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50 Hour Push Nov 17

The weather window was still holding at the end of our rest day. Thursday the 10th of November was the full moon. Everything was lined up for “go time”…so we set our alarms for 2 am. We ate the last of our breakfast cereal and decided to only pack headlamps, puffy jackets, puff pants, mittens, a stove, two water bottles and 30 bars for our summit push.

Having stowed the minimal essentials we left our tent, pads and sleeping bags behind. We started up toward the first ice pitch at 4 am. The sky was dark as the moon had already set and we proceeded with headlamps to the base.

When we reached the ropes something was wrong, we could not get them to budge so David opted to climb the pitch with tools and a prusik backup. The sun was beginning to rise when he had chopped the ropes free from the ice and belayed me up. We coiled the ropes and began to solo up the terrain we had climbed two days before. The face above had already been in the sun for an hour when we reached the upper couloir. Constant rockfall and ice chunks hitting the slopes above sounded like a barrage of mortar fire closing in on our positions.

David trying to get into neighboring fluting

We were 85% of the way up the solo terrain when David got hit in the helmet with a fist sized rock. I dodged a close one myself as I examined the extent of the damage to the helmet. Good thing he had it on or the trip would have been finished. I took the lead heading for a protected belay alcove two hundred yards above on steep terrain.

We reached the base of the “back door pass” runnel and geared up. I took the first block up vertical ice and through a rock step that offered the only passage up. The line was exciting and connected two runnels with one crossover of a mushroomed ridge. Short crux passages of M5 and AI5 brought us to the top of the Nose in three pitches.

I made an anchor combining a v-thread anchor backed up with a number 6 knife blade. We rappelled 60 meters below and ended up at the base of the upper 2,000 ft of near vertical runnel climbing. David took the next block up to our intended line up the leftmost ice runnel towards the summit. The sun had gone behind the ridge when he brought me up to the belay. I belayed David as he rounded the runnel crest to try and gain the next one left. The exposure was massive as we were above a 2,000 ft wall of rock below. David reported that the line was not a go.

David continued up the vertical and overhanging ice above. There were vertical steps of ice in the runnels, some of them blocked with large rock walls. In many cases the ice steps were topped with large eyebrows of whipped ice from the wet snow avalanches that shed themselves in the afternoons. David finished his block climbing through one such section with dubious protection.

I stuffed a pair of chemical hand warmers into my gloves before heading up on my next block of leads. I kicked up the next series of vertical neve and found tiny sections of ice for protection. This section was not the intended line so route finding was fairly blind. It was getting dark as I negotiated another overhanging eyebrow near 21,000 ft. My block of four rope stretching pitches was complete. We just kept climbing until one runnel lead to four more, only one of which offered hope of continuing up. We were in danger of hitting a dead end in the dark after 2,500 ft of climbing. At this point nerves were getting frayed and cameras were stowed.

I handed the rack of screws and pitons over to David just below a wicked section of steep and overhanging ice leading to vertical unconsolidated snow. I believed that this pitch would put us on top of the climbing difficulties. David took the bag of sand and an hour later made it through the ice section. It was a couple of cold and impacting hours later when the rope began to come back down and David put me on belay. Almost all of the belays were hanging belays and I began to feel the ring around my waist and the cold settling into my feet.

Looking forward to the chance to climb and warm up, I cleaned the anchor and climbed up through the horror show that was David’s lead. He had led the vertical snow section by compacting the snow and using stemming techniques his long frame allowed. Afterwards he had ended up excavating a snow mushroom until he found ice underneath the base. The runnel had ended and David had been attempting to climb the unconsolidated snow mushrooms to gain a better vantage point.

We peered through the mushrooms into the darkness below with the help of our headlamps. It seemed that there was a large runnel to our left, but we were not certain our ropes reached far enough 200 ft. below. We rappelled down and discovered to our amazement that not only did our ropes touch down, but we were in the intended summit runnel we had wanted to be climbing in six hours earlier. We were committed to this path; there was no turning back from this point.

I took the next block up more steep neve and ice steps. The difficulties culminated in mixed terrain topped with an eyebrow of ice in a no fall situation near 22,000 ft. Blunted picks matched the “brain damage” that I was experiencing mentally when I pulled into the belay at the end of the ropes. I brought up an equally tired partner. Silently the rack passed over to David and he began to climb up, time passed measured only in lengths of rope passed through the belay device.

Two pitches later David yelled off belay. He brought me up and I could tell something was different. We were on the summit ridge after 22.5 hours. The moon was up and the full moon illuminated the Himalaya as we gazed around at the giants in the surroundings. We decided that we had better find a crevasse or a bergshruund to hide in until sunrise. We climbed over a rise into a saddle of sorts and found a crevasse with a roof that we could stomp into a shelter from the wind.

