1st June
Press on with a load carry up the ridge. The overnight wind and snow had completely filled in all the tracks so it was new trail breaking again, but the weather was on the improve with calm air and light clouds. The route above Camp 2 became immediately steeper and headed up a snow arête that deviated left and right as it climbed so I called this the “Serpentine Arête”. It was quite steep and covered with fresh soft snow so trail breaking was hard work. It was however not my work since Russell (definitely the strongest guy in our team) took it upon himself to lead out for the whole day. The Serpentine arête got more “edgey” near the top and then it stopped climbing. That didn’t help though because it became a real horizontal “knife edge” of ice that is one of the classic technical cruxes of the East Ridge route. As we each got to the top of the Serpentine arête in turn we gathered at “knife edge” and looked it over with interest and concern! The bad part is only about 20m across but it certainly makes you stop and think :)
There was no way you could walk across the top of it – certain death!
The South side was downright vertical and looked loose and bad for technical tooling as well!
The North side looked like the best option but it was also very steep and was covered in a layer of snow so it was hard to see what the ice underneath was like.
Russell was quick to volunteer to lead the crossing (bless him) so we set about putting in a good solid anchor and giving him our best two technical climbing axes. We suggested he do it without his big pack on but Russell didn’t care and headed off fully loaded. It took him a while and he lost his footing at one point but the axes held and he made it over to the other side. He then put in another good anchor and we tied a fixed line between the two sides. This meant that the rest of us would now be able to clip into this fixed line for added safety and comfort. We still had to make full use of our own crampons and ice axes but it was faster and safer this way.
By this time, the Ukrainian team had caught up to us as well and they were starting to get pushy about us blocking the way! I have to say that we were going slowly at this point but that the terrain was very technical. The Ukrainians were, it seemed, very competent climbers and very strong with it, but we had broken the trail all the way up the ridge here and had done all the work of setting up anchors and ropes etc. It also seemed to me that one of the other climbers in particular was being unpleasantly vocal. It turned out that he was a very senior mountaineer from years before and although significantly older and not nearly as strong as the other climbers in their team, he was bossing everybody around and telling them how it should be done, and would have been done in his day! – I admit though that I was interpreting this since most of his words were in Ukrainian and I was mostly just watching body language and listening to tone.
There was no question though that the other climbers in his team treated him with a great deal of deference. Their whole team seemed to have far less regard for safety than we did but it seemed largely to do with bravado than reality to me. I was quite amused when the old bugger who was giving everybody lip started to topple off the ridge and would surely have plunged to a not-untimely end (he was not tied into a rope or an anchor at all) had not one of his team reached out and grabbed hold of him as he toppled. I don’t actually think the old boy even noticed that his life had just been saved and even if he did notice, he certainly didn’t shut up or acknowledge the fact :)
So, anyway, after due process, the four of us in our team were over to the other side of the knife-edge and we started making a trail along the very steep and windy edge of the ridge. We had left our anchors and fixed line for the other team to use, and we would be returning to Camp 1 again later in the day anyway so we’d need to cross that spot again. But heading further along the ridge, there was so much snow that we broke out the shovels and were digging our way along the edge of the ridge – Again this was making for slow progress. After about a hundred meters of this, the Ukrainians were again on our heels with the usual vocal accompaniment from the old timer.
At this point, we decided that since they were so strong and enthusiastic we should just let them go past and they could break as much trail as they wanted. So we stood aside and let them go. They had not been roped up but the terrain must have been just a bit more intimidating than they were letting on because they stopped and roped up before heading off in front. The fact that they were taking the lead made not a jot of difference to the old boy and he was “lashing” his leader on in a hurry. As their lead climber went past us and stepped off the end of our shoveled path and into deep untracked snow on the steep ridge edge he started going very cautiously and the vocal tirade escalated immediately.
So he boldly stepped out and took three confident steps whereupon his footing slipped and he immediately sank his axe shaft deep into the snow and caught himself and his breath! The old boy kept up the tirade and the lead climber pressed on as fast as he dared but he gave us several backward looks with an expression of “oooh, this isn’t great” and “look what I have to put up with” – Well that was my interpretation but it must have seemed similar to the rest of our team because we were all smiling quietly to our selves for a while.
After a few minutes, the other team had moved around a corner and we started to follow along behind, enjoying the relatively easy task of following in their trail. The weather was deteriorating a bit and the wind and snow were increasing again. So, at the first place where there was a place big enough to drop the gear, we did so and then turned around and headed back down to Camp 1. We crossed back over the knife-edge and then also did two or three rappels down the top of the Serpentine arête till the slope lessened and it was safe enough to move quickly as a rope pair.
We made it back to camp at about 8pm and we were all very tired and hungry and relieved. We all had sunburn from the UV despite the overcast conditions, and we were all starving and dehydrated since we had not stopped for food or drink in the whole day and had at most had a munchie bar and a few gulps of water. But we had made it across the first major technical obstacle on the route. From what we could tell, there was another tricky spot further up the ridge, but we’d get to that later.
Now it was time to eat and drink and rest up.
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