Alpine Style!

So, here is a bit more regarding my recent climbs with Steve House and Marko Prezelj on both Naisa/Nasir Brak and K7 West.

Naisa Brak, the perfect rock pyramid. The SW ridge is the left skyline, Tasty Talking takes the ridge in the foreground, while the orignial British route (and descent route) takes the right skyline.

We climbed the striking, SW ridge as a day climb from our base camp nearby. We followed a prominent chimney system on the far West side of the South face for about 300 meters to its intersection with the SW ridge. The climbing in the chimney was mostly easy with the occasional 4th and easy 5th class step. At the ridge, we properly roped up and climbed to the summit of the pyramid in 14 pitches. The climbing on the ridge was surprisingly good and the quality of the rock just kept getting better the higher we got. Initially, the the climbing was moderate with difficulty being in the 5.7-5.9 range. By the time we reached the steeper, upper section of the ridge (pitches 10-14) the climbing got harder and more exposed. Also, the crack systems were much more incipient so the route finding was difficult, though the rock was quite featured so extremely climbable. There was some 10+/11- sections on two of the pitches and plenty of 30 to 50 foot run outs on 5.9. It was an extremely nice rock climb and the rock was much better than expected for a virgin line. It was much more run out than the Tasty Talking route on the adjacent SE ridge, but not as sustained in difficulty.

K7 massif showing all three summits and the various bastions of rock that create the fortress like architecture of this complex mountain structure. Our line of ascent took the thin couloir that leads down and right from the summit then disappears behind one of the rock buttresses in the foreground.

We reached the summit of this previously unclimbed peak on September 3rd, our third day in ascent. The climb was comprised of difficulties in rock, ice and snow, each of which was neatly separated by each day of our ascent. The K7 massif is a large fortress like thing that flanked by several, large granite buttresses on all sides. In between many of these buttresses are large, active seracs looming over the lower reaches of the mountain. So, there are relatively few obvious, safe lines on any of the summits. The East/main summit is probably the most accessible, while the middle is the least, guarded on all sides by huge seracs. The West summit has a south face split by a slender, elegant couloir leading to very near the summit. The couloir begins in a large hanging, inner basin that is quite difficult to see from just about any vantage point in the surrounding area. The bottom of this hanging valley ends abruptly in yet another large, active serac, thereby denying easy access.
We found a large dihedral on the rock buttress to the left of this serac that appeared to end in a ledge system that might gain entry to the inner basin. We went out for a reconnaissance climb of this feature and found (once again) surprisingly good rock climbing and that it did indeed give access to the inner basin. So, this would be where we would start the route. When starting the climb in earnest, we had to climb this six pitch section in eight pitches, most of which had to be climbed twice by one of us in order to get our packs up it. The climbing was difficult in places, up to 11-, and rock shoes were necessary, hence the leader would often go without a pack and the pack contained our boots, crampons, and all the other ice equipment, camping supplies, food, etc. It was a good bit of work, but we made it up the rock and into the basin by late afternoon. We found an easy bivuac site on a flat area in the snow, just above the lower serac at about 5,200 m.
The following day we climbed into and up the long couloir splitting the right side of the South face. After soloing for 300 meters, we roped up and climbed the rest of it in about 12 pitches. We found some good ice, some rotten ice and some mixed climbing. The difficulty was up to WI5 with some mixed sections. There was one particularly stunning feature of 80º ice that was about one foot wide. At the top of the couloir, at about 6,000 meters, we moved onto the ridge to the left and, after much debate, decided to hack a bivy ledge into the 30º ice. It was the widest and flattest place we could find. Since we were a party of three, we had a bigger sized tent and chopping the ledge to accommodate it was no short affair.
The morning of our third day started out cloudy, but so had just about every day before that. We had hoped for better weather for our summit attempt and even brought along extra supplies so we could wait out a day or two if necessary. We decided to go anyway, as the weather had not been terrible and we could always come back down. We started off with a long traverse left towards the middle of the upper face. This brought us to several pitches of interesting, but not too hard alpine ice. The altitude started to be a factor here as we were now above 6,000 meters. We moved much slower. We took the path of least resistance up the face to its intersection with the upper part of what would be a South ridge. We tried to follow this ridge on up, but large snow mushrooms forced us to traverse under them to the West. This bit of climbing around the snow mushrooms prooved to be some of the more difficult, time consuming and dangerous climbing of the entire route. The underside of the mushrooms consisted of 60º-80º snow that sometimes would not support your weight. A 60 meter traverse under the biggest of them took us a few hours but put us right under the final, 50º summit slopes, which we easily climbed to the top. Or, did we?
When we arrived at the summit, we all high fived, celebrated, took many photos and expressed our joy in the climb. Though it was a complete whiteout and we could see nothing, it was nonetheless sensational to finally be on top after such a great climb. That is until it cleared for a brief moment and we could see that in addition to the other beautiful summits surrounding us was the ACTUAL summit of K7 West, about 20-30 meters higher and just a little beyond. It was like someone farted in the elevator. The clouds came in again, this time it started snowing, and we beat feet on over to the real summit. Marko was in front and arrived first. Upon getting on top, which is nothing more than a large, overhanging cornice, he noticed a long fracture in the snow propagate from just beyond where he was. He stopped right there, just short of the absolute highest point fearing breaking off the cornice and told Steve and I not to get any closer. It was like being inside a ping pong ball and difficult to tell which direction the cornice lie on: right or left. The summit pinched down to a small triangle of snow a the top. After a much more brief summit celebration, we turned around and began the process of retracing our steps down.
We had to simply reverse the sketchy snow traverse so this took some time. After that, we were able to rappel via V-threads down the ice face back to our bivy which we reached around 9:00 pm after 15 hours on the go. We spent the next day descending the way we came up and did another 14 rappels down the ice couloir and then 6 down the rock dihedral.

