Monday, October 18, 2010

My mountain weekend or How I didn't die

Part I

After my Russian classes on Friday, I spent the rest of the day searching Bishkek for the equipment I needed to take on Peak Uchityel (Uchityel translates to Teacher). The mountain is in the Ala Archa National Park, which is about an hours’ drive outside of the city. There is a short drive to the trailheads from the main entrance of park. The mountains loom on either side of trekkers who come to enjoy their weekends next to the valley streams.

There are a handful of shops in the city which sell gear for “Alpinizm.” I went to three different shops to get everything I needed. I bought a sleeping bag that can keep me from freezing up to negative 27 degrees Celsius, a set of “Palochki” (climbing poles), warm hiking socks, hiking pants and gloves. I packed up that night and set my bag aside. The next morning I woke up around 8 and had some cereal and coffee. My roommate Aaro came downstairs with his gear and we ordered a taxi.

We headed to the London School to meet up with some of our friends who were going with us to Ala Archa. We picked them up and started on our way to the mountains just outside of the city.

After we arrived, Aaro and I parted ways with our friends as we were taking a different path to the mountain hut where we would be camping for the night. The trip was about five hours, eight kilometers and a gain of about 1600 meters (5200 feet) in altitude. There was a distinct change in scenery the further we went up. At the bottom of the park there was a river running through a forest full of pines and long grass, towards the snow line there was mostly moss and dirt. When we got up to about 3300 meters (10800 feet) the ground was almost all rocks and snow.

By the time we reached the base camp, I was feeling slow and sluggish from the high altitude. There we met a Kyrgyz man named Telek, who lived there two weeks out of every month. His job was to tend to trekkers and rent out sleeping spaces. We carried our own tent to the camp so we set it up and laid our sleeping pads and sleeping bags inside. We boiled some pasta on our camping stove and threw a bouillon cube in to make soup. As night set in, the temperature dropped rapidly. As we started to clean up our dinner mess, Telek invited us inside the hut to have chai.

He told us that he hadn’t talked to anyone for over a week, other than a few porters who stopped in just long enough to drop off food and equipment. He started a fire and told us a little about Kyrgyz history. He told us that the Kyrgyz were originally in Russia but travelled south and later established themselves in and around the mountains of Central Asia. The room was lit by the firelight of the stove and the heat coming from it warmed our freezing fingers and toes as we drank the strong tea.

It was incredibly cold when we finally climbed into our sleeping bags and began sleeping. I had to wake up twice to relieve myself. Each time, I winced at the cold as I opened my sleeping bag and the freezing air snapped me into full consciousness. The wind pushed our tent around the entire night but Aaro and I were able to get a few winks in before our long trip to the top of Uchityel the next day.




Part II



We woke up around 7:30, put our clothes on in our sleeping bags, and began to cook some oatmeal. Although there were some sugar cubes melting into it, the porridge tasted like newspaper. We melted some snow and filled up our water bottles while we wolfed the food down. We took water, some snacks, and all of our warm weather gear and packed it into my rucksack to take with us to the summit.

I felt more comfortable with walking than I did the day before and I didn’t feel too bad after an hour of marching up the first steep incline of loose rocks. My strength, however, started to fade the further up we went. Since the camp was located at about 3300 meters (10800) feet, we had around 1300 meters (4260 feet) to the top of the peak. On top of beginning to feel slow and sluggish, my boots were failing me at every turn. I thought I had fantastic boots when I bought them, but they were more like skis and I was slipping left and right.

The higher we climbed, the more snow there was. I had to dig my climbing poles into the snow to get traction, but we continued to make progress. We took two small breaks to drink some warm tea from earlier and eat some nuts and dried fruit. I was tired during the first stop, exhausted at the second, and a zombie by the time we reached the summit.

The sky opened up and the wind calmed for a minute when we finally arrived at the top. The view was incredible. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. The sky was slightly cloudy but we could see Bishkek, miles away. Aaro reached out his hand and I shook it while he said “Congratulations!” This was his sixth time to reach the top of Uchityel, 4600 meters (15000 feet) above sea level.

We looked around for a few more moments and then started on our way down. Aaro was much lighter on his feet than I was, and my boots were giving me more trouble on the way down, so he managed to get quite far ahead of me.

As he dipped out of sight I continued to follow his footsteps. Most of the time they followed the path we had taken up but sometimes they meandered off through areas which were easier to step down. Usually, the easier areas were snowy which meant that I could hop down considerably faster. As I descended I came across an area where his footsteps veered off quite sharply to the right from the old path. I decided to take the newer path, which was thick with snow (or so I thought).

The new path curved to the right around a huge rock outcropping that was sided on the left by a small path and a short drop onto rocks, so I was happy to try the newer path which looked safer. Walking around the outcropping I noticed that the new path was on the edge of a snow face that was insanely high.

I wasn’t particularly worried when I started to walk in Aaro’s footsteps because he had made it without any problems. I’m not sure whether it was because I’m about 30 pounds heavier than him without a rucksack on, or because of my boots, or because I’m just not experienced enough to know how to walk properly in those conditions, but I slipped.

It wasn’t much at first, and it didn’t really seem like a problem, but I couldn’t stand back up without slipping. It was about two o’clock and the sun had been beating down on the snow face for several hours so the snow was soft and powdery, not icy and firm. There was ice, however, about three quarters of a foot under the snow. Suddenly, I was acutely aware that I was sitting on a 1000 meter (3200 foot) ice slide which was tilting downwards in front of me.

I began to worry.

I was to the middle left of the snow face so I was about 15 meters (50 feet) from the rocks that I needed to stand up and continue my downward trip. I started to push myself to the left using my poles, but every time I did I slid further down. The further I slid, the steeper the wall became. Later, Aaro would tell me that usually there is much more snow which makes it a lot easier to walk on without slipping.

I started digging my sticks in as deep as I could and pushing to the left. One of the water bottles we brought fell out of the side of my rucksack and tumbled down the slope until it eventually stuck into the snow somewhere and I couldn’t see it. I heaved myself to the left and slid about 20 feet further down until I jammed the stick between my legs so the weight of my body pushing on it stopped my downward movement.

I wanted to shout to Aaro, but I was afraid of any unnecessary movement. I considered taking off my rucksack and letting it tumble down the side of the mountain but getting it out from behind me would have caused me to lose my position and slide further. I continued to push to the left, this time using all my force to keep the sticks staked in. I inched slowly to the left and eventually hit a rock. I almost shouted with relief and continued to inch to the left. Eventually I reached a patch of rocks I could stand up on as Aaro was coming back up the mountain, calling my name. He had climbed back up a considerable distance to find me and I was incredibly relieved to see him. I didn’t look back at the snow wall until I was at the bottom. I almost lost my balance when I did.

We arrived back at our camp around sunset, packed up and decided to go home. On the way back down we managed to get lost in the dark, but we made it (A story for another time). Our roommate convinced a taxi driver to drive out of the city to pick us up at 11 o’clock at night. The lights of the city flickered by as we drove home.






Dedicated to Mills Bigham, 4/8/1986-10/19/2009, a best friend and brother.

1 comment:

  1. Buy some new boots and keep it up.

    Beautiful dedication.

    ReplyDelete