End of Season Winter Ice

Winter ice is over for me for this year.  I'm heading to France today for spend some quality time with Ann in Paris and then onto Chamonix.  We were nominated for this year's Piolet d'Or for the Sasser Kangri II climb in India last year - but more on that later.  Here is a summary of some great ice climbs in the Canadian Rockies this winter.

Steve Holeczi leading first pitch of Fang and Fist

Blessed Rage

Looking up at the crux of Blessed Rage

J Mills pulling around the crux

J Mills leading final bit on Blessed Rage

Hydrophobia

Dylan Johnson following second pitch on Hydrophobia

We traversed on the ridge top over to the Sorcerer

Castle Mtn at dawn heading up to the T-Wall

Juan following second pitch of the Replicant

Juan again

Rapelling off the Replicant

Mark Kroese following His in Grotto Canyon

Hiking out from Grotto Canyon

The Pencil pitch on Polar Circus

Leading the Pencil

Near the top of the steep bit

Upper pitches on Polar Circus

The Pencil - Notice the Crack

Whiteman Falls

Lynx along Evan Thomas Creek

Last pitchs of the season!













































Dry Tooling

Dry tooling is when you use your ice tools and crampons to climb on rock usually (but not always) as part of an ascent that includes getting onto ice as well.  When the climb involves both rock and ice in this way it is called mixed climbing.  Here are some photos of me, and then Josh Wharton doing some dry tooling at a crag outside of Banff called Bear Spirit. 

Steve on a climb rated M6

same climb

Josh on a much harder climb rated M9 or M10

My Daddy's a Psycho

Had a great day with Steve Holesczi an J Mills on some climbs on either side of Murcheson Falls a month or so ago.

Canadian Rockies Ice



Sorry I haven't posted on my blog recently.  I've been busy ice climbing in the Canadian Rockies this winter so I will try play catch up with some photos on some classic routes.

Things started out with an early ascent of Sacre Bleu on Mt Rundle.  You can see it from Highway 1 between Canmore and Banff left of the Trophy Wall.  You want to do this one when the avalanche danger is low as there is a huge snow bowl above it.  You can do it in 2-3 pitches at WI 5 on the last bit.

First Pitch of Sacre Bleu

In the South Ghost River area there are a couple of climbs not too far from where you park.  Wicked Wanda (WI 4+) faces north and Malignant Mushroom (WI 5) on the other side of the valley faces south.  You can easily do them both in a day.

Malignant Mushroom

Another classic is Nemesis (WI 6) on the Mt Stanley Headwall.  It is 3-4 pitches long and is a nice ski in and out.

Nemesis

Hospital in Leh

After landing in Leh, a small ambulance took me to the hospital.  Teresa Richey (Mark's wife) and her friend Lisa were there to meet me.  Teresa was very helpful in ushering me around as I was pretty sick and needed help.

In the hospital in Leh

By American standards the hospital was pretty grim.  The ER where I was first admitted was a room packed with eight beds full of patients and barely enough room in between to accommodate the staff and all their family members.  They put me in one of the beds, took my vital signs, and the doctor listened to my chest.  I had the doctor talk to Dr. Brownie Schoene in the US and they came up with a treatment plan for me that included four injections of an antibiotic.  I was a bit concerned about the hygiene of the injections, but I watched them use a syringe and needle that were from sterile packages.  The small bottle used for my injection had the name of the antibiotic on it that I was supposed to get and the nurse who administered it was skilled at finding a good vein.

Getting examined by the doctor

Teresa is originally from Peru where they have a tradition to stay with a hospitalized friend or family member 24 hours a day.  So Teresa wouldn't leave me and brought a sleeping bag and pad to spend the night on the floor next to my bed.  Just as she was bedding down, a rat scurried across the floor next to her head.  She jumped up and into my bed facing the opposite direction as me and spent the night there.  I coughed most of the night so neither one of us slept much.

Teresa in my bed after a rat scared her away from her bed on the floor



I was able to convince the hospital staff to let me go in the afternoon on the 27th so I could recuperate in my hotel room.  The hotel was a lot more comfortable than the hospital and I just had to go back to the hospital a couple of times for my last antibiotic injections.