“It is the large, siege-mentality expedition that is an aberration, a sixteen-cylinder shark-finned gas-guzzler that should be relegated to the mountaineering junk pile where it so richly deserves to rust.”

R.G. Morse, The Naked Mountain

K2’s mighty West Face is one of the greatest big mountain walls in the world and ripe for a beautiful alpine style ascent. This past summer a large, 18-person team of Russians converged upon Concordia intent on forcing a direct line up the steepest part of the face by any means necessary. Like they have done before on Jannu, they sieged the mountain, fixing ropes from base camp to nearly the summit, establishing seven camps enroute! Like Maestri and many others, they have left the refuse of their daftness behind to spite their detractors and litter the face; a not-so-subtle “fuck you!” to the others to follow like a dog pissing on the fire hydrant.

This expedition marks yet another unfortunate regression in mountain sport at the hands of Russians due to their insistence on adhering to such stillborn styles and attitudes. They call this alpinism? I call it what it is: disgusting, lame and weak! There is no reason for what amounts to the fleecing and raping of the ambitions of future (or, perhaps even the current) generations of inspired alpinists. The” Russian Way” is an agent of death to modern alpinism.

By late July they had breached the main difficulties of the wall, fixing ropes to over 8,000 meters. “The bastion has been climbed!” They would stay there as long as needed to push the route up the remaining 500 meters to the top. There would be little left to uncertainty. Like a machine, the 18-member climbing team would continue to slowly grind and manufacture their way up the face. This is much more reminiscent of a military exercise, not true alpinism. True alpinism is art; it is beauty, things that are quite the opposite of this folly. Hubris, narcissism, vanity and especially solipsism are their true inspiration. Three weeks later, the final 500 meters to K2’s summit succumbed to their greedy hands.

Since these Russians (though certainly not all) clearly were unable to climb K2’s West Face by fair means this summer, then they should have waited until they were able to do so. And, if it is (more likely) just beyond them, then they should have gone elsewhere and tried something that was within their means. Instead, they chose to bring the mountain down to their own pathetic level. Certainly, they should have left it for others who do have the skills, courage and vision to do so. It can be done.

While I am sure my ranting might easily be dismissed as just the jealous rants of a rival climber, I harbor no illusions that I might have been able to do the face justice myself. Still, I would love to have tried and would have humbly accepted defeat had it proved beyond me.

It is a true tragedy that this face has been violated in such a manner. It is forever changed both physically and psychologically. If there is any saving grace it is that in their efforts to force the route up the straightest possible line up the face, they left the obvious, much more elegant “crescent” line to the left untouched. Shame on these men for desecrating yet another great one in the name of the “Russian Way!” What these gentlemen really lack is imagination.