, and established myself in the Gyoko Resort. It sounds like a holiday camp and it was, compared to the base camps I had grown used to on winter trips to the Langtang region and on Shishapangma with Victor Saunders. I could see why people come here, it's easy and comfortable, base camps in lodges! Opposite was a good-looking mountain that turned out to be called Phari Lapcha that Gielgi Sherpa, the lodge owner, said had been climbed by Japanese or Koreans to its west summit. Of course I had noticed the big gully leading up to it, Snotty's Gully, but the start of it was very dry and the rock not too good either. There wasn’t much ice around, that essential medium for my style of climbing. So, I didn’t go on to the large face to its left, the higher summit. Bad snow on loose rock being a bit dangerous for soloing! Instead the line that caught my eye was the face we saw from the lodge, its North East face apparently, as it at least caught some sun. Very important in winter! After the usual wandering about and painting and observing I was in a position to climb at the end of December. Now, with Victor we had imagined a style of climbing in winter on low-altitude peaks, such as this: that is no bivvy gear, just a down suit, high-altitude boots and a stove. Solo, I had a certain amount of stuff to carry, usually carried by two climbers, such as hardware to get up and down a big face. My ropes where light though: two 50m Dyneemas. At 5.5mm in diameter they are worryingly thin but strong and a blessing for the soloist. At nightfall on the 1st of January I began climbing the initial diagonal snow couloir, my plan to go slowly and eventually stop to wait for the sun to show me a line through the upper wall. Straightforward climbing and trail breaking lead to a point at about 5500m that I knew would catch the first sun. Hacking out a ledge and brewing up kept me warm and occupied, but eventually the cold took hold. My feet went numb, I slapped and banged my mittened hands on legs and torso to get the blood going. It was awful and I have never been colder. Staring into space, directly at the constellation of the Great Bear, I tried to draw heat from the pulsating stars! Slowly the sky over Makalu lightened until eventually a veritable ball of fire poured its heat into me. Of course when the handle of the stove broke I had had enough. I had survived the night but the thought of another, and higher, I just couldn’t face. Having picked out a route I climbed, stiffly, back down to the foot of the mountain. Two days later I was back up there, having gone beyond my previous bivouac, to the very end of the snow ramp. This time with a sleeping bag I spent a better night, the same sun warmed me and I found a more obvious way up an arête of snow and ice bordering the true north face and winding back on to north-east side. Delicate and balancy climbing led into superb grooves of eighty-degree ice and mixed ground, the most reassuring of the entire climb. The line paralleled the skyline ridge until my hoped-for traverse back to the centre of the upper part of the wall. Below my cramponed heels, emptiness: rather like being on the north face of the Matterhorn. The rock was probably worse though and I was seriously worried at a few places on the dry tooling sections. In fact, a few blobs of frozen turf saved the day, and my life. There was no problem keeping warm now I thought, crabbing along tilted ledges, wishing that I was anywhere but where I had landed myself. Still, it led me to where I needed to be, below the summit. I just had to get up this thing. I kept chanting along with Om Mani Padme Hum, calming my flailing spirit but not my tiring arms. I felt good, though lost high up in Nepal. Just the sort of change I needed from a crowded Alpine valley back home. The worried feeling came back, as it does, whilst I was tip-toeing up high-angled snow on really bad rock. The nearer I was to the top, the worse it became. It resembled a bad dream. They finish though, dreams, like everything else. And this one wasn’t the worse by far! Even so, 20m from salvation, the very top, I had to overcome a sort of dry stone wall construction. Picks wedged at its base, I did a vaulting mantelshelf to clear it! Gasping, like a landed fish well out of its element, I had arrived. Stripping off crampons and the sac, then rock climbing the final blocks, I stood at last, on the very spot I had been ogling through binoculars. A perfectly dry summit with a couple of eroded towers, rather like being on top of a gritstone tor. And there below me, miles away and down in the land of the living, Gokyo village was being swallowed up by the shadow of my mountain. Behind me, the warm and friendly sun sank into the west. It was four o'clock and time to look for a home for the night, Tomorrow's another day, as they say and I can get off this hill, one way or another, and back to my village. |
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