Road to Scupltua Chokursu, ‘Sculptures Peak’
Written by Tom Stewart
Kyrgyzstan is overflowing with beauty and adventure; everywhere you look there are new routes, virgin peaks, friendly fun people. No day is the same, nothing turns out quite as planned, and you are always on your toes. Adventure is everywhere.
All of this is captured perfectly in my latest trip as part of an expedition to the Western Kokshall Too.
Kyrgyzstan, where is that? How do you spell that? How do you pronounce that, what is there? These were all but a few of the thousands of questions I had of which many stayed unanswered on being invited on the expedition.
The Internet helped a bit and convinced me straight away it was a good place to go to. My wife gave me amazing support and suggested if I really wanted to then we could work something out. This despite, having a 4-month-old baby, jus having spent 5 months in the Alps, getting married within 6 weeks and supposedly looking for a new job! I owe you big time!
Fast forward and Carl, Graham, Tom and I arrive at Bishkek, to meet Dave and Urpu our other team members. This was the start of one of the biggest culture shocks and surprises I have ever had.
Every man and his dog claimed to be a taxi!!!! With a few over excited local drunks to add to the mix, not actually able to communicate very well and not really knowing where we were supposed to be going, we somehow found the rest of the team and out Bishkek accommodation.
Imagine Cold War Russia, grey decrepit communist tower blocks, knock it about a lot, make it look condemned, and that is what our apartment and area of Bishkek looked like. However then look a little closer a massive cultural and race mix, lots of tree’s, parks and greenery, happy helpful and hard working people, busy bazar’s, when you look out on the horizon snow capped mountains, it’s a hustling and bustling pretty cool place, full of character.
After a little altercation with the local police, search, interrogation and then a telling off, ‘You bad boys, no DRUGS, no GUNS, no KNIVES’, we had managed to get all of our supplies and find the IMTC agency who where supplying us with a driver and transport.
Well what a truck all 17.5 tonnes and six wheels of it!!!! The wheels were bigger than me! From here the adventure really kicked off in style and not quite as we had expected.
At a top speed of a bone shattering 35 mph we left Bishkek and after 3 hours, we had a blow out! This was not to be your usual quick wheel change, 5 hours later, a bit of slack lining a lot of sledge hammer smashing, head scratching and a few fags by Sergei our Driver, (whom no matter how much we tried to help, would let us touch the truck, that was soon to change) and he had changed the inner tube only to find as the tyres inflated that the valve snaped off and we were back to square one! Another couple of hours and his son arrives with another new tyre, and we can get going again. We pass mountain range after mountain range, climb numerous mountain passes over 3000m, drive through green and lush valleys, barren desert like terrain, just about everything you can image. At Naryn we leave main civilisation behind and enter the nomadic Yurt country. We then bribed our way through three border posts with vodka and fuel. The dirt track disappears, rivers, ditches, broken bridges are crossed and we are now slap bang in the middle of nowhere just staring at the mountains and trying to work out how we are going to get to our proposed base camp without getting stuck in one of the notorious mountain bogs.
Trial and error, following our noses and really just guesswork we start to weave a spider’s web of a route through the bog. We started to get confident and then just as we changed direction, all of a sudden, the world beneath our tyres came an awful lot closer. We came to an instant stop and we had sunk over a metre into a bog. No longer did you climb up into the truck you just stepped though the door!Sergie was mega stressed, we were just stunned, and then reality dawned. We were either going to have to ferry all of our kit across the hills in front of us, over 10km to the supposed base camp, of dig out the truck and somehow lift it out of the bog!
