April 27, 2007

"Maybe true. Maybe not true. Better you believe." — Sherpa saying

Today was quite the day! We aoke at 3:30am for tea and breakfast, after what for me was a restless night. We were off for the summit of Island peak at 4:30 am and it was immediately clear the summit was going to be a busy place. Unfortunately unlike Mera where only a short section of fixed line was needed, several long pitches of fixed lines were needed to be set up, hence Kaji and I couldn't make a mad dash for the summit. It also became evident early on that this was going to be a much more technical ascent then Mera. We had to cross couple of precarious snowbridges and even climb down into a shallow crevasse (the crevasse of course was plugged, who knows how deep it really was). The real difficulties began with a 300ft ice ramp that had to be climbed to gain the summit ridge. As no fixed ropes were in place so Kaji and the guides from a British group had to fix them. This took quite a while and during the fixing and Italian group showed up and butted in front of our 2 groups to use the lines, that was really not cool! Ascending these lines was extremely fatiguing and still left you a couple of hundred feet shy of the summit. I thinik I incured a repetitive use strain in my left knee ascending this slope, which likely played a role in my mishap on the descent (~80% of accidents happen on the way down). After the ramp more fixed lines ascended to the summit over a rather narrow and harrowing ridge, in places no wider then the width of both feet, this was less stressful than on the descent. The summit, while providing great views was exceedingly small so I only waited to for Kaji and descended. Just below the summit on a narrow section of ridge I mis-stepped and fell off the ridge (the snow I stepped on had given way beneath my weight). I fell perhaps 20 ft before I was able to arrest my fall in some soft snow. I was likely not in any real danger as I secured to the fixed line, but you never know what shape the rope is in. After that incident I decided to rappel the rest of the way to the bottom of the ice ramp, and other than the sore knee it went smoothly. I think Kaji was more afraid then I was, I didnt have time to be afraid during the episode.
So I managed to scale 2 6000m peaks and a 5800m pass, and now if I can only spot a yeti I will consider this expedition 100% successful. And now we begin the trek back to civilization, back to Lukla, starting with Dingboche.