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25 May A bit about the background; Then, in January, Veikka Gustafsson called and the plan changed. Now here is a famous guy (at least in Finland and in mountaineering circles around the world) who has already climbed 11 of the world's 14 +8000, peaks. He has only three left to climb. He said he was going to attempt to climb all three this summer, in a row (!), starting with Gasherbrum 2 and why dont I come along? Would be fun he said to once bring a friend along... I asked how long it takes and he said "oh only about 7 weeks...". Now for a somebody who professionally climbs mountains I realize that 7 weeks is just a drop in the ocean - but for a "normal working person it is not that simple to take such a long time off. And even worse, being away from the family for that long! Well, to make a long story short, in the end I agreed to come along...I have always wanted to climb a big mountain before I turn 40 in any case...Is this part of the "I am still young and want to prove it 40's complex"...? So I signed up with Amical Alpin, one of the world's biggest expedition organizers. Veikka will be tagging along on the side with his two Japanese climbing partners for Gasherbrum 2 and after that they are going out to G1 and Broad Peak. The team with Amical consists of 4 Germans, 7 Austrians and one Finn... It looks like I am in for a 7 week course in German as well - and those of you who know me are aware that my 1 year of studying German in school means I am not exactly fluent in it... On the other hand perhaps this is my chance! Ever since this decision was made I have been training a lot to prepare for this physically very demanding task. This means running (with and without a pack), biking, hiking, lifting weights etc - been trying to do something every day. Lately the runs have turned into longer 10-15km runs and the hikes have involved a 20-25 kg backpack. I am also in the lucky position that for the moment we live in Nairobi, which is at 1800m altitude. This means the hills around here range from 2300m all the way to Mt Kenya's 5199m. Now that there isn't more than about 10 days left before flying through Dubai and Doha to Islamabad means that time is running out. Therefore I only have a couple of higher hikes left, Mt Longonot at 2700m and the Aberdares national park at anything up to 4000m. After that I hope to have an small edge when it comes to acclimatizing for the expedition. The main reason why I want to go on this expedition is that this is somethng I have wanted to do for a long time already and want to know and experience the feeling of being out there in what people say is one of the most beautiful areas in the world. Naturally it will be a very rough ride. I have really tried to prepare myself and decided that if the expedition is not successful (ie we dont make it to the summit) for my part it will definitely not be because I was not in shape! Not that I will personally consider it unsuccessful if we do not make it to the summit. I still think it will be such a fantastic adventure that reaching the summit (and making it down) is almost only a secondary objective - the first objective being enjoying the ride! There are naturally other factors as well but I can't affect them so directly - for instance will my stomach take the Karakoram diet, will my feet survive the rough approach march - and of course as well the weather! 28 May Only eight days left now before I leave Nairobi for Dubai -> Doha -> Islamabad. I will meet the other expedition members at the airport in Doha. Am really looking forward to getting to know everybody! Some time ago (ie months) I ordered a few vhs tapes about gasherbrum 2 from www.chesslerbooks.com. They have all kinds of books, maps, tapes, dvd's - both collectibles and new ones. Both tapes have finally arrived here in Nairobi after weeks and weeks of being on the way through who_knows_what_route. I think I start to have a bit better picture of what's in store...or perhaps I am just a bit blue eyed... For instance on the other film they talk about how G2 is said to be the "easiest of the 8000'ers" and how whoever coined that phrase probably had never been on an expedition there :-) Perhaps the biggest surprise in watching the tapes was that the icefall that lies between the base camp and camp one is a big one! And you don't see that on any pictures... About 12 km long....so it means that if there has been a tough winter it will take easily a week to find a route through the maze and make it to Camp one. On the other hand there will apparently be a number of expeditions there this summer so all the hard work of route finding and setting will be shared. And then as an added bonus we have Veikka and his Japanese climbing partner :-) Oh I also finally received the two Amical Alpin duffel bags that were sent by DHL from Germany to Nairobi. Sounds simple doesn't it. Just send them with DHL and then wait. However this being Africa it wasn't that straightforward. After waiting for 5 weeks finally I went to the main post office, saw 9 different people, sat with a lady in a small booth with tons and tons of paper (= the archive as they still do not have a single computer) and went through every single receipt for all packages that had arrived in Kenya in May, eventually located the right receipt, got 7 different stamps on that receipt after which I had to give it back and then pay 7 Euros for the joy... but hey got the bags! Just so you know that this wasn't an isolated case (more like business as usual), another time a package was sent through FedEx to our home address but naturally it was never delivered here even though that was the address on the label. Instead it was for some peculiar reason delivered to the office. And the office address was NOT on the address label. So that required some detective work as well.. Well, as they say in the movie Blood Diamond, TIA - This Is Africa! Better not to wonder too much about stuff like that, it's life here! Thanks Maka for finishing the website! It looks great :-)) 31 May 1 June Lots of expeditions to the Karakoram this summer - I know of at least of an Italian, a Spanish, an Austrian, two Polish, an international, a Russian and a ski/snowboarding expedition to G2, in addition to ours.... Out of these some will also attempt Gasherbrum 1, Gasherbrum 3 and even Broad Peak at the same time... Seems that nowadays one peak isn't enough and everything has to be a "first" (although I know that two Germans have already made a ski descent so at least that one is out :-)... In