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?

Explore Ladakh (without leaving your sofa)

For this blog post, I thought I'd use some cool satellite images to make it more interesting and to show you the region we'll be exploring during the expedition.

If you're reading this thinking "what expedition?", take a look at this post: What's this blog all about?

We'll be approaching our base camp from Leh, along the Pensi La. Type 'Pensi La' (La means 'pass' in Tibetan) into Google Earth or Bing Maps and do some exploring of your own from the comfort of your sofa! (A great excuse for procrastination for those of you revising for exams..).

I love maps. Stuff like this makes me very happy indeed. (So does this, but that's not really relevant..)

The overall region we'll be in is Ladakh - as you can see, this region is in the sticky-outy bit (v. technical term) at the top of India, with Pakistan close by to the west, China to the North and the Tibetan Plateau to the east. We'll fly from Delhi to Leh, where we'll spend a few days acclimatising and sourcing food and equipment to take with us to base camp.

We’ll then approach base camp via the Pensi La (the Pensi Pass), which is nicknamed the ‘Gateway to Zanskar’. It connects the Suru valley (NW of Zanskar) to the Zanskar valley region, which is where we'll be exploring. The region is a high altitude desert, with many glaciers and un-summited peaks.

You can see the Durung Drun glacier flowing NNE from the bottom/centre of the image. Hopefully we’ll spend some time on this glacier (and others) measuring melt rates at different points on the glacier, its retreat rate, and take some ice cores. It’ll require technical skill negotiating our way onto and over the glaciers, so by the end of the expedition the whole team will be pretty proficient at ice axe and crampon use (hopefully we won't still be tripping over our own feet every couple of steps and ripping holes in our waterproof trousers!). The TL team will do some recces whilst the rest of the team makes their way up to Basecamp and acclimatises. We’ll explore the area for dangerous places to avoid, good tracks to follow and safe places to cross rivers. We’ll also have a good chance of seeing some of the varied fauna of the Zanskar, before scaring everything away with our presence before the other fires reach them!

The exact final location of our Basecamp is still undecided, as it'll depend on the ground when we arrive and what looks best. Our ~5 day expeditions out from Basecamp will explore the surrounding region - and these will be decided properly once we're out in country.

It's all getting very real and our flights are drawing ever closer... only 11 weeks, 5 exams, 1 half-marathon and a canoe trip across Scotland to go!

More training, more new people, more excitement

I spent last weekend up in the Lake District with the other Trainee Leaders (TLs) and the Leaders, so the people in charge of the science projects, basecamp and the adventure side of things. It was awesome meeting more people and finding out about their experience with expeditions and mountainous environments - lots of inspirational role models.

We stayed at the YMCA National Centre on the western shore of Lake Windermere - a beautiful place for a morning run with everyone, next to the mirror flat lake and surrounded by the rugged Lake District hills.

One of my favourite parts of the weekend was learning about Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), High Altitude Cerebral Oedema (HACE) and High Altitude Pulmonary Oedema (HAPE) (don’t ask me why the acronym ends with an E not an O..). It was slightly depressing learning how I might have a headache for the six weeks I’ll be in India, and terrifying learning how quickly HACE and HAPE can develop, but the medical team who will be part of the team seem really knowledgeable on the subject and will take great care of us all.

It’s important for all of us to know the symptoms and treatments of altitude related illnesses, as it could happen to anyone in the expedition team and we all need to know how to react. We learnt about the Lake Louise scale, which allows a score to be assigned to a person depending on their symptoms, and helps with the monitoring of people’s state. We can all expect some tiredness, headaches and poor sleep, but it’s important to know when people are deteriorating.

We’ll be acclimatising slowly on the way up into the mountains, taking time for rest days and factoring in going slower if anyone is struggling. We’ll be flying from Heathrow to Delhi to Leh, where we (the advanced party; the TLs and some of the Leaders) will then spend time sorting supplies of food, fuel etc. for basecamp and acclimatising - Leh is already pretty high, at 3,524m! ‘High altitude’ is classed as anything above 2,500m, and your breathing get shorter and deeper from only 1,500m, so we’ll definitely be able to feel it.

Our outdoor classroom - where we learnt about ice axes, crampons,
security on steep ground and roping up for glaciers

We also spoke a lot about hygiene and how we’re going to stop illness from happening and spreading. Some of the techniques we’ll be using at basecamp and during our short expeditions are very clever, such as the system we’ll be using for getting clean drinking water. Although the water we’ll be drinking is from glacial meltwater and will look crystal clear and clean, it’ll actually be full of tiny particles of rocks and even tinier bacteria. We’ll be using bags to filter the water through, before then using chlorine tablets, then adding a tiny sliver of vitamin C tablet to make it taste better.

Me, roped up, pretending I'm on a glacier and surrounded by ice
(lots of imagination required..)

We spent some time out on the hill, talking through crampons, ice axes, security on steep ground and how to rope up together when on a glacier. It was very useful revision of the material I covered on my Mountain Leader Training week last summer, and it was great to see how to teach each topic well. As a TL, I might need to teach or remind some of the Young Explorers on the expedition how to use the equipment and stay safe.

Loving life outdoors with Imi, one of the other TLs

One of the highlights of the weekend was drinking wine and playing an old board game - it involved climbing K2 via different routes and answering ridiculous mountaineering and climbing questions as a team. We found out a lot about each other, such as who would cut the rope when their friend was dangling off it, who would happily let their climbing partner pee out the tent door, and who cheats at board games..

I’ve now been set the task of planning a short session on the ‘leave no trace’ principle - it’s something I’m interested in and a big advocate for, so it should be a fun session with lots of discussion. That’ll be at the next training session - the TLs have an expedition first aid week soon, followed straight after by a weekend with the YEs. I can’t wait to meet everyone!