Meanwhile at the local Soilent Green store we ran across the The Stinking Rotting Geriatric Baby of Death
Jay immediately filed for adoption.
Cheers Y'all!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
China - Chengdu II
We decided against going to Rilong - the 20-hour bus ride didn't sound too appealing. Instead our driver Mario "I've never seen a Dong Feng I couldn't pass, or Cheese Dick I couldn't run off the road" Wangdretti set a new overland speed record from Kang Ding to Chengdu in the incredible time of 05:02:37 by the official third party verification timer. We are now at the quintessential hostel matrix, Sim's Guest House, complete with fish ponds and bunny rabbits. Jay has already polished off a large hamburger, French fries, mushroom-alfredo pasta, triple fudge chocolate chip brownie, a bottle of Campo Largo Cabernet Saugvignon, and 2 Guiness beers for starters.
Meanwhile at the local Soilent Green store we ran across the The Stinking Rotting Geriatric Baby of Death
Jay immediately filed for adoption.
Cheers Y'all!
Meanwhile at the local Soilent Green store we ran across the The Stinking Rotting Geriatric Baby of Death
Jay immediately filed for adoption.
Cheers Y'all!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
China - Genyen - Part 4 - The Final Steps
This is Michelle again. On the way down from basecamp, we discovered a view that had been obscured by clouds on the way in. Peak 5965 in all its glory.
Peter was psyched!
Joe taking some time to show some "Blue Steel" to the crowd:
A view of Genyen from the monastery
Joe decided to hike another 15 mile day and ran up to the head of the valley to get yet another view of the peak they climbed. Here is the back side of Peak 5965.
Group photo on the morning of departure
SeDorge is ready to go after freezing his butt off for the last three nights
Even on the way out the views never ended; we could see Genyen for miles and miles
Our horses did not want the trip to end
The next morning starting at 6 am with the herders started passing our camp, yelling Tashi Delek, a greeting of good morning and hello. Joe who had gone up to the plateau for the sunrise caught them on the camera. They were all excited to have there pictures taken.
Meanwhile back at camp we were slowly thawing out from the last nights frost
Passing herders on the way to Lamaya; the town we were to meet our taxi back to Litang
We were mistaken when we came upon this little village; and realized we had two more ridges to cross.
After a few Peeju's, beers. Jay is finally feeling those last two ridges
Goodbye Genyen!
China - Genyen - Part 3 - The Climb
This is Joe again. While Michelle and Jay were busy having deep intellectual conversations in base camp, Peter, Julie, and I decided to go try and climb this crazy peak that we had just hiked over 30 miles into the middle of the Tibetan wilderness to try to climb. We still couldn't see the peak yet, but we had a feeling that it was just around the corner. After a little scouting we saw a big mass of rock, ice, snow, hanging glaciers, and talus that we were pretty sure was our peak. We only had 3 days to try to bag the sucker because of time restraints, so we headed up with high hopes.
Luckily it only took 4 or so hours to reach our high camp in a basin below the peak. We figured what was above us, was indeed the 5965-meter peak that we were keen on climbing, but it looked quite difficult to access the main face that would lead the summit ridge.
The views of Genyen were nothing short of, well...
On the morning of day 2, the three of us geared up for our 1st attempt. Our high camp was at 5000 meters and it was pretty darn cold.
Peter getting ready to go.
Julie wasn't feeling well and turned around, so Peter and I continued up an easy glacier. Our hopes were that this glacier would simply traverse around the annoying and rather large rock outcropping on the ridge crest above camp and we would simply walk easily to the final headwall.
Ha! Guess again. Our easy glacier dead-ended into to 200 meter cliff and the peak was still a long ways away. We tried to go up and over the annoying rock thing, but it was beyond the scope of the objective and would not have really been considered progress toward the main summit. But we did get a good look at the summit and the upper part of the route, which looked really amazing. Now all we had to do was get there. In retrospect, we really chose the wrong valley to do the most logical route on the peak. Had we come up the next valley to the west, we would have gained easy access to the main glacier. Such are the tribulations of first ascents.
We descended back to base camp and tried to scout a new route. There were two obvious gullies that looked like they led to the ridge crest. One looked easy and one looked hard. After much thought and discussion, we decided that the easy one didn't go anywhere (in hind sight, a very good assumption). So we decided to take the more challenging looking of the two - the "heinous choss gully of death" seemed an appropriate name.
Here is a rough outline of the route we eventually took on the peak - much of it is very forshortened.
We got up very early and started up the talus to the couloir. Julie decided not to join us on this adventure, so it was just the two of us. Because of the short days and the length and unknown nature of what lie ahead, we mutually decided that we would solo as much terrain as possible in order to get up and down the peak within a reasonable time frame.
Here's Peter in the gully, approaching the crux rock band.
Peter just topping out on the rock band. There was a short bit of rock/mixed climbing, moderate in nature - just on the edge of keeping within our soloing limits.
We were quite glad to be out of the gully and onto the snow. We continued up a moderate ridge, with absolutely perfect snow conditions.