any case it Base Camp will be a busy place. Some interesting links: 3 June Two days left! Today I made the first attempt at gatherg all the gear together in one place. The good thing is that I dont need to worry about any common gear such as tents and food etc as that is provided by the expedition. Therefore I only need to worry about myself :-) In any case, it all amounts to quite a big load. In the picture you can see how much it is. Included are two sleeping bags and a down suit - those are already packed into compression bags. Which was in itself quite an effort... So all of this I now need to squeeze into two duffel bags and a backpack! Will let you know if I succeed :-) 5 June This is it then! I didn't sleep very much last night. Probably more because of the excitement than because of the 1 liter of ice cream I ate :-) These last hours are just flying by, fortunately everything is pretty much packed and ready to go, some fine tuning left. I have about 33 kilos in two large duffel bags plus a bit in my pack. In the evening it will be interesting to see if I will be able to check in everything without problems. However usually weight is not an issue on Emirates as they allow 60kg per person at least from Dubai to Nairobi - hopefully they allow the same the other way. Qatar airlines - which I take from Dubai through Doha and Islamabad is hopefully the same.... So, departure is at midnight tonight then I should be arriving in Dubai around 530. The connecting flight is then not until 19 in the evening so the already very familiar airport will become even more familiar.. To leave you with a quote from the ever so famous (at least in Finland) Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykanen when asked what he thought about the movie about himself: Well the fact is I'm off in a few hours. Will try to update these pages as often as I can. Thanks for all the support and encouragement! It certainly feels good to have that in one's pocket! 6 June Well I have now spent the past 10 hours getting bored and a sore rear end here at the airport lounge in Dubai. The luggage was fortunately checked in all the way to Islamabad so now I only need to hope it makes it there... Not much to do right now except think about what lies ahead. I guess many people think it is just the summit that matters on an expedition like this - ok for sure for some it may be "summit or nothing" because of sponsorships and such. But there is so much else that leads up to your possible half or full hour on the summit, starting from the decision to go. You've got the preparation, planning, training, gear preparation and research etc. And you havent even left yet! 7 June 8 June We also spent some time walking around the markets in Rawalpindi where you can buy everything from mobile phones to towels to sheep stomachs. The weather was extremely hot, around 40 degrees, so the fact that we had an airconditioned bus helped a bit. But the highlight was when we by Veikkas suggestion through peer pressure made a quick stop at a goverment owned hotel called Flashmans. There, in the back, through a small hatch the size of a 26-inch flatscreen tv, we were able to buy a case of local Murree's classic lager! Yes it was warm, but after an hour in the hotel room mini fridge while we finished off the excellent dinner it tasted wonderful...:-) Tomorrow's wake up call is at 4, followed by breakfast, loading of the bus and then....finally...we will get the show on the road called the Karakorum highway! Kippis! 9 June We are now about 200km South of Chilas where we will spend the night on this air cooled bus journey to Skardu. The rest of today's drive could take anything from 3 hours and up, depending on the traffic and in what shape the road is. So far the road has been very good and the traffic has not been too bad - overall a very interesting journey so far with none of the blood chilling narrow hairpin turn overtakings that this road is so famous for... But perhaps it is still to come? People have also been very friendly and happily wave back and smile when all our 15 cameras come out and point at them like a battleship preparing to shoot a broadside. We are still only at 700 meters but unless we start climbing soon there must be an awfully long tunnel somewhere! 9 June But I digress... The second half of the day was a bit more exciting - or tense is a better word. The reason is that in the morning we were driving on the left side of the river while the afternoon went by on the right hand side. It may not make a lot of sense yet but when you consider that the driver sits on the right side of the bus it means he no longer sees exactly where the 100-300m drop starts and whether the wheels are still on the road or hovering over the abyss... Instead you now have full visibility of the mighty Indus from a very exciting vantage point. In some instances in my opinion even a bit too exciting... With us on the bus we also had our LO (liaison officer) who is supposed to keep an eye on us and make sure we are not dangerous foreign spies. And of course also to help us with formatilies :-) Will tell you more about him tomorrow. Now it's time to see if our cooling trick worked! Tomorrow we continue from Chilas for some 9 more long bus-hours to Skardu... 10 June There were some scary and very very close overtakings where you could have perhaps fit the Tuesday newspaper between the bus and the other vehicle if it was a thin edition. The skyhigh overhanging rock dropping straight down into the foaming and wild Indus certainly also made sure the Karakoram highway keeps its reputation as it is. Today this only lasted 10 hours but even so it was a relief to arrive to Skardu. We also have another climber from the "famous" list with us on this expedition. His name is Mr Hirotaga - or Hiro -and is the most famous Japanese climber today with "only" 9 of the 14 +8000m peaks under his climbing harness. He had a pretty bad accident at G2 last year - he broke his back - but he is back to give it another try. And after that comes Broad peak. Veikka and he have climbed together before so you can imagine that the combine experience makes for some entertaining dinner stories. Oh the LO... Usually expeditions hope for an experienced guy who will therefore often be useful. Our guy has no experience, smokes like steam train, has never been anywhere and totally out of shape. So our bets are he wont even make it to base camp. Tomorrow we will do some last second shopping, weight loads etc and after that it will finally be time really get going! Until then. Hälsningar E,K,L o S!