A quick survey of what we had produced three shovels, 7 pairs of hands, one small jack and another a bit smaller, two planks of wood and not much else. A few hours later and Carl had worked out a plan, which meant we dug under the front of the truck, placed the spare tyre under the truck, and used it as a base for the jack. We would then jack up the truck, dig out the wheels, back fill with stones; repeat at the rear and systematically lift the truck. Well that was the idea. After a day and half, of this, realising that the clay could not be dug with a shovel and it required two people one to cut and the other by hand to pull out the mud, we had slowly lifted the truck up and out. Each time it was jacked up, we would build a mini Leaning Tower of Piza out of wood, stones and discarded door we found!!! Every second under the truck was put your life in the hands of the gods!
We then had it ready and Sergei decided it was time to just rev it and gun it, all breath was held, fingers and toes crossed. Sergei let rip and out she came!!!
The plan was changed and we headed up the riverbed, through the river and to the snout of the Komorova Glacier.
After 4 days of travelling Dave and I had so much pent up energy we were like Saturn V on it’s launch pad, and off we blasted like kids in a sweet shop.
17th August – Arrive at base camp at 1400, leave base camp at 1500 for first mountain. 1700 atop of peak 4416m. Dave spots coulior on Pik Yurnos and reckons that should be tomorrow’s objective. 2000 back at camp.
18th August – Up at 0430, leave camp at 0530, base of route 0930 350m later some WI 3 and 4 I am at the base of what is the last pitch before the summit ridge. Two choices left mega hard, right easy and Dave is like which way you heading? Well I thought it’s Dave’s route, right is easy, left look pretty impossible, it’s a shame to finish on the easy, so announce going left! Wow, I am at 4600m, higher than I have ever been before, I have just climbed some WI5, got my self on vertical unconsolidated crud, stuck in a corner about 5m from and blocking overhang, 5m above my last bit of shitty gear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I am crapping myself, wishing I had gone right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well better do something, very tentatively reverse, well just fall down in a controlled manner, crossover through to my right switching axes across a snow cover slab, into a iced crack which is about 4 inches wide. Repeatedly match on my axes, torquing my mono points into the crack, and slowly climb the crack. I then get bridge under the over hang, manage to place a god screw, reach up and over into the ice and just let rip, feet in space and yard it!!!! Wow, now that’s not something I don’t do every day. Hardest bit of climbing I have ever done, at the highest I have ever been!!! 2000 Back in camp, one route done, very chuffed, but eager for more.
19th August – lie in, pack 5 days worth of food and head high up onto the Komorova Glacier to beneath the Orchre walls, 5 hours up and pitch camp at 4400m.
20th August – Start up an intended repeat of either Fire and Ice or Beefcake, spot many lines, think how can we repeat when we can easily pick up a new route? Dave tries, Fire and Ice and reckon a bit hard. There is an extremely elegant, but mega thin ice line to the left. 2 inches of ice on slabs, with a small channel of ice about 6 inches wide in a crack heading up the middle at about 85 degrees. Well lets go for it! Plan is to place bomber screw, and then just sprint up, run it out, get to better ice. So much for the plan, bomber screw is tied off after 4 inches, get scared, head down, a bit further up go for another screw, this one goes in about 3 inches, B******S, this is hard and pushing my nerve. See better ice, or so a I though, hollow crust on rock held on by magic. Go for a traverse across this magic ice, now in for a thought provoking whipper, phew better, it’s three inches thick and only half crust. Calfs are burning, lungs are on fire, I am finding it hard enough to just breath let alone climb. ‘Keep going Tom, look for a belay’, eventually I find a belay, nice hanging one. Done it! 4 pitches later we top out the route, and head back down, for me another height record, another piece of hardest climbing, this is wicked. I love this new routing game, rock up with no plan, spot something you like and go for it.
21st August – Storm bound in a white out, but decide it would be nice to see the Great Walls of China. So pack up, and climb the glacier to the Window Col, in zero visibility and breaking trail. 4 hours later, we really do not know where we are, must be close to the col, so set up camp. Middle of the night everything clears, and we are directly below the Unmarked Soldier about 500m from the col. What a place, routes everywhere.
