It took a while to have the desire to write up the recap of part two of our climb of Spantik.
Expeditions are interesting; sometimes I finish and the next day I am researching new climbs or reading hair-raising epics from other climbers, and other times I know I need a break and am disinterested in climbing for weeks or months. This time was less of the first and more of the second - basically all of the second…
Not to say that Spantik, and Pakistan as a whole, was any kind of disappointment, failure, disaster, or something less than I had hoped and planned for - I was just tired. I really don’t know how pros maintain the drive, stamina, and overall desire to continually go after big objectives, one after the other. I just felt exhausted, and as I thought about it more, I realized that James and I had been devoting massive amounts of time and energy to alpine climbing for the last 6 months:
February: 10 days, in and around Ouray, ice climbing
April: Two weeks in the PNW where we climbed Dragontail (bailed on that) and climbed/skied Rainier
May: Two and a half weeks in Alaska where we climbed Huntington
July & August: 6 weeks in Pakistan
Everything in between was focused around climbing: trip planning, gear, logistics, endless emails to Pakistan to organize the expedition, working with brands for funding, deliverables, etc.
In addition, I was working full time. I took off one week for Huntington and most of the time we were in Pakistan, but the rest of the time I was working. It consisted of a lot of 4 am wake-up calls, or late nights, or both. It ended up working out really well, I was able to do well at my job (maybe check with my boss about that…), while climbing a lot, but it’s exhausting.
Maybe this sounds like complaining, I hope it’s not, more so ruminating on why James and I felt so exhausted after Pakistan. I think it’s extremely important to continually evaluate the reasons behind why you do things: Is it still fun? Are you doing it for the right reasons? Are you still excited about it? Are you doing it because it’s personally rewarding, or because it appears “cool”? On and on…
To sum it up, the last 6 months were awesome, challenging, rewarding, and just yes - fun, but I’m going to take a break until I feel charged up again; that might be in a month or a year, and that’s OK.
But I digress, this is a trip report, so here you go:
Spantik pt. 2 Trip Report:
July 27, 2021
We slept in and took our time eating breakfast and enjoying the views, before packing up our loads to carry to C2. We left a backpack at C1 with gear (food, fuel, etc.) that we likely wouldn’t need but could come back for if needed.
We made our way along a stunning ridgeline, often with large drops on each side to the glacier thousands of feet below. The snow was soft and boot packing would have been brutal, and so, once again, I was incredibly happy to be on skis.
We skinned to C2, dropped our gear, skied back to our bag drop from the day before, picked up our loads, and carried the second time to C2. All in it was 6.25 miles and 3k gain in 7 hours - all over 16,500 feet. We both felt strong and were able to move efficiently. The ridge meandered up and down, which made for multiple transitions both ways: annoying on skis and more annoying on a split board.
We wrapped up our load carrying and were at C2 by 5 PM. Around that time a climbing team arrived at C2. They had summited the day before and were making their way down. We chatted for a few minutes before they kept descending. They were an all-Pakistani team comprised of 3 guides/high porters and three climbers. Two of the two climbers had turned around before the summit due to altitude issues, but one of the climbers had summited. They told us that the route looked to be in good condition with minimal crevasses - even less of an issue on skis.
We were debating going to C3 the next day vs. taking a rest day at C2. We finally decided to take a rest day the following day. The next camp was at 21,500 feet, where it would be much harder to recover and sleep. C3 was at 18,500 feet, high enough to acclimatize but low enough to rest and sleep well.
Camp 2, 18,500 feet
July 28, 2021
Rest day. We didn’t do a lot. We slept in, drank coffee, relaxed, then wished we had gone up to C3 as it was a beautiful day. But ultimately, it was good we rested. We also spent time shooting products for a few of the brands that James had deliverables for. James took pictures of me as I did my best to pose with gear as he directed. It’s not my strong suit, but I think James did a good job of working with what he had :)
July 29, 2021
The next morning we were up at 5 AM and moving up by 7 AM. We had a great view of most of the route up to C3 from our camp.
We put our skis on our packs before we left camp, as the route got steep almost right away, and plodded up slowly. After taking a rest day it was fun to move again. Halfway up the face we stopped, melted snow, and fueled up. Big thanks to Tailwind, Gnarly Nutrition, and Honey Stinger - we stayed stocked up on electrolytes, quality sugar, carbs, and protein.
Unfortunately, the Pakistani team that descended the day prior, had left trash scattered everywhere at a spot they had rested on the way down. We consolidated the trash and left it under a tarp that the high porters were going to take off the mountain at the end of the season.
The last 500 feet was the steepest - about 50 degrees when I measured it on my phone level app. The snow was still soft and we were very thankful for the boot pack left by the previous team. I partially fell into a small crevasse but was able to ungracefully extract myself. All the crevasses we had encountered were small and more annoying than dangerous.
Once we made it to the top of the hump we were at 21,000 feet and thought we were almost at camp. Instead, we put our skis and traveled over flatter terrain, gaining 500 feet over about half a mile, and made our way to a large flat plateau that gave a phenomenal view of the ridgeline leading up to the summit. We probed the area for crevasses, stomped out a flat spot for our tent, and set up camp.
July 30, 2021
It was a weird night of sleep. We were at 21,500 feet and there was significantly less oxygen. I kept somehow forgetting to take a breath then ended up incredibly winded - while sitting in the tent. It was definitely a strange feeling.