Greetings from this 7 week intensive German course in Pakistan!
As many of us do not have visas that are valid long enough, we went to the local tour operator office this morning. There we filled in all kinds of applications and forms and then together marched over to the local big shot, the Deputy Commissioner Skardu. He said no problem it will be arranged and sent us away...what an anticlimax... 15 June, 3450m Hi I finally now got a chance to send an email so here is what has been happening the last few days. So we left Islamabad and travelled for two days by buis through this absolutely amazing canyon cut through the mountains by the mighty river Indus. There will be some material on Hiros web pages, for instance a clip of the trip from Islamabad to Skardu, at http://weblog.hochi.co.jp/takeuchi For the Finns Veikka also sends his daily reports and they can be heard on Yle radio at around noon every day!! After doing the final shopping and getting visa extension etc we it was time for a jeep ride on the 12th. We had in total about 15 jeeps, small, open (!) and super durable Toyota Landcruisers. This was the dustiest, bumpiest, most amazing and at the same time scariest drive I have ever done or been in. These Landcruisers will just go through almost anything – and that is what we did. Up and down over ridges and piles of rock, following this narrow “road” that I wouldn’t even calla road as it was more of a trail barely the width of one landcruiser. In some places as we wound our way up and down the steep walls of the canyon the curves were so steep that we had to revferse and forward a few times before being able to turn. So you can guess that this made for an extremely exciting ride! Then there was of course the dust as well. It was all over and we were wearing bandannas in front of our mouths to protect from the worst. Now of course last night I had bribed the head guide by means of a bottle of beer that our jeep would be first so we didn’t get the worst of the dust ;-)) At one point as we took a quick natural break we saw a cloud of dust ahead. As we approached we realixed there had just been a small rockfall that had effectively closed the road. This meant offloading all the 15 jeeps, walking up the steep sandy and rocky hillside over the rockfall and descending on the other side.
In the end we finally arrived in the evening in Hungal instead of Askole as the road had been cut in another place as well. Hungal was a small camp site where we immediately set up camp and took a look at the 220 porters that were going to be part of this expedition! Yes, 220. So quite a big and colourful group – not to mention dirty…most of them dressed in not much more than rags and flipflops.
On the 13th we heade off for Jola, about 15 km away. The morning trek went fine but as the sun got higher the temperature rose and the ground warmed up – it became close to 40 degrees. So the last two hours of the roughly 6 hour hike was pretty tough. I paired up with HIro and Veikka, and HIros climbing buddy Kasi and we arrived about 2 hours before the others. Kasi is a filmmaker and will document Hiros climbing adventure. I wil tell you more about him a bit later.
Jola was a surprisingly neat place with toilet booths and shower booths. The shower booths are really just booths without any running water. Instead there is running water coming down in cascades from the mountainsides and which is then being collected into big containers. The containers then have pipes that feed the water down to the camp. SO you need to get this ice cold water into a bucket, go into the shower booth and with a small cup pour the water over you. Very very refreshing!! But you feel fantastic afterwards. This is also how we wash our shirts, socks etc every day, with cold water and soap. Yesterday was the second trekking day. We went from Jola to here in Paiju, which is at 3450m. Here we will stay for an extra day for acclimatization and to heel the blisters. The trek was also quite hard but as we were going fast we got to camp already by mid day – meaning we were on the road for about 6 hours. But it was pretty hard going – broken rock, sand, boulders, steep and narrow trails and of course the heat. On the right hand side was the roar of the Indus, every now and then you could hear huge boulders being rolled around in the river with a dull “clunk”.
