Recap part 2

Hi Everyone,
Here is the final installment of the Nepal trip sorry it took 2 months to get this up.  This entry picks up where recap 1 left off.  For those of you in the Salt Lake area I will be doing a slideshow at the Black Diamond Flagship store 7:30pm on Thursday, March 21.  Hope to see some of you there!


After the Yalung Valley Tino and I regrouped in Na.  We relaxed there for a couple days, watching movies on ipods, reading, and packing for the next excursion.

Tino hanging out with one of the few other living things in Na

On November 14th we packed up eight days worth of supplies and headed to attempt to climb Langmoche Ri and continue along traversing the North ridge to the summit of Tengi Ragi Tau.  It took three days of walking to reach the base of the Langmoche Ri.  We had to travel over a terrible undulating rock glacier.  Almost every step rocks would shift from under you and balancing with a large backpack on proved difficult and took a large toll on our psych levels.

High camp 19,300' below Langmoche Ri

Eventually on the afternoon of the 16th we reached the base of Langmoche Ri.  We walked over to the pass to our east and could see Mt. Everest and the Kumbu region.  

If your asking which one is Everest the answer is the highest one.

The next morning we woke up with dull headaches, and we were both pretty lazy.  It took a long time to leave camp.  However, we knew we had to attempt it today since our weather girl, Emily, had informed us the night before that this was the day with the lowest winds.  Just a mellow 50 mph wind forecasted from the south, with zero degree ambient air temps.  According to NWS charts thats a -31 F wind chill.  It was cold, not quite Alaska cold, but still pretty darn frigid.  

The day began with not a lot of hope,  it was tough to break trail, we found ourselves wallowing through waist deep snow with an annoying wind crust that was not quite strong enough to hold body weight.  Each step you would hope it would hold then without fail it would break leaving you to punch into the softer snow.  You would pull yourself out and repeat the process.  However perseverance paid off a couple hours later we found ourselves making progress up the steep sections of the North face to gain the NW ridge.  

Me at 20,500' with the Dromblao glacier thousands of feet below Photo:  Tino V.

The climbing was very mentally and physically taxing.  The snow conditions were challenging to say the least.  We expected to find ice in the steeper runnels, but we were disappointed.  All we found was a slightly thicker crust that would barely hold body weight.  It felt like climbing a house of cards, every step you wondered if the whole slope would crumble.

First pitch of the headwall, which gave us 3 rope lengths of sustained 75 to 80 degree climbing Photo: Tino V.

Once the ridge itself was gained our wind exposure increased greatly.

At the top of the headwall we met our next challenge two overhung cornices that stood between us and the summit of an unclimbed peak.

Tino figuring out how to climb the overhanging unsupported snow while he is 20 feet from the summit of Langmoche Ri (6611m) 

  We each tackled one of the cornices, a combination of hacking away to firmer snow, and using snow pickets to pull up allowed us passage through the final obstacles to our unclimbed summit of approx. 21,700'.

With the temperatures we were dealing with and fatigue from challenging conditions we decided retreat was the best option.  We summited the previously unclimbed Langmoche Ri via the North face to NW ridge, and decided to rappel down the North face instead of continuing the ridge line to Tengi Ragi Tau.

Rappelling the North face proved interesting the first rappel was over a huge overhanging ice cap.  A mix of quick somewhat sketchy minimalist ice and snow anchors got us off the north face fast.

final overhung rappel off the north face.

  From here an hour walk brought us back to camp.  We ate dinner and passed out.  Both of us woke up during the night to drink water and eat more food.  The next morning we were really beat.

The morning after...

 
Now we still had 3 days worth of walking to get back to Na.  This time we knew exactly how much of a bummer walking on the rock glacier was.  But we also knew we had climbed the peak, and returned to camp safely.  The walk back to Na was a bit less painful for me since I still had headphones that worked.  Tino's ear buds conveniently stopped working on the second day of our trip. He was less than thrilled.

We returned to Na to find that all our remaining supplies were locked in the house we had left them in.  The catch was the woman who lived in the house was not there.  We waited hungry till 8 am the next morning, then we took the walk down to Beding (2 hours) to find some food.  We hung out there all day eating and drinking whiskey.  We met Norbu, the chairman of the village who would become a friend.  Tino and I spent several nights at his house on our way back down the valley.

The next week was spent climbing ice routes near the town of Na.  We found challenging brittle ice conditions.  Also the days were warm, and we needed to be off the ice by 11 am before it would begin to melt.  This caused us a bit more stress than we were looking for at this point in our trip.  We established a couple new routes one short fairly difficult route and one 500 foot ice route that was a bit more moderate.  We also repeated a couple previously established climbs in the area.  After this both Tino and I were ready to start our trip home.

Tino seconding one of our new routes at WI5M6

We moved all our equipment down to Beding in two trips, then hired 3 porters to bring the rest of our equipment back to Gongar.  Along the way we met up with an interesting British chap, who provided us with a jeep ride to Kathmandu.  Well, the Jeep was a bit full, so I rode in the covered bed of the pickup and slept on a duffel bag bed.

Happy to be on the road back home!

Thanks for reading.  In mid May I head back to Alaska for some climbing in the Southeast fork of the Kahiltna glacier including Mount Hunter.  I have been training for that since my return from Nepal, by climbing a lot of ice and continuing to develop new climbing routes in the Wasatch Mountains.  More to come!

Alan Rousseau