22nd August – About 30 –40cm fell last night, we decide to have a look over the col and 1 hour later and back breaking trail breaking we see the Great Walls and decide we must come back and do some thing here another day, but not now. 5 hours later we are back at camp, having got lost in the moraines.
23rd August – We rest. Dave my partner, what can I tell you about him? Well we met over the winter in the Alps and did a few routes including the Ginat on the North Face of the Doites. Dave is the epitome of chilled, wears the baggy’s, love the surf, boarding, skiing and mountains. He eats soduku for breakfast, lunch and dinner and is an extremely driven climber, who loves his sport climbing. He is by far and a way a better rock climbing than me, and really a very sound climbing partner.
24th August – Pack up again, go with 6 days worth of food, and 30kg rucksacks each! They are back breaking, and to be honest I am either a weakling or they are hardly lift able. Now we had a great idea to cut out distance, cross the mountains between Kizil Asker and us at 4400m and drop down the other side. Well that is what we thought. 5 soul destroying hours, about 10km, a 800m 45 degree leg, ankle and body wrecking scree slope and a 4400m col later, we arrived battered and bruised on the Kizil Asker glacier, regretting our short cut!
25th August:
0400 - the stars are out, good to go, three days worth of food, no idea what lays ahead, quite daunted, feeling nervous, but also mega excited.
0700 – looking up at the initial slopes and man they are long, snow’s unconsolidated on bullet hard ice, this is going to take a while.
1500 – 800m of 50/60 degree trudge done, knackered, and we haven’t even started, all the snow just keeps falling away, that was 8 hours of breaking trail!
1930 – we have managed three pitches on WI3, general mixed, some crazy rock probably alpine VI, not really sure how Dave climbed that, totally unprotected. Dave is now tucking into the delights of some pretty gnarly mixed climbing, up a corner, then chimney and then I am not sure where he is going to go? He’s got himself a bit stuck, keeps popping axes and front points. Just got really tangled in his lanyards and had a bit of a barny. I really hope he can do this, it’s getting dark, I’m shattered, to be honest he has too. Dave’s just told me he can’t do it! I just said well you have to, so bet get your head down and sort it (I think that did the trick, sorry Dave). Well blow me down, off he goes, up and up, teetering on his points, scratching with his axes, but where is he going to go? A roof caps the corner; there is a blank slab out left, but no gear? By now he is well and truly beyond the point of safe return, but that is probably a good thing, keep him on his toes, (sorry again Dave). This is edge of your seat stuff, Dave has been climbing for the last 18 hours, it’s now dark, he hanging on in there and doing some of the best climbing I have seen, defiantly the most determined. Somehow he has found a hook under the roof, done a massive rock over on nothing to his left, and is just hanging there on nothing, I think it is pure adrenalin that’s keeping him from falling. Another 10 mins, I have started climbing, Dave is somewhere up in the dark, hopefully looking for a bed for night, not sure if there are rooms vacant up here.
2030 – Well the least I can do after that is cut him a nice bed, and that is what I do, double bed for two, and dinner in bed.
2200 - Say goodnight to my wife and daughter, say good night to Dave.
26th August
0530 – Suns up, another day is good, off we go. (how long is this good weather going to last?)
1400 – Well this is hard, I thought we might get some moving together but oh no. This mountain is throwing everything at us. We have had more and more rock climbing, some on solid and other on terrifying loose rock. We have had ice pitches, down climbing, traverses, nightmare rope drag, dead ends and some pretty hard mixed stuff and now we are just staring at a blank wall????????????????????
1430 – Dave doesn’t think we can go left, right or up? Also if we get up this, what’s next looks worse? There is a thin crackline going up the middle, aid has not even entered my head and it’s my pitch. Well the crack it will have to be, but not one foothold, well that’s a lie there seems to be a few grains of granite and there is one small pocket like thing about 5mm deep. Here we go, turns out to be well protected, if you can place the gear. One mono in the crack torqued, one axe tip balancing on an edge, the other stacked on top, my right mono on a grain and I am at 5000m with calf’s burning, veins pumping, throat burning. Blood Hell I still have my rucksack on why? It weights a tonne. Mono points keep popping, but I am going up, and I can’t believe it I am actually climbing this thing, not sure how, but it is happening.