We woke up at 4:30 AM, then decided to sleep longer and wait to get up until sunrise when we could better evaluate the weather. 5:30 AM - there were heavy clouds with only the occasional break in the clouds. We could intermittently make out the ridgeline to the summit as well as the boot pack left by the previous team. We spent the next hour eating breakfast and packing our gear. By 7 we were skinning across the flat plateau. Unfortunately, 45 minutes later, as we approached the ridgeline, the clouds moved in and turned the visibility to almost zero. I think if we were more familiar with the route we would have kept going, but we felt that we needed to have some visibility to safely move forward. We waited for five minutes then ripped skins and skied 3 minutes back to camp.
We sat in the tent for hours, hoping the clouds would clear up. Per our satellite device, we thought the weather could be bad the next day so we really wanted to make a summit attempt that day. By 11:30 AM the clouds had somewhat cleared up. We discussed our options and decided that there wasn’t a downside to going for it, we could always turn around again if the visibility went to zero.
By noon we were on the skin track again. The clouds were in and out, but we could see enough to find the route, and as we continued up the visibility improved.
James set the skin track up a steep section that led us to the ridgeline. Just before the ridge, we took our skis off as it was too steep to move efficiently. Once on the ridge, we found icy wind-blown snow mixed with sections of soft snow, at a 35-degree slope. It was nasty conditions to skin, so we kept our skis on our backs, put our crampons on, and took turns setting the boot pack.
For the next 4 hours, we plodded up. 22,000 feet, 22,500 feet, 23,000 feet, 23,150 feet, 23,151 feet, 23,152 feet - we started to move very slowly as we got nearer to the summit. It was becoming hard to catch our breath, but we continued to methodically place one foot in front of the other. The wind had been getting progressively stronger as we got higher, and by the time we hit 23k, the winds were at least 50 mph with gusts up to 60. At this point, I had all my layers on as well as my mitts and goggles - James and I had learned our lesson on Dragontail in Washinton a few months back. We had been caught in -20° wind chill without mitts or goggles and I think my face almost froze. My eyebrows did freeze to my sunglasses, that was a first :)
Dragontail Peak - note the eyelashes stuck to the sunglasses :/
So this time around, even though it was cold and incredibly windy, we stayed warm enough and had every inch of skin covered. I set the track the last 400 feet and locked into a strange mental state - almost zoned out, it was miserable and we likely looked comical we were moving so slowly, but eventually, the slope flattened out and the summit came into focus.
Spantik Summit
We snapped a few pictures on the summit then hightailed it out of there. It was CRAZY windy. It was hard to stand up.
At the summit, holding a ROMP flag - check them out at the link below, they are a really cool non-profit
https://www.rompglobal.org/
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I transitioned on the summit, legitimately worried my gear might blow away, but 5 minutes later I clicked in and started down. James downclimbed the top part. He would have had to do the full split board transition, and with the nasty conditions, he didn’t want to subject himself to that.
After traversing the flat summit, I started my GoPro and started down the steep and very icy headwall. I slid sideways for 30 feet, function over form for me. I’m no expert skier and I had no desire to catapult down the ice and over the 4,000 foot drop below me. So I took it easy and safely made it down to where the slope evened out to 30 to 35 degrees.
Below the ice, James transitioned. I nearly froze as I waited, and it’s the coldest I have been in a while, but soon we were ready to rock. What a surreal feeling; skiing at 7000 meters. Sometimes I have no idea why I do this type of sh*t, but wow, it was a wild experience to ski down a massive mountain in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by some of the most incredible mountains I had ever seen.
I was able to snap a few pictures of James. Unfortunately, my GoPro froze 2 seconds after turning it on at the summit - yup, it was cold. 30 minutes later we skied off the ridge and shot across the sloping plateau towards camp. The sun was setting, the wind had dissipated, and the sky was clear - my GoPro was dead and I had no desire to pull my camera out, the moment was too good. I don’t have a single picture of it, but I know the experience will forever be engrained in my head. It was beautiful, absolutely stunning. We flew down the slope, yelling and laughing, taking in all the post-suffer fest feelings, it was incredible.
Back at camp 3
July 31, 2021
We camped at C3 that night and packed up by 11 AM the next morning. We wanted to wait for the snow to soften on the steep sections below C3 so we were in no rush to leave.
The skiing down to C2 was the steepest we encountered - about 50 degrees. The snow was decent but wet and heavy. I took my time on the top section where it was steepest, then got into the groove, and James and I had an absolute blast skiing the rest of the face.
About 1000 feet above C2, I stopped while James skied down to the flat section below and pulled out the drone. He was able to capture some really cool videos that I’ll upload at some point. This was taken on my GoPro.
We got to C2, stopped for refuel, then continued on. We had left a backpack at C2, about 50 lbs of gear, and we decided that it would be easier for one of us to shoot back the next day and grab the backpack, rather than try to load up everything and plod back to base camp. We had a few days to kill as we had climbed it in a week less than our allotted time.
We skied the ridgeline back to C1, transitioning a few times and partially falling into a few crevasses - but nothing too serious. Back at C1, we left our skis loaded up some of the gear from the backpack we had left at C1, and headed down to basecamp.
It would still be two weeks before we got back to Colorado. And those two weeks were full of waiting at basecamp, trekking, riding bumpy roads, more waiting, canceled flights (many canceled flights), traveling chaos related to all those canceled flights, croissants in Paris, and quite a bit more. Maybe I’ll write about it at some point, or maybe I’ll turn this into a cooking blog ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ … suffice to say, we made it back to the States safely, and that is the end of the Pirates of the Carabiner 2021 Pakistan expedition - over and out.
Post-expedition; I lost 10 pounds and James lost 15+