Motip's office for RIMO expeditions was next door to the hotel so I stopped by to thank him and Teresa for all the work they did along with Global Rescue to get me off the glacier.  It was a great team effort!

The rescue team in Leh - Teresa and Motup!



I spent four days in Leh waiting for Mark, Freddie, and the rest of our team to show up.  They brought down everything from the Advanced Base Camp on the 27th, evacuated base camp on the 28th, spent the day on the 29th in the Nubra Valley, and on the 30th they drove to Leh and we were reunited .

We flew to Delhi on the 31st and after more R&R there we flew back to the US on September 2nd. 

Many thanks to those who have expressed concern for my health.  Since being home I've made a full recovery.  My lungs are nearly clear so my cough is mostly gone and I'm slowly getting back into running, bicycling, and rock climbing. 

This concludes my stories about our expedition to India.  Stay tuned for some stories from the northwest before I head to Canmore for the winter later this fall.

Could I Choke to Death?

At 3AM on August 26th I woke up in the tent at Advanced Base Camp coughing.  That in itself was not unusual - I had been suffering from a bad cough for over a month now.  What was unusual was my cough produced a thick mucus that I couldn't get all the way up - it was sticking in my airway and I was choking on it.  After a couple of episodes of this I woke Mark and Freddie to get some help.  He witnessed me gasping for air after each one of my coughing episodes where I could only clear part of my airway.  We decided to call my friend Dr. Brownie Schoene in Bozeman on the satellite phone to see what suggestions he might have.  Brownie specializes in high altitude respiratory medicine and I had been communicating with him the past month on how to treat and recover from my sinus problems.  Mark and Brownie were discussing my situation as I wasn't able to talk, but I did write a note for Mark to ask Brownie, "Could I choke to death on this thick mucus that is getting lodged in my airway"?  Mark listened to Brownie's response and then turned to me and said, "Brownie says that yes you could".  That wasn't what I wanted to hear and now I was pretty frightened.  Sometimes the coughing would leave me with a completely obstructed airway and I couldn't breathe at all until more coughing and hacking created a passageway to let in just enough air to allow some restricted breathing.

We decided that I needed to get out of here so calls were made to initiate a helicopter rescue.  While we waited I moved outside and sat in a nice snow chair working hard to keep up my breathing.  I decided that the best thing I could do was to not cough and drinking warm tea seemed to work best to suppress that urge.  By around 11 AM I had been sipping tea for about three hours which helped me rehydrate and during another coughing episode I was able to clear my airway and cough everything up onto the snow.  It was a tremendous relief to not be choking any longer and I felt that I was now out of danger - but still pretty sick .

After some bureaucratic wrangling, two Indian Air Force helicopters showed up around 4PM.  They made a circle around our camp on the glacier and then one landed on the helipad that Freddie had laid out in the snow.  Freddie and two of our Sherpas pulled me out of the tent where I was resting and we hurried to the helicopter where I climbed into an empty seat in the back of the small bubble cockpit.  The two pilots sitting in front of me got us off the ground and we immediately headed down-glacier.

From inside the cockpit

 The views on the flight to Leh were pretty spectacular and I tried to snap a few pictures along the way while breathing through the oxygen mask the pilots gave me.

South Shukpa Kungchang Glacier



Confluence of Nubra River on right flowing into the Shyok River on left which flows west into Pakistan

When we landed in Leh we had about a 30 minute photo shoot with the pilots, wing commander, army doctor and district commissioner.  They were all involved in helping in some way and I was grateful to them.

Landing at Leh

After the formalities on the tarmac they drove me to the hospital in Leh.  It was a pretty grim place, but more on that tomorrow.



The Descent

After I had a sleepless night of hacking and coughing, we packed up the bivy and started rappelling down the wall.  Unfortunately on our first rappel yesterday we dislodged a loose rock that fell down the wall and chopped one of our ropes about 40 feet from one end.  Fortunately Mark, who went first, noticed it and didn't rappel off the end of the one rope where it was cut.  To enable us to do full length double rope rappels down the wall, we tied a knot in the one rope to attach the 40 foot piece that was cut off.  This meant that everyone had to pass this knot around their rappel device each time.