1555 – Time for a snack, Walkers Nonsuch, packed me off with three boxes of their Seasame Crunch and what a life saver, they are not just tasty, but for their compact size mega calorific. They come highly recommended.
1600 – The route is not letting up, we have just had another few rock pitches all at about alpine V / VI and now I am hanging here chucking bricks off the mountain, my gear is wedged in a sandwich of loose rock, my foothold is wobbling, I have just put back my handholds and my brain is fried. I don’t really like this, but I want the top, I know we can do it, despite the massive storm front over to the West, which has now started to rumble and growl and protrude some nasty looking lightning.
1610 - Every we look there are these amazing sculptures carved into the rock, contorted faces, shapes, watching our every move, your imagination can play wild with this.
2000 – When is it going to let up, I am starting to wilt, I know Dave is concerned about the weather? (So I am fella). Where we might bivi? How we going to get down? How we going to survive the storm that is now only a few peaks away.
2100 – Right it’s dark and we have got to get decisive, we are going for the top and we had better hurry. If we head out right across the ice field, we might find a gully to get us the top.
2300 – Well it’s been two pitches, about 300m of climbing, some spine tingling unconsolidated ice / snow on 70 / 80 degree rock steps, but I think that might be the summit cornice. Also I don’t think we can out run this storm.
0000 – Man this is rough, I am in my wife’s friends sleeping bag; in my wife’s bivi bag; I can’t feel my right set of toes; the wind is blasting; the snow is falling by the bucket load and it’s mega cold. My wife and daughter have just told me I had better get some feeling in my toes and work out a way out of here or there will be hell to pay!
0500 – The weight and force of the snow has pushed me off my ledge, I am just hanging on the slope in my harness. I have spent the last 5 hours desperately starting to get feeling in my toes, and I think I can feel them. Shouted at Dave, who says he is okay, but I know that he desperately wants to get down and is probably suffering just as bad as me.
0600 – Plan is, it’s too windy to try and diagonally head back the way we came, the only viable way is straight down the west side, but we have no idea what it looks like or what is there or where to go.
1400 – Well I thought the climbing was hard, but this is just mind blowing, we done about 15 abakalov abseil’s, in the most intense bombardment of spindrift and falling ice I have ever witnessed. Currently, I think Dave is next to me on the belay, I think I can feel his shoulder. I cannot see, hear or talk to him; I am struggling to breath and have just been knocked off my feet by the force or the spindrift. I am trying to pretend this is normal, when in fact if we survive this, it will be a miracle. It feels like I am standing in a kids TV gunk tank, but instead of goo, its freezing steel ball bearings smashing into me.
1600 – We are still abseiling, still making abakalov’s, we have about 1m of tat left.
1700 – I think that’s it, the bottom, can’t stand around and chat, terrified we might get killed from, falling ice, avalanche or even one of the massive 100ft serac’s that are directly above us.
1720 – Dave and I think that for moment we are safe, we have not had any water or food for the last 24hours, the storm prevented us from be able to melt snow and the burning in our throats prevented eating.
1900 – Despite being down, we are not safe, we still have to get to our tent and that is about 4km away and on the other side of this col. Dave is destroyed, I am totally blown out this is going to be a long walk.
2200 – I think we fell in about 12 crevasses! But you know what? We made it. I am lying here amazed. That was the most intense, beautiful, hardest climb of my life. I have just said goodnight to my Wife and Daughter and am about to congratulate Dave and say goodnight to him, but he is still doing a soduku!
Piolet dor Nomination - http://www.pioletsdor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=109&Itemid=259&lang=en
