Who would have thought that you could save yourself a lot of time, effort, pain and money by just borrowing some mountaineering gear and taking a photo in front of a white sheet? Such is what my experience of life at 16,500+ feet was like. I'm not sure if it was the hardest thing I've ever done -- Ironman Lake Placid holds a special place in my heart for that -- but it's DEFINITELY the hardest thing I've never trained for. Also, while Ironman was a long 10 hours and 40 minutes, this was a long, very hard 4 days.
Sunday started with a 6:30 am meeting to get in the cars and head up. We pulled into Stepansminda (formerly known as the town of Kazbegi) by 11, got a cup of tea then drove up to the Holy Trinity Church to start our climb. (Some folks start at the bottom and hike up to the church, but that's an extra 1-1.5 hours of wear & tear we didn't feel necessary.)
So, we kick off at about 11:40 at 2400m. We hike up through some alpine meadows and have an interesting time crossing a run off stream into a camping area used by many along the ways. (3145m, About 4 hours to get here.) That was already a pretty solid hike, but no kids, we're not done yet. We start heading up the moraine of a glacier, walk up onto an icy slope and once we're up on the glacier, start trekking across it. The hike across the glacier was work, but not that bad despite the light drizzle we had for an hour or so. But after 7 hours of hauling a 45 lb pack up 1300m (4200 ft!), the last 100m up a ridgeline to the old meterological station was pure misery. It has been a long time since I've had to set goals 10 ft ahead of me. Ow that hurt.
Monday morning arrived and we all woke up with the worse hangovers we've ever had. Air at 3800m (12,400 ft) is in short supply and it makes for some unpleasant sleeping. But, you shove some food and fluids into you and eventually you feel better and we went for a hike up to a small chapel at 4100m. Apparently one of our guides had a friend who was married in this chapel. After having our fun on the steep snow where we didn't really cover much on the safety side of things, we returned to the meterological station to rest up and get ready for an early morning wake up.
At 2:30am Tuesday morning (technically) we wake up to grab some food before our long day. At this point I should point out to you that the short walk to the toilet still winds me. I tried to shove 2 packets of oatmeal into me, but 1.5 was about as much as I could muster. Armed with some clif bars and 3 bottles of Powerbar Endurance (my favorite version of Gatorade) we headed out. After an hour of hard hiking in the dark over snow and rock fields, we took a break. I did some math and realized that assuming we weren't going to refill bottles, I had a budget of about 1/4 of a liter per hour for our trip. Don't worry I wouldn't have time to actually drink that much.
We moved and we moved fast. As the sun came up we found ourselves along a rock wall with a bunch of watermelon sized rocks on the ground. We skirted them as much as we could, but as we walked by I knew we should have had helmets on. We continued pass a crevasse field and up to a high plateau in a snow field at about 4200m. Some teams apparently only go this far and set up a high camp here. But we continue on up the snow fields.
At about 4500m, Ron decided that he wasn't keeping the pace and that he would be better off on a second rope team. I disagreed with him at the time, but in hindsight seeing what I went through, it was the right call. So we pushed on. Now it's 3 guys who smoke a pack a day apiece dragging me up this hill. (How is that even POSSIBLE?) Somehow I'm the guy who's dragging in the rear, but we catch up to this other rope team of about 10. They're moving a lot slower than us (they left 90 minutes earlier than us) and the weather has started to deteriorate. Visibility was about 50 ft or so and their rope team appeared to be floundering around -- either due to the guide not knowing where to go, or the team not moving very well.
We eventually pass them and Levan found the line to the top without too much apparent difficulty. (There is no way even with the best maps I could have found this. Good job, Levan.) The last 100m of elevation to go though are steep snow. We're roped up, and the snow was fairly deep so stopping a fall is probably possible, but it's a tough up hill battle. After 20 minutes of battling our way up the slope we find ourselves on the top of Mt. Kazbek with nothing but a scene of cloud surrounding us. 6 hours and 30 minutes. A VERY fast ascent. Most estimates are for 7-9 hours from the meterological station unless you're an experienced climber from the region.
Now we have to go down that slope that was sketchy to get up. I'll save the details, but IMO it could have been handled much safer than we did. If it was ice instead of snow (which is pretty common) this would have been a very different story. After we got off the steep snow ramp and back to the more open slopes, we continue to move quickly. By this point, my lack of calories, probably mixing with some altitude issues, have me at my limit and I'm literally being pulled off the mountain. They're not dragging me on purpose per se, but we're roped in and I'm struggling to keep up. The more the pace continued above my tempo, the more I got pulled off balance.
As we continued through the crevasse field and the bowling alley of rocks it was even more important that I keep up. I recognized this and pushed as hard as I could and we did clear the field fairly smoothly. As we cleared the field and walked up onto the moraine again, we caught up to the other rope team we passed earlier. At this point we were able to unrope and proceed at our own pace. It took 30 minutes for Vidar and our two guides to get back to the meterological station. I took over an hour. Total time up and down: 11.5 hours.
After arriving back at our "room", I pushed a bottle of Endurox into me. (Read: liquid calories) Solid foods hadn't appealed to me in over 12 hours and they certainly didn't now. I took a nap and when I woke up felt a little better. I managed to force down some Mac & Cheese, then read for a while before going back to bed for the night.
Wednesday morning, around 7 am we woke up to start heading home. It had rained for several hours the night before and the weather was still looking bad on the summit. Any teams planning on an attempt today would have to wait. I still couldn't hold down any solid foods so some more Endurox and down the hill we go at 8:20am.
It took us 3.5 hours to go from the campsite, across the glacier to the meterological station. It took us 1 hour to descend. After a short break at the campsite, we found that the rains from the night before had made our creek into a raging torrent and we could no longer find a path across. Our guide managed to get across, rigged a rope and we all got across. However everyone got wet up to their knees in doing so. Crossing the river took us an hour. But then it was an easy hour and a half down the mountain to the church. 12:00 on Wednesday we were at the church headed home.
That's the details on the trip. I'll try to add some more entries on the personalities side a bit later. Overall it was an awesome trip. Beautiful scenery and I really got a chance to appreciate how quickly the mountains are changing. The massive glaciers are dwarfed by the size of the mountain. However the glaciers carve huge trenches through the mountains and these trenches lead to more and more erosion. Even though these forces are acting on a geologic time scale it was very easy to feel that it was happening very fast and right now.
Absolutely worth it. Extremely challenging. But absolutely worth it.
1 comment:
Scoooooore! Nice job dude - I'm jealous!!
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