Page 42 - SA Mountain Issue 62

Voytek considers a traverse on the ‘chocolate cake’ section, on day two
the lesser ice eld we are now climbing. The sun swings away; the rock cools noticeably in my hands. We pull down jackets from our sacks. My last three leads of the day end halfway up the wall. Voytek turns the overhanging lip magni cently on the right. In the evening glow, we reach the sixty- ve degree summit ice and hack out a ledge big enough for the three of us to make a sitting belay. The ritual begins as we pass the pot of food back and forth between us, each taking two spoonfuls of instant potatoes and cheese before passing it on, content and amazed by our bench in the sky at 21,500 feet. Then Voytek has to spoil it.
‘You see there the Pamirs? That one
big peak on the far left? Last year two Russians climbed a big face for three days and couldn’t get through the cornices at the top, so they had to go back down.’
‘Well that’s great, Voytek, we’ve already established we can’t get back down from here.’
DAY SIX
Dawn breaks slowly behind the great peaks to the east, gently gathering pace and strength as it scrolls through a spectrum of pastels. By the time the sun splits open the horizon, we have nearly nished our porridge.
DAY FOUR
When I open my eyes in the clear dawn, I discover why it has been a draughty night. An icy breeze is venting upwards from a 4,000-foot hole in the world just over my left shoulder. Above us, like a golden ice cream cone, 3,000 feet of new wall awaits, basking in the morning sun. The climbing is pleasant, up a mixture of slabs, short rock walls and melting ice elds. At times, we scramble together unroped to increase speed. In this way, we gain 2,000 feet and stop in the late afternoon to take an early bivvy on a comfortable and safe ledge. It is time to catch up on eating and sleeping, which have been in short supply the past three days. Once again we share our three- man bivvy sack.
DAY FIVE
The weather remains perfect, but the wall steepens into more technical ground. At breakfast, I bandage my ngers with tape to cover the deepest lacerations. Once again Alex takes up the rear and jumars as Voytek and I take three leads each before swapping over, repeating the routine as the mountain falls away beneath us. We are rising above the surrounding peaks. The seemingly endless ridges of the Hindu Kush march in ranks toward the two main peaks at the eastern end of the range – Noshaq and Tirich Mir, eighty miles away as the eagle ies.
The summit ice eld is like The
Shroud on the Grandes Jorasses, steep
but straightforward, except for one rock step, which I tickle over on front points. The overhanging ‘frog’s eyes’ seem to stay motionless at rst, but after eight pitches we are passing up the bridge of
the nose between them. There is one nal, unwanted surprise. From base camp, we thought the frog’s eyes were the summit cornice. In fact, they hide from view a nal cornice now hanging over our heads. I remember Voytek’s words from the evening before but none of us says a word.
40 SAMOUNTAIN.CO.ZA SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 2017
We still can’t see the nal ice eld and the fearsome summit cornices. They are hidden behind a 200-foot wall that caps
Alex has woken up. We are now in his domain.
The ice has now hardened into the familiar black steel of a winter alpine
face and has steepened. Voytek and I are debating the options when Alex arrives
at the stance. Voytek thinks it might be possible to go left, I wonder what happens out right. Alex clips onto the ice screws, smiles and looking up says: ‘My turn guys.’
‘You are like the fabled monkey,’ Voytek says, ‘or maybe just joker in the pack.’