MacCoffee Tien Shan Expedition 2005

We are in Basecamp now. Flew in by helicopter yesterday which was spectacular. Weather was good until we reach basecamp. It became very foggy soon after. Basecamp is at 3850m and some of us have a bit of altitude sickness. Probably due to the rapid ascent to this attitude. We should acclimatise in a day or two, for now, lots of liquids and asprins. Otherwise, all are fine. Today’s itinery includes breakfast, acclimatising and going for recce hikes to see what potential peaks we can climb.
Dave

Pop the champagne!!
The team climbed our first peak today! Weather was ‘iffy’ the last 2 days. Tien Shan’s weather is warm at night and that causes soft snow which makes it harder to walk on. Today’s weather was perfect, all team members summitted a 4,374m peak, which is not even on the map. It is part of a snowy ridge next to the glacier. We have yet to figure out what to call this peak, but for now we need hot teas, soup and some eats.

Everyone’s in good health but tired after today’s achivement. We are planning to rest tomorrow. We might do a recce for another peak which we might attempt the day after, weather permitting
Dave

Today was a good day of rest. We did some recce. We hope that the weather will hold up. The plan for tomorrow is an early start, at dawn. We will attempt a 4,500m peak. A beautiful mountain. This is definitely a virgin peak. Everyone is feeling good. Breathing fresh air and getting hungry. : )
Dave

Today, Roz, Beng Cheong and I summited another virgin peak. Our altimeter reads 4,589m at the summit. We began at 2:30 am in the dark of the night. The first few hours were very cold and dark. Even with our recce and planning yesterday, this was charting new ground. The new ice crunch beneath our boots. As we suck the cold air, we kept moving one step at a time. Out headlights kept us focused on the ice and rock, and kept the dark away. Shani opted out of this climb today because it had some steep sections she was not comfortable with. It was tough going, the climb and the uncertainty of the untrodden terrain kept our adrenaline pumping. The dawn opens to a murky morning. It was then that we could see the path that we had took, a challenging route. The summit was in sight. The sun appeared much later, giving us a bit of blue skies and bright light. the last bit before the summit was a bit steep but manageable. The views at the heavily corniced summit is as always, wonderful. Didnt go to the very lip in case it might snap off! It started to snow later in the day on the last leg of our return to basecamp. We reached basecamp at about 3:30pm. It was an exhausting day. We are tired but elated that we have submitted another virgin peak.

Satellite communications from the glacier is not too stable, perhaps because we are surrounded by high mountains. We had problems calling out.

Upon returning to basecamp, we have been melting snow and making loads of tea. We are all feeling good, tired and thirsty but other than that OK. Dinner is heating up and soon we will be celebrating with some noodles and jerky (which does taste nice when you soak them in the soup)… For now, food.
: ) Dave

It is good to rest after yesterday’s 20 hour day. We climbed up PEAK 2 through gullies and deep snow. Often, we did not know whether the snow underneath hides the big crevice that could mean a plunge into a deep and dark place… The final ascent to the peak was spectacular, at parts, it was a 55 deg steep slope. Almost at the top, we had to crawl up a 10m overhang. It was excruciating but also very challenging. PEAK 2 did not give up her pride easily. Shani decided not to climb yesterday, taking a bit more rest after our first peak.

It will be an early night for us. We will be waking up at 2:30am again and will attempt our 3rd virgin peak. This mountain is about 4,600 – 4,700m. The peak is capped with snow and ice. Two potential routes are possible. One is a long hike up ice and glaciers, and the second is via rock gullies and scrambling across some boulders. We will take the gully route.

It is raining and snowing right now. I cooked an egg honey omelette for the team. Got to do the necessary to keep spirits up!! We didn’t carry eggs here, just the dry powder stuff that changes into mushy orange stuff when you add water to it. Tastes almost like egg…
: ) Dave

At 2:30AM the four of us attempted the 3rd peak but turned back after about 2 hours. There are 2 ways up this mountain, the fast but more risky or the longer and seemingly safer route. We tried the faster way today but came to an area with lots of loose rocks. The loose scree and ice made this very difficult for all of us, for me, it is even more of a challenge. I cannot imaging wobbling and scrambling up the mountain on this terrain. The risk is a fall down the side of the mountain, definitely not fun. We agreed that it’s way too dangerous and decided to turn back.

We will be trying the same mountain again tomorrow, this time using a the longer route. I estimate that it will take us at least 14 hrs to climb and return safely. We will begin at about 2AM again. Waking up at dawn to climb is a norm for climbing mountains. The mountains here are amazing beautiful. Even in murky weather, the mountains still peek at us. As if they are saying, come climb… higher ground. New paths… In sunny weather and at dusk, the colors are amazing. And camping on a glacier, it is never quiet. The soft creaks of the glacier is always present.

We are also trying to get off the glacier a day earlier. We have confirmed our heli rides out on the 1st.
By the way, we are cooking rice and tuna tonight. At this altitude, it does take a long time for rice to cook. At the moment we are all sitting around staring at the rice cooking. It does seem to take a long time…
: ) dave

We made it up Peak 3 today. This is perhaps the highest mountain in this area. It is not named and there are no height markers of this peak. It took the four of us, 8 hours of serious climbing to reach the summit of over 4,700 m. We began at 2:30AM again. The path was lit only by our headlamps and the few stars above us. The route up was a long climb with many interesting slopes. As we approach the summit, we climbed over a small crest… thinking that we had reached the summit. Only to realise that there was a even higher hump further away. This is what we face on an unclimbed mountain. We do not even have knowledge of what lies ahead and we just had to make do as we climb. The summit is an overhanging cornice. The highest spot is on an icy edge that falls off down the side of the mountain, We stood a few meters away from the edge. Not a good idea for us to fall off the mountain if the snow and ice decides to move. The climb back was equally challenging. Even then, we managed to catch some sights. The mountains surrounds us, the icy glacier below looking much like a quiet river.

We are all back safely and will be tucking in some dinner soon. It will be a rest day tomorrow and maybe we will start thinking for some names… for the peaks. Peaks 2 and 3 have been very tiring and many stretches during the climb were very exposed. All these puts a lot of physical and mental stress on us. We are utterly tired after today’s climb but the feeling is good. We have arranged for our helicopter pickup and am waiting for confirmation for our move down to a lower base but this is some days yet. For now it’s rest and food.
: ) dave

We slept for almost 12 hours after yesterday’s climb. I think it was something Beng Cheong did to our dinner… hrumph!! Our plans for today depends on whether we will be flying out tomorrow. We are waiting for a message via sat-coms sms to confirm flight. If there is no flight due to some reason or other, then Beng Cheong and Roz will likely go climb a mountain. From basecamp, Shani and me will try and take some shots of them climbing. If the helicopter comes tomorrow, then we will be going out. We had spent some time today on deciding on the names of the peaks…

Looking back, the last 8 days has been challenging. We virtually did 3 marathons over 8 days, lost a bit of weight, ate loads of mushy stuff, drank tea and shared many bad jokes. Not bad eh… : )
for now, Dave

We took off on the helicopter at 10AM. The heli came in a bit early, we had a fit and a bit of a rush stuffing our gear into bags before trooping into the heli. The flight to Karkara was great, we had a good look at the mountains that we spent the last few days climbing. The sun was up and the views were great.

Civilisation… the first thing I did was to have two baths. The water runneth over rather murky. It was 8 days of grime and sweat. We just had some eats, hot teas and more eats. Everyone is happy. An interesting thing we heard, horse sausage is in season now. We will go check this out at the market tomorrow. Hope no one is pulling our leg.. Thanks for tuning in : ) Dave