Sulman Badshah
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FIRST ASCENT OF LINK SAR WEST - FEVER PITCH
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August 2014. By midnight it was snowing hard again. Hiding our naked faces deep inside our bags we tried to ignore it and hope it was just a passing snow flurry, the following morning would prove otherwise. Perched on top of a rounded sloping boulder at 6500m on Link Sar’s unclimbed North West Face, myself and Kevin Mahoney were no longer having fun. We’d climbed until we both bonked and then climbed some more, but whilst topping out of the face lay tantalisingly close, we had nothing left to give. We opted to sit out the night, too tired and spent to cook or drink, nothing left to say. This was only the beginning though.
The previous two days on the face had been rough, “Blue Collar work” as Kevin called it. Hounded by bad weather and terrible conditions en route, we were both exhausted and now an open bivy had left us fighting through the night to keep our sleeping bags dry from the falling snow. The usual infectious smile had gone from Kevin’s face but he still had the glimmer in his eyes and that was all we needed. As we headed off onto a dangerously loaded face, with the snow still driving around us, it only took a few steps to realise how depleted we both were- steep black ice covered in powder, heavy packs ripping at ours shoulders, the altitude, the hunger and raging thirst. I’d never seen grown men brought to their knees like this before, but the MOG endures.
We traversed under stomach wrenching cornices, Patagonian snow formations on a Himalayan scale. We slowed to a pitiful crawl, fuelling off each other’s presence and encouragement. Kevin tried to lead us off the face and on to the ridge above but there was nothing. Just a knife edge ridge of honeycomb ice and double edged cornices that stretched far in to the whiteout.
A brief clearing in the weather for sunset before finding our bivy boulder for the night, K7 in the background
Our bivy boulder the morning after
Not ideal starting the day with boots full of snow
Heavy spindrift
Trying to find a break in the cornices above in the storm
The storm raged on. We seemed so close to getting out of this hellish scenario, but our misjudged salvation of the ridge line above was an unspoken crush to an already very low morale. We weren’t even clutching at straws anymore. We’d gambled that topping out from the face would take us to easier and safer ground where we could get out of this weather and put the tent up but we were wrong Kevin rapped back down to me, the glimmer in his eyes fading “The bad news is that the last two hours I spent up there was fucking useless, a sheer vertical drop on either side, no where for miles to bivy. The good news is if we have it in us to get over there through a break in that cornice” he pointed with his eyes high up in to the whiteout “that will bring us to another ridge crest and hopefully somewhere to stop. But I’m fucking exhausted right now”. The snow kept falling, and the Disney like cornices above kept getting heavier one snow flake at a time.
I didn’t look up at the overhanging snow towers above me, I just stared dead ahead and climbed. The rope came tight and I was stuck, spindrift dumping down my neck, as I clung on to the steep vertical choss around me, I waited for Kevin to start moving together. The last bit of decent pro some 20 meters beneath me; the heinous rope drag was making already insecure moves feel like they might be my last ones. I tunnelled my way through the ridge- so knife edge it was the only way to get a purchase on it and as I straddled the crest I felt safe for the first time in days. Safe being a relative term, things were bleak.
“One more pitch” I prayed. Kevin took over and climbed up round the side of the huge cornice. I could hear him moving about on top of it, I could feel the snow straining. Muffled shouts occasionally drifted my way, but communication was impossible, the wind snatched his words away over towards K7 so I sat a cheval in silence wondering if we had any more cards to play, weighing up the single screw belay that was all I could get in the base of the huge cornice overhead. Then a crack and shudder- Kevin had broken through. Time slowed, “This is it” I thought. As the rope came tight I realised I was still straddling the ridge, the fracture line was beyond the anchor point. A close call in a long series of them. If Kevin couldn’t see a spot to settle in around the corner then we would have to resign ourselves to rapping the whole North Face in a storm to get out- but it was almost unthinkable at this stage. We needed to stop. Desperate, we hacked our way in to the side of the cornice that Kevin had broken through. We burrowed as deep as we dared through the fragile honeycomb snow and ice and finally sat in the tent; no words needed saying. Shelter was the ultimate luxury.
