Ascending Mount Shyok

One of the reasons I went to India was to stand on top of a mountain and see the view you think of when you hear the word 'Himalayas' - snow capped, triangular peaks, as far as the eye can see, some of them disappearing into the clouds, all of them majestic and breathtaking. Well now I've done it, and I want to do it again, and again, and again, because it was everything I expected it to be and more.

Team Shyok at the summit - Photo by Cameron Montgomery

The expedition was divided up into phases one to four, with each fire doing something different for each one, and phase three being for 'special tours', where everyone could choose between peak ascents, ice field tours, climbing camps, etc. For tour three, most of the TLs decided that they'd like to do something together; we settled on an ascent of a 5,797m peak down the valley from base camp, that we named Mount Shyok.

Our ascent was to be over three days, with a day to reach our high bivvy spot, a day to summit the peak and return to the same bivvy spot, and a day to return to base camp, feeling elated having summited the awesome mountain. The team was to consist of me, Becky, Steph, Rob, Karl, Calum, Monty, Mark, Imi, Cameron and Matt, with Jenny in charge.

We left base camp on the morning of the 10th of August, walking down the Pensi La past a stupa we'd become quite familiar with after trekking past so much, before turning off to the left and starting our ascent. It really was uphill, and felt almost vertical at times, zigzagging past groups of yaks and avoiding slippery parts of scree, struggling to breathe most of the time. The terrain morphed from rolling grassy slopes to broken scree, then into giant unstable slabs and boulders, changing every time we'd got used to walking, climbing and clambering over it. By 6pm we'd made it to our bivvy spot - a flattish area about 4,900m high, sheltered by a large crag, which when climbed over gave way to the most incredible view over base camp and up along the Drang Drung glacier. As it grew dark we cooked our dinner on our temperamental stoves and bedded down in preparation for our ascent the next morning.

Hugging rocks just above our bivvy spot
Photo by Calum Matthews

Throughout the night I woke to a new view of the stars and moon overhead as they moved across the sky, always feeling warm and cosy snuggled up to the others in my crazily warm sleeping bag. I couldn't stop thinking about what awaited us in the morning, and was both stupidly excited and nervous about what it would be like. I hadn't been above 4,700m before that, and knew that I'd feel the altitude as we climbed higher, but I was ready to push myself hard to get there.

We awoke at 5:30am to find our sleeping bags frozen to our bivvy bags and the sun rising over the mountains ahead of us to the east. After a quick flapjack breakfast we packed our bags as light as possible, leaving our bivvy bags weighted with rocks to dry in the sun, and set off towards the ridge we were to follow to the summit.

On the ascent, hating the scree
Photo by Calum Matthews

I could feel the air getting thinner, making it harder to breathe and causing my muscles to burn like fire as we pushed ourselves on. Even taking two breaths per step became difficult at points, and I found myself staring at the ground ahead and forgetting to take in the beauty of our surroundings. We could see the summit we were aiming for most of the time, and it seemed to taunt us by looking so close but making us slog for nine hours before we could stand atop its snow. 

The morning stretched on and the afternoon began before we attached our crampons, grasped our ice axes and began to follow the edge of the snowline to the summit, avoiding precipitous drops and menacing hidden cornice. We stuck together as a team and slowly plodded up the snow towards the summit, over crests and hummocks before the final lump.

Team Shyok crazily happy at the summit
Photo by Calum Matthews

As we moved up the final uphill stretch and onto the flat summit, it felt incredible. We were jumping for joy, congratulating each other on our massive achievement and taking photo after photo and holding pose after pose. The whole team was elated - we'd managed to reach the summit, and for all we knew we could have been the first people ever to get up there. We hadn't seen a single cairn or path on the way up, and we certainly hadn't seen footprints at the top, so maybe we were!

Our descent flew by, and was much faster than our ascent. The snow fields could be pretty much slid down (apart from the deep patches where we fell in up to our knees and couldn't get out from laughing so much), and our route back avoided scrambling over a lot of scree, instead sticking to the snow. We reached our bivvy spot - having been able to see our brightly coloured bags for most of the day - just as the sun was setting, and enjoyed the dramatically changing colours of the sky dancing behind the mountains as we walked into the camp. We ate dinner in the dark before bedding down again, feeling completely knackered but very pleased with ourselves.

Team Shyok on the descent down the ridgeline
Photo by Calum Matthews

The morning after the ascent we woke to find everything frozen again, and had a relaxed morning enjoying the sunrise and the gorgeous view. We even fitted in a spot of yoga in the four hours we were up there, doing sun salutations and poses, before Calum's glute workout, which in hindsight really wasn't necessary but was fun all the same.

One of the main aims of the BES expedition was to conduct science in a remote environment, collecting data for various scientific projects. One project was looking at the effects of pre-conditioning on altitude acclimatisation. A few of us on the expedition had volunteered for the study, which involved being 'cuffed' (a blood pressure cuff was put around our arm and inflated to a certain pressure for a certain amount of time, to build up toxins in our arm and trick our bodies into acclimatising quicker) before each ascent in altitude, and then tested to see how our bodies had reacted. This resulted in us having to do press-ups as fast as possible for 30 seconds, as well as doing multiple spirometry tests, all at high altitude and whilst knackered. Hopefully some interesting results will come out of this study, which should help with our understanding of altitude medicine.

We descended from our bivvy spot to base camp feeling completely parched, as our water source had been the snow but we hadn't managed to melt very much. Reaching the stream by the Pensi La was a happy moment for all of us, and the 30 minute wait for our puritabs to work felt like hours. We got back to base camp in time for lunch, so we made chapattis on the Shyok stove (which we'd named Tanzin), and then deep fried nuggets of dough, when the mix didn't go so well..

Ascending Mount Shyok was definitely one of the highlights of the expedition for me - what an awesome feeling of camaraderie and achievement. Everest next?