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| The
Philosopher's Stone |
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A 3am start to jug
300m in the dark is not an ideal way to start a day's
cragging, but then this wasn't an ordinary day and it
certainly wasn't an ordinary crag.
The 1000m-plus Wall of Dykes towers directly above
the 3000m basecamp in Kyrgyzstan's Ak Su valley and
thus far the only route up its monstrous West Face was
Paul Pritchard and Dave Green's The Great Game. Their
E5 line is one of the harder free routes in the valley
and weaves deviously up the left side of the wall, the
exact line of which we were unable to make out from
our poor photocopied info.
We were trying the wall further right, following a
striking why-has-no-one-ever-done-this-before feature
- a compelling white streak weaving like an enchanted
pathway to the very apex of the barrier roof. We'd fixed
all our spare rope and after a protracted struggle we'd
tamed the lower wall. Now it was time for commitment,
for once we launched out over the roofs turning back
would no longer be an option.
The
fledgling independent states of Central Asia
have been carved up on ethnic grounds from ex-Soviet
states to leave a tangled patchwork of bordering nations,
each with its own government, political strategy and
economic prosperity. We knew there would be borders
to cross - the map showed the road passing in and out
of Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan, through towns
orphaned from their parent nation, like if Betws-y-Coed
was part of France and Llanberis part of Germany - so
we had expected a few difficulties. But when we were
met at Bishkek International Airport by the British
Consul with tales of terrorists and hostages in the
very mountains to which we were heading we began to
appreciate just what kind of a mess we had flown right
into.
The Consul told us the terrorists
belonged to the "Islamic Rebirth Party of Uzbekistan"
and advised against continuing. Our tour company suggested
another climbing area, and our attempts at gaining more
detailed information about the situation were invariably
met with sharp intakes of breath. Our ITMC tour company
had charged a great deal and arranged very little so
we bid a delicate farewell and spent a frustrating couple
of days assembling a local crew of guides, interpreters,
drivers and negotiators prepared to try and get us there,
before heading off into the minefield of political uncertainty.
We were six climbers in the
minibus; Anne and I, a trio of Plas y Brenin instructors
(Jon, Mark and an already lassitude-ridden Chris quietly
dying in the back) and Pete "fakyeh" Scott - our kiwi
court jester. Besides ourselves and a large mountain
of gear there was young Ahad (our super-negotiator and
translator), everyone's friend Aibek (who would be staying
up in the valley with us), our driver ("the ox"), a
driver's mate, and Des, whose role no-one could quite
work out but who seemed to complain rather a lot. Shielded
by such an entourage we hoped that no border would bar
our way.
Sure enough Ahad came up with
the goods, sweet-talking the heavily armed guards at
eight border controls in a variety of local languages,
amazingly having to part with nothing more than a few
cigarettes, a lot of handshakes and a huge amount of
being nice. We learned a lot from the soldiers; the
hostages (which included the local Mayor) had now been
released in return for a large wodge of cash, many of
the rebels were still hiding in the hills nearby, and
the Uzbek and Kyrgyz armies were bombing the area in
the hope of flushing them out. Nevertheless we seemed
to be getting through, sweetened by giving military
officers rides between border posts.
We had
already climbed half of the pitch above on the last
rope-fixing day, looking for a line through the great
roofs before lowering to the stance and abbing our five
fixed lines. But at six in the morning and with a sack
full of bivi supplies the initial E3 overhang now felt
depressingly hard.
Above this the tiered roofs loomed
impenetrably, guarding access to the vast expanse of
slabs and walls above. The only option was an awkward
traverse down leftwards to cross the roof at its narrowest
point by gymnastic monkeying on a spike. Abandoning
a quadcam to backrope an equally rucksack-laden Anne
on the tricky descent was the quickest option and soon
Anne appeared over the roof, pausing to recover from
the unfamiliar early morning exertion.
Unfortunately by this time I was
suspended cross-legged from my hanging stance, shouting
impatiently at Anne to f---ing hurry up please as I
couldn't hold the contents of my bottom where they were
for much longer. She duly obliged and in return had
the unenviable privilege of sharing my hanging belay
while I dropped my thankfully releasable legloops and
exploded a torrent of pungent brown liquid streaming
and steaming down the wall beneath our feet. "You look
white as a sheet", she commented reassuringly, but I'm
sure I felt much worse than I looked.
Time to move on, I thought, already
queasy with the stench, so I grabbed enough gear and
raced away in pursuit of an odour-free belay ledge.
Sure enough I found a ledge, but what I hadn't bargained
for here in the middle of first ascent nowhere was finding
an in situ belay bolt.
Arriving
at the roadhead in Vorukh after kipping by the roadside
we were faced with a much thornier negotiating task.
