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2005
Mugs Stump Award Winners:
Nott/Varco—East
Face of Kamet
Sue
Nott and I have just returned from our seven week expedition
to Kamet. This expedition was plagued by horrible weather,
on the approach to ABC we got trapped in-between camps for
five days while it snowed over twelve feet! We had already
been in India twenty five days and only seen our objective,
the unclimbed East face, for about ten minutes... We hadn't
even managed to make it to ABC. (normally a three day hike
from base camp.)
Kamet
7756m (25,447ft)—the highest mountain of the Zaskar range—rises
near the Indo-Tibet border. Due to its close proximity
to the border it has been closed to non-Indian teams for
many years. Just reopened to foreign expeditions, the peak
permit required permission from both India and China. Receiving
this permit would have most likely been impossible without
the help of Ibex Expeditions, our great outfitter. One
condition of the permit was a strict six week time limit.
Our
original plan of attack was to acclimatize on the standard
route (climbed by the Shipton and Smythe way back
in 1931) then after some rest go for it on the East face.
Nearly out of time, we had to compromise and went for
the summit via the standard route. Two of the three teams
with plans for this route had already pulled the plug on
their trips. These large teams had many high altitude porters
and twelve climbing Sherpas. The mountain had been covered
with deep snow and the avalanche hazard was very high.
On September 30th we left our one tent ABC (18,000 feet)
with light packs, five days food and fuel and started
up the mountain. On this historic route we found spectacular
yet technically easy terrain. The upper snow slopes
scared the crap out of us! We broke trail in deep snow
finding sections of highly tensioned wind slab. These slabs
would kindly remind us of our insignificance with a more
than subtle "Whoop."
After
five days of hard work we reached the summit at 1:30
pm in the strong afternoon winds on October 4th. Upon returning
to Delhi we heard news of a tragic season, eight climbers
had been killed
on other expeditions. Though we didn't get the chance to
attempt the East Face we had a great adventure and made
many new friends.
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