For the next four hours we donned all of our clothes and hand-wear and brewed the much needed hot water our bodies craved. We had only drunk two liters in the past 24 hours. We filled our bottles with boiling water and stuffed them into our pants and jackets to stave off the cold in the middle of the night at over 22,000 ft. Cold feet were the most remarkable, but we did not feel in danger of frostbite with the blood from the femoral arteries being warmed by the hot water bottles in our pants.

Summit of Pangbuk Ri Nov 11

Finally, the light began to grow in the East as the sun began to rise. We each drank a liter and had two water bottles for the day in our packs. We geared up and were walking towards the true summit at 8am. We stood on the summit and took photos for about thirty minutes. Cho Oyu, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Malungtse and Lobuche Kang were all visible clearly from the summit. We were then faced with the question of the best way down.

After looking at the two sides of the mountain we decided to down climb and rappel the opposite side of the mountain we had climbed. The face was covered with countless seracs all draining into a central gulley. It took over an hour to locate a spot for our first v-thread. It turns out it was the bottom of a large snow bridge spanning a large crevasse. After the first rappel we were in a runnel system that drained the upper mountain. The sequence continued like this for the next 12 rappels. I rappelled down and located the next chunk of water ice, drilled a v-thread and put in the anchor. Then David followed and pulled the ropes. Our ropes were thin 8 mm lines so we could just pull the ropes through the v-thread slot thus reducing material left behind on the mountain. There were three free hanging full rope length rappels off of seracs that were notable. On these sections I put in two v-threads for peace of mind; in case one failed there was redundancy in the system. Below the last serac rappel all the snow was scoured off the rocks from ice and rockfall. We called this section the “Shadowlands.” Thankfully the sun had begun to set and we traversed to the side and down the protected side of a large rock rib.

We began to make use of our six stoppers and six pitons that were left of our rock rack. The ropes began to get stuck with the coming of nightfall. My headlamp was nearly dead so I used it sparingly for placing anchors only. Being on the West side of the mountain meant that the moon light would not reach us for several more hours. We had been on the move for nearly 40 hours at this point and things began to get interesting. My calves began to lock up from over 3,500 ft of climbing on my front points with very little water. David had to climb up on several occasions and free the stuck end of the caught rope.

Finally we could see the snow cone at the base of the mountain. Only a few more rappels before we were free of the grasp and dangers of Pangbuk Ri. I placed another single piton anchor as we rappelled the final rock cliff. At the base I manufactured a walking stick out of a picket and an ice tool tied together with two slings. I coiled my frozen rope and walked gingerly down the slope secretly hoping that a final serac bomb would not overtake me before I could reach the end of the avalanche outrun.

It had taken us over 14 hours to descend the face. Feeling physically spent and hallucinating freely, David and I began the ten mile walk along the glacial hills covered with loose talus. The moonlight was upon us and the glacier and we could both navigate without the use of our dead headlamps. The talus was covered with two feet of snow making the walking treacherous and painfully slow. After five hours of slow headway and many rest stops we decided that the only way we were going to make it to Base Camp was to jettison our packs. It had now been 45 hours on the go. We were reaching into new areas of both mental and physical endurance.

We left the packs under a huge boulder and made our way to a glacial valley bottom. We each had a few of the last of our bars and our cameras inside our puffy jackets. There was no water left. We trudged along the valley bottom and found a small section of running water. Both of us had numerous pulls from the clear cold water on our hands and knees.

Refreshed and almost thirstier we crossed the mid section of the glacier over small mountains of ice and rock rubble that exacted the last of our remaining energy. On the opposite side we climbed up a nearly vertical dirt embankment if the lateral moraine and ended up on a familiar trail. This was the trail we had carried the loads to our first bivouac. I forced down another set of gel blocks and limped along with the use of my cane trying to keep pace with David.

The sun began to rise as we followed the grass and talus covered slopes nearer to base camp. It was 5:58 am when we reached the cook tent. Elated, exhausted and humbled we sat down on the rock bench inside and began to drink water from the thermoses left inside for us. Dowa our cook had seen our headlamps near the summit 30 hours before and had been prepared for our arrival a day earlier. He awoke from his tent and immediately made us a huge breakfast of dal bhat. Nothing could have tasted better after a 50 HOUR PUSH.

For the next two days I woke up only to eat and return to sleep. Our bodies were thankful for the break from climbing for awhile. A 50 hour push is the longest climbing push either of us has done to date. I am thankful to have put up such a demanding line on the South Face, and equally thankful that we were able to descend safely under our own power back to base camp in a single push. This climb defined high altitude climbing minimalism for David and I. I hope that we can continue to push our limits safely in the mountain and put up more beautiful climbs on other unclimbed peaks of the world.

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