The more we argued about the price of the beaten-up
old truck to take us 25k up the rough valley road the
higher the price became. Finally Chris could take no
more and very nearly came to blows with the shark in
charge. This dangerous tactic surprisingly worked and
pretty soon we were all being thrown around the back
of the open truck as the driver negotiated the clearly
undriveable track up the steep sided valley, getting
off on occasion to put planks under the wheels for traction
on the loose rubble hillside.
With morbid fascination we peered
over the edge to see where many sections of the track
had given up and crashed down hundreds of metres into
the raging torrent below. I swear I've felt far safer
doing E5 solos on sight. The remaining eight hour uphill
hike into Ak Su was easy by comparison, but by the time
we arrived we felt like we'd come through a trauma.
It had taken us a full week to get there and, like Sassenach
weekend lemmings who fling themselves at Scottish winter
regardless of conditions, we were determined to make
it worth the effort.
Ian Parnell was there to meet
us when we arrived, he and Zippy having been in the
area for a few weeks already ticking off new lines.
He gave us a quick tour of the existing routes and the
staggering potential while we struggled to keep our
enthusiasm in check. We couldn't help but drool at the
sight of clean rock towers rising like enormous monoliths
either side of the valley, so close you felt like you
could reach out and touch them. The nearest bit of rock
to the camp - the 550m Pamir Pyramid - Ian told us had
only three routes on it. 'That's just silly', we thought,
and Anne and I determined to help rectify this absurdity
the following day by way of warm-up and acclimatisation.
Swinging leads on pitch after
pitch of clean, solid rock we began to realise quite
how big the walls hereabouts really were. Everything
was foreshortened and we found ourselves having to double
every guestimate we made of time or distance. We followed
disappearing cracklines in vast compact slabs, with
runout friction moves providing cruxes to numerous E3
and E4 pitches. With rain having stopped play, we returned
to finish The Hostage and discovered laybacks on the
headwall like we'd never seen before, culminating in
a nervy but staggeringly good sixty metre E5 that raced
up a blind, inescapable and largely unprotected flake.
I'd never seen such immaculate rock and compelling lines
outside of Yosemite, and we descended more excited than
ever to get on something even bigger and even nastier.
The news back at camp was that
there were now 450 fundamentalist Islamic mercenaries
('Taliban' rebels mainly from Afghanistan and Chechnya)
in the hills around the town of Batken and that they
were now holding four Japanese hostages. As this was
on our exit route we weren't sure how or even if we
would be able to leave, but we felt relieved to be up
out of harm's way for now.
We quickly
realised the belay bolt must have been on Paul and Dave's
route. Convinced they must have gone back up left from
here, I looked up at our binocular-scoped disappearing
flakeline that led steeply and committingly up rightwards.
I wasn't convinced I was up to the task, especially
at seven in the morning during a bout of diarrhoea and
with a rucksack-shaped albatross on my back, so I left
the sack on the ledge and set off up the pitch hoping
to clip only one of our 8.3mm twin ropes and leave the
other free for hauling.
Fifteen metres later the flake
melted into blank granite, another bolt appeared, and
it painfully dawned on me that we'd stumbled onto Paul
and Dave's crux pitch without the option of working
the impossible-looking moves, redpointing and retreating
back down fixed lines. And despite the ridiculously
early hour we were very conscious that many hundreds
of metres of wall lay ahead of us, so time was precious.
Even reaching to clip the bolt
was an ordeal, achieved only by creative use of three
interleaved wires and a skyhook. The ensuing traverse
- albeit now well protected - required all the friction,
technique and confidence I could muster, and I ended
up laying one on for the finishing holds rather than
trust to marginal friction for a moment longer. By now
I was shaking from the exertion, from my medical condition
and from the sheer excitement of our situation. Relieved
to see climbable rock above, I pulled my sack up on
the spare rope and started belaying, privately relieved
when Anne found the traverse hard too.
Some hours later it seemed like
we'd been laybacking for days. The hoped-for easing
we'd expected hadn't materialised and pitch after pitch
looked easy and felt desperate. Laybacking with a sack
on is hard at the best of times but as someone had apparently
stolen all the footholds it was seriously wearing us
out. The whole wall was peppered with 5-10m layback
flakes and it became quite a challenge to stay on flakes
that connected; we often had to plan our line four or
five flakes ahead to avoid blank sections which we quickly
learned could be very blank indeed. I managed to spare
Anne a repetition of earlier unpleasantness by coinciding
my next anal urgency with her lead, and as we progressed
ever upward the rock horizon above seemed if anything
to grow further away.
We'd
hoped to be able to fix all our ropes on the
wall in one day, but a combination of hard climbing
and poor weather meant it ended up taking three. Just
getting to the start of the hard climbing was an ordeal
in itself, my cunning plan to save rucksack weight on
the approach pitches by trailing rather than carrying
most of the ropes having badly backfired when I got
60m up and realised I now had the full weight of all
the ropes plus 300m of rope drag! But all our travails
were soon forgotten when we arrived at the base of the
clean white streak and gazed up at the magnificent sheet
of rock above. The surface undulated like waves on the
ocean, its recesses suggesting just enough potential
to give our voyage some hope of success.
