Laila Peak Climb, Part 2 Continued:
July 15, 2021
Per our forecast on our Somewear devices, the weather was nice. We left mid-afternoon for advanced basecamp, below the face of Laila. Our packs were light as we had carried gear up to ABC (advanced basecamp) a few days prior. Two hours later, around 5 pm, we were staring at our objective while making camp at ABC.
I should have gone to bed early, but I lay awake for hours – excited about the next morning and deeply engrossed in my audiobook, Dune (highly recommend if you have not heard of the Dune series).
July 16, 2021
2 am wakeup call. I dislike alpine starts. Once you get going it’s fine (and beautiful usually), but nobody likes to roll out of a warm sleeping bag at that ungodly hour. We gobbled down a Mountain House breakfast that we shared; 260 calories for each of us, I was going to be pulling on my limited fat reserves, that’s for sure… We weren’t in a huge hurry to leave, and after a slow breakfast and a groggy gear-up, we set off at 4 am.
We walked slowly uphill for 30 minutes before the grade steepened to about 45 degrees. Firm cool snow made for easy plodding as the sun poked above the nearby mountains.
We moved slowly and methodically, getting used to the altitude. Per the usual, it took me awhile to settle in – crampon, crampon, axe, axe – repeat; over and over again. 5 am, 6 am, 7 am – rest. We dug a small ledge on the 55-degree snow and took a rest. We were 2k up out of 5k gain to the summit. I was starting to feel stronger and in rhythm. I broke trail for 500 more feet. Rest. The snow was getting softer and whoever went first worked harder to kick steps into the slope.
James led the next 500 feet. We were now at 3k gain and sitting at 18,000 feet. The air was thinner, but I was feeling strong and smooth. The last 150 feet had been 60 to 65-degree alpine ice; nothing too hard, but it required high attention to each placement and precise focus 100% of the time. We had been climbing un-roped the whole time and did not plan to rope up at all unless we hit steep ice or rocks up high. We had limited gear, planned to move fast, and had confidence in our climbing abilities. We did have a single, thin 70m roper in case we needed to pitch out or rappel a section. A face like this can be difficult to protect with gear unless you carry a ton of pickets and the occasional screw. In my opinion, in these conditions it is best to climb quickly, efficiently and simply “don’t make a mistake”.
But we had an issue - the problem was James’ crampons. They fit very poorly to hit splitboard boots, and the toe piece was at a weird angle and kept popping off. James had to resort to putting most of the weight on his axes – the opposite of proper form. This wasn’t too much of an issue on the soft snow, but it became serious on the steep ice we had just encountered. And we were about to traverse for a long time, directly over a 1000 meter cliff. I had seen the crampon struggle over the last section as I had been climbing below James, and was beginning to worry.
It look dangerous, and we still had 2k of moderate but sustained snow and ice above us – all in a no fall zone. This is where gear is absolutely critical. I felt perfectly controlled in my ski boots and technical crampons, but James had splitboard boots and non-technical crampons. Hindsight is always 20/20, but we should not have left our climbing boots back in Skardu. James had technical fully-automatic crampons back with his climbing boots, but they did not fit to his splitboard boots. We had over committed to the ski/splitboard decent, and when it proved out of condition, we were left with climbing in our ski and splitboard boots. James had tested the boot and crampon setup on Rainier a few months back, but that was on less technical and mostly soft snow.
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My buddy, Adam Nicholson’s hand-sewn bag/pouch - this was for my point-and-shoot camera. It mounted on my backpack shoulder strap and kept my camera perfectly accessible. He recently started a company, San Util, and he custom sewed James and I a few bags for our trip. They came in clutch and I’ll hopefully start a gear review section on this website where I’ll write more about it. Check out his website:
https://www.sanutildesign.com/
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We sat on out small ledge we had dug and discussed our options. We both knew we could climb Laila, it was well within our skillset, but a crampon falling off at the wrong moment – right when weight was transferring to it, on sustained ice, could prove potentially deadly. I knew in the back of my head that turning around was the wise option, and as we discussed it, that became clearer. It sucked – I hate turning around, but it was the smart choice.
We set a v thread and rapped 35 meters down the ice where the softer snow started again, and began the 3k downclimb. 500 feet down we dug a large ledge and flew the drone. It was some wild footage.
Those two dots are James and I
For the next 3.5 hours we downclimbed. Slogging down, slightly depressed but still confident we made the wise choice. 10.5 hours after leaving ABC, we were back at ABC. James enjoying a smoke back at camp – yes, yes I know, smoking is bad for the lungs, but the rare smoke is oh so good.
Checking the stats on the Coros Vertix watch:
July 17, 2021
The next day we trekked 5 miles up the valley to get the iconic view of Laila:
Typical garb to block the wildly bright and direct Pakistani sun. We gringos burn easily.
That’s a detachable nose cover on the sunglasses.
Our crew from left, taken back in Hushe:
Nahdeel our cook, me, James, Salman our guide, and the head of the hotel (forget his name), where we camped out before and after our trek. I’ll write more about Nahdeel and Salman on the Spantik trip recap. They were with us up to basecamp for both expeditions and we got to know them quote well - both great guys.
Then back to BC where we waited a day for the porters before trekking for two days back to the Hushe Valley. There could be a lot more details here, but I’m tired of sitting at my laptop. You’ll have to hear the account first hand for all the details, pictures and videos :)