Kevin showing the strain after getting our tent up
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August 2014. By midnight it was snowing hard again. Hiding our naked faces deep inside our bags we tried to ignore it and hope it was just a passing snow flurry, the following morning would prove otherwise. Perched on top of a rounded sloping boulder at 6500m on Link Sar’s unclimbed North West Face, myself and Kevin Mahoney were no longer having fun. We’d climbed until we both bonked and then climbed some more, but whilst topping out of the face lay tantalisingly close, we had nothing left to give. We opted to sit out the night, too tired and spent to cook or drink, nothing left to say. This was only the beginning though.
The previous two days on the face had been rough, “Blue Collar work” as Kevin called it. Hounded by bad weather and terrible conditions en route, we were both exhausted and now an open bivy had left us fighting through the night to keep our sleeping bags dry from the falling snow. The usual infectious smile had gone from Kevin’s face but he still had the glimmer in his eyes and that was all we needed. As we headed off onto a dangerously loaded face, with the snow still driving around us, it only took a few steps to realise how depleted we both were- steep black ice covered in powder, heavy packs ripping at ours shoulders, the altitude, the hunger and raging thirst. I’d never seen grown men brought to their knees like this before, but the MOG endures.
We traversed under stomach wrenching cornices, Patagonian snow formations on a Himalayan scale. We slowed to a pitiful crawl, fuelling off each other’s presence and encouragement. Kevin tried to lead us off the face and on to the ridge above but there was nothing. Just a knife edge ridge of honeycomb ice and double edged cornices that stretched far in to the whiteout.
A brief clearing in the weather for sunset before finding our bivy boulder for the night, K7 in the background
Our bivy boulder the morning after
Not ideal starting the day with boots full of snow
Heavy spindrift
Trying to find a break in the cornices above in the storm
The storm raged on. We seemed so close to getting out of this hellish scenario, but our misjudged salvation of the ridge line above was an unspoken crush to an already very low morale. We weren’t even clutching at straws anymore. We’d gambled that topping out from the face would take us to easier and safer ground where we could get out of this weather and put the tent up but we were wrong Kevin rapped back down to me, the glimmer in his eyes fading “The bad news is that the last two hours I spent up there was fucking useless, a sheer vertical drop on either side, no where for miles to bivy. The good news is if we have it in us to get over there through a break in that cornice” he pointed with his eyes high up in to the whiteout “that will bring us to another ridge crest and hopefully somewhere to stop. But I’m fucking exhausted right now”. The snow kept falling, and the Disney like cornices above kept getting heavier one snow flake at a time.
I didn’t look up at the overhanging snow towers above me, I just stared dead ahead and climbed. The rope came tight and I was stuck, spindrift dumping down my neck, as I clung on to the steep vertical choss around me, I waited for Kevin to start moving together. The last bit of decent pro some 20 meters beneath me; the heinous rope drag was making already insecure moves feel like they might be my last ones. I tunnelled my way through the ridge- so knife edge it was the only way to get a purchase on it and as I straddled the crest I felt safe for the first time in days. Safe being a relative term, things were bleak.
“One more pitch” I prayed. Kevin took over and climbed up round the side of the huge cornice. I could hear him moving about on top of it, I could feel the snow straining. Muffled shouts occasionally drifted my way, but communication was impossible, the wind snatched his words away over towards K7 so I sat a cheval in silence wondering if we had any more cards to play, weighing up the single screw belay that was all I could get in the base of the huge cornice overhead. Then a crack and shudder- Kevin had broken through. Time slowed, “This is it” I thought. As the rope came tight I realised I was still straddling the ridge, the fracture line was beyond the anchor point. A close call in a long series of them. If Kevin couldn’t see a spot to settle in around the corner then we would have to resign ourselves to rapping the whole North Face in a storm to get out- but it was almost unthinkable at this stage. We needed to stop. Desperate, we hacked our way in to the side of the cornice that Kevin had broken through. We burrowed as deep as we dared through the fragile honeycomb snow and ice and finally sat in the tent; no words needed saying. Shelter was the ultimate luxury.
Kevin showing the strain after getting our tent up