A bit of steep and exposed downclimbing led to the first flat area on the climb, where we took our first and only break.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the ice cliffs and seracs that we had seen from below were easily (and safely) bypassed via a long avalanche chute right up the center of the peak. This led to a bergschrund where above stood the 200 meter 55-degree calf-burning headwall. Since the snow conditions were still so good, we decided to continue soloing the headwall to the ridge crest.
Looking down the avalanche chute, below the headwall:
We finally reached the ridge crest and were again surprised, but excited to find a very sharp and tricky final 200 meter stretch to the summit:
We finally decided to bust out the rope. The climbing was very Alaskan in nature - walking the fine line between the cornice break off point on the right, and the steep exposed snow on the left. Very often we would wander a little to far right and poke down into the cornice fracture hole. Funny that the night before we had joked about the Fairbanks belay (if one person falls off one side, then you jump off the other), but now it was the foremost thought in our heads.
Without incident, we reached the tiny summit at 11:55 a.m., just in time to make our scheduled radio call to Michelle and Jay (who actually didn't even know which summit we were on, just that we were very ecstatic, so they figured it must be the big one).
Peter on the summit taking a cheap shot swing at me with his ice axe:
Me throwing up my arms in surrender:
The weather was a bit foul, but we were delighted none the less. We spent 30 or minutes taking pics and vids, before descending. We carefully retraced our steps along the summit ridge, downclimbed the headwall, then walked down the glacier.
Downclimbing into the top of the couloir:
In the couloir we busted out both ropes and made 4 double-rope rappels, through the sketchyness:
We had to be careful because the Evil Cyclops Glacier of Doom might have eaten us alive.
We made it back down by 4 p.m., just in time to break camp and rush down the hill and make it back to basecamp before dark.
A final view of the mountain:
Luckily it only took 4 or so hours to reach our high camp in a basin below the peak. We figured what was above us, was indeed the 5965-meter peak that we were keen on climbing, but it looked quite difficult to access the main face that would lead the summit ridge.
The views of Genyen were nothing short of, well...
On the morning of day 2, the three of us geared up for our 1st attempt. Our high camp was at 5000 meters and it was pretty darn cold.
Peter getting ready to go.
Julie wasn't feeling well and turned around, so Peter and I continued up an easy glacier. Our hopes were that this glacier would simply traverse around the annoying and rather large rock outcropping on the ridge crest above camp and we would simply walk easily to the final headwall.
Ha! Guess again. Our easy glacier dead-ended into to 200 meter cliff and the peak was still a long ways away. We tried to go up and over the annoying rock thing, but it was beyond the scope of the objective and would not have really been considered progress toward the main summit. But we did get a good look at the summit and the upper part of the route, which looked really amazing. Now all we had to do was get there. In retrospect, we really chose the wrong valley to do the most logical route on the peak. Had we come up the next valley to the west, we would have gained easy access to the main glacier. Such are the tribulations of first ascents.
We descended back to base camp and tried to scout a new route. There were two obvious gullies that looked like they led to the ridge crest. One looked easy and one looked hard. After much thought and discussion, we decided that the easy one didn't go anywhere (in hind sight, a very good assumption). So we decided to take the more challenging looking of the two - the "heinous choss gully of death" seemed an appropriate name.
Here is a rough outline of the route we eventually took on the peak - much of it is very forshortened.
We got up very early and started up the talus to the couloir. Julie decided not to join us on this adventure, so it was just the two of us. Because of the short days and the length and unknown nature of what lie ahead, we mutually decided that we would solo as much terrain as possible in order to get up and down the peak within a reasonable time frame.
Here's Peter in the gully, approaching the crux rock band.
Peter just topping out on the rock band. There was a short bit of rock/mixed climbing, moderate in nature - just on the edge of keeping within our soloing limits.
We were quite glad to be out of the gully and onto the snow. We continued up a moderate ridge, with absolutely perfect snow conditions.
A bit of steep and exposed downclimbing led to the first flat area on the climb, where we took our first and only break.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the ice cliffs and seracs that we had seen from below were easily (and safely) bypassed via a long avalanche chute right up the center of the peak. This led to a bergschrund where above stood the 200 meter 55-degree calf-burning headwall. Since the snow conditions were still so good, we decided to continue soloing the headwall to the ridge crest.
Looking down the avalanche chute, below the headwall:
We finally reached the ridge crest and were again surprised, but excited to find a very sharp and tricky final 200 meter stretch to the summit:
We finally decided to bust out the rope. The climbing was very Alaskan in nature - walking the fine line between the cornice break off point on the right, and the steep exposed snow on the left. Very often we would wander a little to far right and poke down into the cornice fracture hole. Funny that the night before we had joked about the Fairbanks belay (if one person falls off one side, then you jump off the other), but now it was the foremost thought in our heads.
Without incident, we reached the tiny summit at 11:55 a.m., just in time to make our scheduled radio call to Michelle and Jay (who actually didn't even know which summit we were on, just that we were very ecstatic, so they figured it must be the big one).