This camp is also quite civilized with the same sort of toilet and shower facilities as in Jola. Apparently this wasn’t always the case so you can imagine what the hillsides looked like when you had several expeditions here at the same time… By now most of us have had some sort of stomach problems already but for most it seems to be over at least for now (myself included). Tomorrow we are off to Urdukas, at about 4000m, which wil be quite a steep trek. Then we go from there to Gore2 and one more camp before reaching Base Camp. SO in about a week we should finally be able to start doing what we came here to do! I hope to be able to connect again in a few days, so until then! Och an en gang halsningar hem och till alla bekanta! 16 June, 4050m This morning we had a very early wake up call, at 4 am. After the wake up call each tent “couple” packs their own gear into stuff bags and compression sacks and stuffs those into the duffel bags. Then comes the disassembly of the tent, followed by breakfast. Breakfast has so far consisted of hot water / tea/ coffee, some chapatti bread, and what seems to be very common is corn flakes with hot water and milk powder..mmmm delicious! So after this we took off towards the Baltoro glacier which we started walking up about one hour after leaving, so around 6 am. The following hours were quite tough as we had to ascend over 500m over very very rough terrain. There was small rocks, big rocks, moraine, ice – everything. The beginning went fine as the weather was cloudy but as the clouds disappeared it got very hot. In the end, 7 rough hours after leaving, we made it here to Urdukas which sits in a fantastic place, a bit up the hillside with green all around. On the other side of the huge broken up and stone and rock covered Baltoro we can see the very famous Trango tower, the highest rock wall in the world. Next to it sits the huge Baltoro Cathedral, a fantastic rock formation in itself.
Some people have been a bit sick again but I hope it will be over soon. Tomorrow we are going to Gore 2, which should be about 3-4 hours away. After that comes one more camp before we get to Base Camp. I am not sure whether I will be able to send any update before that but stay tuned! All in all everything is well, apart from a few blisters and a missing toenail. But hey, what do we need toenails for in any case?. Stay tuned! Hälsningar hem till flickorna! June 19, 5025m
What we have been carrying is around 10-15 kilos in a good backpack. What I have had is a gore tex jacket, a down or syntheitc jacket, some extra underwear, a hat, 2-3 liters of water, suncreen etc. So basicaly stuff that might be needed dring the day. Then once we get to camp we wait for the prters to arrive and get more of our things such as sleeping bags etc from the big duffel bags.
This morning we got on the road for the last leg of the approach. The weather was a bit strange as it snowed every now and then and then the sun would come out and burn us so there was a constant change of clothes... But the views were just abolsutely out of this world. We followed the middle moraine of the glaicer that on both sides fellaway to small rivers on the other side of which the white snowy broken p glacier went on like sails on a stormy sea. You just need to see it to believe it.
So, we are now at about 5000m and have set up Base Camp. We finally get to sleep in our own tent so it is no longer necessary to listen to your tent buddy snoring. We have also set up the dining tent, shower tent and toilet tent and tomorrow we will do soe more fine tuning of those. The BC sits so that we can easily see the whole Gasherbrm 1 but not G2 yet. Tomorrow we will take a rest day and acclimatize as the air here already is clearly thinner than what we are used to.
All in all, finally here, and in another day or so the real climbing can begin! I hope to be able to send yo updates a bit more regurarly now, so stay tuned!! 20 June
The highlight of the day was probably taking a shower! We have a small shower booth which is basically nothing more than a frame with some canvas around. Then you get a 5 liter bag with hot water from the kitchen, get into the shoer booth and - voila! As we havent had a chance to shower in many days it was truly a nice experience. As I got back to the big dome tent where the others were sitting I realized how bad I must have smelled as well :-) 21 June
So with this experience and hopefully now being a bit wiser we have decided to try and push our way to Camp 1 tomorrow. It will be very tough as there is an altitude difference of about 900-1000m. The plan is to leave around 2 in the morning to ensre we are high enough when the sun gets up and starts warming things up. We have also agreed with the other expeditions to share the route setting on the mountain. I am a bit concerned though as everybody seem to be prepared to leave at the same time tomorrow so I need to talk to our leader and see if we should perhaps change the time. 22 June
Then came the long, seemingly neverending march down. At this point the weather was warmer so the earlier firm snow had turned soft.It really became a physical struggle to get all the way down, the strugle took bout 2 hours at which point we had been on the move for almost 11 hours. I can honestly say I was so exhausted that I could barely get undressed and crawl into the tent.
Tomorrow is a rest day so not much exciting happening then. |