Rappelling down the Ramp

Halfway down the wall we rappelled through the rock band

It took over 30 rappels to get from our high camp to the glacier at the bottom.  In spite of all my coughing and  hacking, I was able to get myself down OK.  Mark and Freddie traded setting anchors that we almost entirely V-threads in the ice, and I went last pulling the backup ice screw and any other gear left at the rappel station.

Rappelling into the Great Couloir

We were all exhausted

The final rappels to the glacier below



We arrived at our skis a couple of hours after dark around 10:00 PM.  I was exhausted and had a hard time keeping my balance skiing back to ABC.  I fell several times, which was something I hadn't done before and I was nervous about skiing over the several crevasses along the way.  Unfortunately Thinless and Tashi did not keep a light on at ABC and we had a hard time finding the tents in the darkness on such a big glacier.  We eventually found the camp and had some tea and a bit to eat.  It was after midnight that we went to bed - I didn't realize at the time that in just I few hours I would wake up with a serious breathing problem.



Our route





Sasser Kangri II Day 4 - The Summit

August 24.  We only had four pitches of technical climbing from our third bivouac to get to the summit ridge, and from there we knew that it would be easy snow walking to the summit.

Just below the summit ridge

It was a beautiful summit day - windless and relatively warm temperatures for being at almost 25,000 feet.

On the easy summit ridge

Last bit below the top

Mark, Freddie and I could see the entire Karakoram range - not a cloud in the sky!

Mark Richey, me, and Freddie Wilkinson

A Japanese expedition had attempted Sasser Kangri II in 1985 and claimed to have reached what they called the "West Summit".  But when we reached the top of the true summit we could look to the north along the ridge from that side and see that the "West Summit" was clearly below us and is not really a summit at all.   The place the Japanese expedition reached was just a point on the shoulder of the mountain and not a separate lower summit of the peak.  Because many climbers thought Sasser Kangri II had been climbed, the mountain probably did not receive the attention it might have gotten if no one had claimed the summit.  This misinformation worked in our favor though because it was only after carefully researching this issue before our attempt in 2009 that Mark and I came to the conclusion the Japanese "West Summit" was probably not the top and the peak was still unclimbed.  When we arrived on top we could clearly see that our theory was correct and that we just made the first ascent.

The "West Summit" to the north is clearly below us

In the distance are the Gasherbrums, Broad Peak, and K2 across the border in Pakistan

After spending maybe an hour on top we headed down.  After some down climbing to the summit ridge we made several rappels to our high camp where we spend a second night.

Beginning the descent

Our plan was to rappel the wall all the way to the glacier tomorrow.  It would be over 30 rappels which would take all day.  That evening the sinus infection that I had been fighting for a month seemed to move down into my chest and I had a very difficult night sitting up in the tent dozing and coughing up phlegm into the snow outside the door.  I felt like tomorrow might be a long exhausting day to get myself down.

Making several rappels back to our last bivouac



Sasser Kangri II Day 3

On the morning of day 3 we were already established on the major ramp system that angled up to the right side of the wall above. 

Climbing up the "Ramp"

Tsok Kangri - the peak we climbed about a month ago is below us now

We made quick progress up the ramp to where it steepened in a headwall.  At this point we needed to cut left through a feature we called the "Escape Hatch" onto some easier snow slopes and lower angled mixed climbing to the summit ridge.

Near the top of the ramp where we cut left through the "Escape Hatch"

The Escape Hatch was probably the most technical pitch of the route.

Freddie leading up through the "Escape Hatch"

Above the Escape Hatch we looked for our final bivy from where we could climb to the summit tomorrow.  Since we could leave everything except water, food, and some clothing behind in our high camp, we would be able to move faster on summit day.  At around 7000 meters we carved a tent platform out of some snow and ice under an overhang and settled into a bivy that was a bit roomier than last night.  I was not feeling that healthy and still weak from the sinus infection I couldn't seem to get rid of.  While Mark and Freddie built the tent platform I busied myself with the hanging stove to melt snow to fill water bottles and dry out all my clothing that had gotten soaked from a leaking water bottle in my pack.

In the tent at high camp

The weather was still perfect and we didn't see any signs of that changing.  We were only 500 meters from the top so things were looking good for tomorrow.