Peter on the summit taking a cheap shot swing at me with his ice axe:
Me throwing up my arms in surrender:
The weather was a bit foul, but we were delighted none the less. We spent 30 or minutes taking pics and vids, before descending. We carefully retraced our steps along the summit ridge, downclimbed the headwall, then walked down the glacier.
Downclimbing into the top of the couloir:
In the couloir we busted out both ropes and made 4 double-rope rappels, through the sketchyness:
We had to be careful because the Evil Cyclops Glacier of Doom might have eaten us alive.
We made it back down by 4 p.m., just in time to break camp and rush down the hill and make it back to basecamp before dark.
A final view of the mountain:
China - Genyen - Part 2 - The Approach
(Joe is taking a break from narration; Michelle is stepping in.) This is our first morning in Litang after an amazing breakfast of banana pancakes and fried egg sandwiches at Mr. Zheng's restaurant. Look at all the satisfied faces.
Following this farmer out of town; we are leaving this frontier town for the wild west......
But in route we discovered a counterfeit Dong Feng which had inadvertently damaged a local bridge. We spent the next hour helping to haul rocks to the sight in order to lift the trucks tires out of the river with the hydraulic lift. Julie rescued the little dog that was hanging from the top of the truck bed. Peter is surveying the situation.
We arrived in Sanla a little frontier town at the end of the road at 1:00pm; we were greeted by the Chinese Mayor and a local Tibetan Rock Star. This town was an interesting mix of Tibetan farmers and Chinese military; not a cheerful a place as we were used to.
After the entire town came out to help negotiate the price of our horses we departed at 4:30pm into the Genyen nomadic trade route. A short first day.
The weather was spectacular the entire 10 days!
We were so excited to be on the trail our horsemen, SeDorge and Thkidd, thought we would never stop to rest; finally when we reached our first sighting of Genyen we stopped to rest.
Then we hit the trail again.
The second night we made camp with three Tibetan families; they were hesitant at first, the kids did the initial spying and soon the entire crew joined us for some music, tea and picture taking.
Joe discovered that he was keeping up with local fashion.
Jay had the crowd captivated with his monocular.
Joe later discovered that all Tibetan nomads are rock stars.
We finished the evening with an amazing sunset over Genyen, settled down to sleep.
The next morning we discovered that while we were slumbering in the early morning the nomads were on the move; we were immediately greeted on the trail by a huge herd of heavily laden yaks and colorfully dressed horsemen, women, children and monks.
This young horseman was the leader of the pack!
The third day.....the landscape seems to go on forever; not knowing exactly where we were going we stopped to consult the map frequently.
After some scouting by Jay and Joe up two different valleys; we decided that we had found the valley we were looking for and we headed up. The trail petered out after a short distance into a talus field the group started to get worried. The horsemen thought we were leading them on a wild goose chase. We started following some faint yak trails up into the forest; thankfully they panned out and we came through the trees to this incredible valley.
We arrived at basecamp on the third day. Jay earned his nomad stripes and SeDorge gave him a ride on the horse.
Following this farmer out of town; we are leaving this frontier town for the wild west......
But in route we discovered a counterfeit Dong Feng which had inadvertently damaged a local bridge. We spent the next hour helping to haul rocks to the sight in order to lift the trucks tires out of the river with the hydraulic lift. Julie rescued the little dog that was hanging from the top of the truck bed. Peter is surveying the situation.
We arrived in Sanla a little frontier town at the end of the road at 1:00pm; we were greeted by the Chinese Mayor and a local Tibetan Rock Star. This town was an interesting mix of Tibetan farmers and Chinese military; not a cheerful a place as we were used to.
After the entire town came out to help negotiate the price of our horses we departed at 4:30pm into the Genyen nomadic trade route. A short first day.
The weather was spectacular the entire 10 days!
We were so excited to be on the trail our horsemen, SeDorge and Thkidd, thought we would never stop to rest; finally when we reached our first sighting of Genyen we stopped to rest.
Then we hit the trail again.
The second night we made camp with three Tibetan families; they were hesitant at first, the kids did the initial spying and soon the entire crew joined us for some music, tea and picture taking.
Joe discovered that he was keeping up with local fashion.
Jay had the crowd captivated with his monocular.
Joe later discovered that all Tibetan nomads are rock stars.
We finished the evening with an amazing sunset over Genyen, settled down to sleep.
The next morning we discovered that while we were slumbering in the early morning the nomads were on the move; we were immediately greeted on the trail by a huge herd of heavily laden yaks and colorfully dressed horsemen, women, children and monks.
This young horseman was the leader of the pack!
The third day.....the landscape seems to go on forever; not knowing exactly where we were going we stopped to consult the map frequently.
After some scouting by Jay and Joe up two different valleys; we decided that we had found the valley we were looking for and we headed up. The trail petered out after a short distance into a talus field the group started to get worried. The horsemen thought we were leading them on a wild goose chase. We started following some faint yak trails up into the forest; thankfully they panned out and we came through the trees to this incredible valley.
We arrived at basecamp on the third day. Jay earned his nomad stripes and SeDorge gave him a ride on the horse.
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