A few introductory flakes provided
gear and holds but these were never to last for long.
Mantling onto a small ledge after only fifteen metres
the gear was already well below, as were most of the
holds, and the options above for either looked minimal.
I reluctantly conceded the need for a bolt and began
hammering, but it took almost two hours to place and
left me completely knackered. The white streak that
made the line so compelling was apparently made of a
quartz-filled granite of near diamond-like hardness.
A good night's sleep and I was
psyched. Thin moves led passed the bolt and up to an
equalised poor offset wire and skyhook. With unwarranted
confidence I crept up the slab above, linking blind
ripples and occasional edges with absorbing friction
moves, devoid of pro until another hook some fifteen
metres higher. 'This ought to do until I get into that
corner over there', I thought, and tiptoed nervously
across a 6a traverse to the sanctuary of a knifeblade
crack.
When I got there the blade went
in only half an inch, but by then I had little option
but to tie it off and continue. Besides, I could see
more gear potential above, which turned out to be two
brass offset micros hammered into flared placements,
an aluminium copperhead and another hook. 'Almost enough
for a belay', I thought, but deciding not to risk a
factor two I brought Anne up only as far as the bolt
and continued leading. The crux arrived five metres
higher, was very thin and wasn't at all reversible.
With nothing but more blind ripples to aim for a leap
of faith found me committed to a further twenty five
metres of unprotected climbing, thankfully easing to
ledges and a welcome peg crack just as the 60m ropes
came taut.
Anne followed with a huge smile
on her face, giggling all the while with enjoyment at
the sheer quality of the climbing - it's not every day
you get to share the first ascent of the finest single
pitch either of you have ever done. Still only a fraction
of the way up the white streak, we spent another day
creating two more superb long E6 and E5 pitches before
we ran out of rope to fix. Whatever difficulties remained
in the 500m or so ahead would now have to wait for 'the
big push', which at this rate seemed to have all the
chances of success of a WWI campaign.
Back at camp Ian had returned
from a mammoth and impressive solo frenzy and the politics
were closing in. Horsemen had come up from the nearest
village with news of more hostages: the Japanese were
now accompanied by twelve Kyrgyz military personnel,
including a General, and the rebel numbers were now
said to be over 600. Worst of all it was feared they
may decide to escape through the mountains, and the
local authorities had ordered all local hillspeople
to go down to the towns for safety. 'Best get our route
done quickly', we thought, as we may not be able to
stay much longer. Thus our preparations for the big
push included stashing money, passports and valuables
behind nearby rocks, in case some Taliban came through
in our absence and raided the camp.
The
rain arrived in the afternoon, but at this altitude
it was falling as hail. Sadly it was also my lead, and
I climbed a cold and urgent pitch brushing hailstones
off the holds before being able to pull on them. Thankfully
the storm was also short-lived, and when the clouds
swept away the sun revealed only one pitch to go before
the easier summit ridge. As usual one pitch turned into
two, but even then we still weren't there. Three pitches
of simulclimbing later we arrived, the ridge led interminably
off into the distance and a bigger and badder storm
was brewing. The race was on, and our tired limbs speed-climbed
up Idwal Slabs terrain for pitch after pitch before
finally admitting defeat in the gathering thunderous
gloom and stopping at a well-appointed bivi ledge.
It hailed again and I shivered
all night, sleeping barely a wink, and rising in the
morning freezing, starving and miserable. Anne had a
good night's sleep. It turned out we'd been half an
easy pitch from the summit moraine, so topping out was
easy enough, but the allegedly three-hour blocky scree
descent took us six in our exhausted and undernourished
state. Two abseils became five as we could now barely
lift our sacks let alone scramble with them, and we
returned to camp to be greeted by a ready-prepared meal
(so there is a God, and His name is Mark) and the biggest
storm yet which, were it to have arrived a day earlier,
would have left us truly buggered.
The decision had been made to leave
while we still had the option of horses to help with
our gear, and we weren't about to argue since we weren't
in a fit state to climb again for days anyway, so the
following day we retrieved the fixed lines and we packed
up camp. On the descent the truck driver tried hard
to kill us all by overdoing the Colin MacRae act, eventually
having to slow down when he smashed a rear wheel into
a track-side boulder and exploded the tyre. But thankfully
Ahad had got our message to arrive early with the minibus
and was there to guide us back through the troubles.
Fifteen times we were stopped, searched and interrogated
in one day. The guards were now on full alert, hiding
behind concrete shelters with fingers on triggers, which
was exciting at first but became tiresome after a whole
day. Once again our fantastic support team got us through.
Keen to go back? Too right we are,
there are unclimbed lines enough to sustain us through
many a weary winter's training session, but it would
be nice if we could plan another trip with some certainty
of actually getting there.
This article, by John Aran, first
appeared in the March 2000 issue of Climber magazine.
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