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Tagne 2001 |
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Dan's DiaryDay 20 - Tuesday 17th July 2001see also Steve's Diary for today
My 5am alarm went off and the mental debate over whether to get up or not began. One side of me would tell me to get up and stop wasting time while the other side demanded more sleep. At 5:15am the side of me that encouraged me to get up won and I crawled out of my sleeping bag. The cold air inside the tent hit me and I hurriedly scrambled for my down jacket. Alan was already up and was getting water for the porridge when I exited the tent. Jon came and helped Alan light the stoves while I took my first visit behind the big rock, armed with toilet roll. Cups of tea were drunk and we ate porridge until we were full and (in my case at least) feeling bloated. We had over-estimated the amount of porridge that people wanted and Narinder didn't want any anyway, so there was loads left over. I packed my rucksack and filled my water bottle with water from the stream and treated it with iodine. A flag had been placed in the stream where we were to collect water from. Washing up was done downstream of the flag and going to the toilet, downstream of this.
It was a bright morning, only a few clouds were in the sky and the sun soon came up. Alan, Steve and Andy had decided to undertake a reconnaissance of the North Tagne glacier while Jon, Narinder and I had a look at the South one. They left at 6:50am and we weren't far behind them. We soon passed them as they were moving slower over the screes than we were. The scree was out to get me again. I would put my foot on a rock to see if it would take my weight. It appeared stable so I would tread on it and it would then give way causing me to slip and loose my footing. The scree also often ate my leki pole tip and I would have to take two steps backward to release the trapped pole. After ascending the scree came the massive piles of moraine, containing blocks, some the size of houses, and blocking the valley. We couldn't decide whether to go over or around the moraine and so ended up doing a bit of both. Shattered rock often provided a stable footing around the large blocks of rock but every now and again holes would appear waiting to trap the stray foot. In between some of the larger boulders black holes could be seen opening up, large enough to take you whole should you be unfortunate to fall in. On the far side of the moraine pile we headed down to a small stream and what looked to be a flat riverbed. The stream was low and easily crossed but the flat riverbed was a mass of rounded boulders with dry channels cut into them. It turned out not to be as easy to walk across as I had first anticipated, however it was far better than the moraine or scree we'd previously crossed. Narinder wanted to go and climb the first snow capped mountain we saw, which happened to be behind us. After a brief discussion we compromised, deciding to follow the right hand stream up to the glacier we could see rather than head up to the hidden valley where we had initially thought the west Tagne glacier was. There was a peak at the end of the glacier that we thought looked easy enough to attempt. We walked up the valley along the dry old river channel. It was full of different sized rounded boulders set in a silt bed. The dry channel joined the main river and we were forced to climb the riverbank and head along by the river. The slope undulated up and down as we walked up the valley. We had a brief stop some half way before reaching the glacier for a bite to eat and water to drink.
We continued up to the stream keeping to its left-hand bank, crossing boulder after boulder. The valley got steeper as we neared the snout of the glacier and our pace slowed. On arrival at the foot of the glacier we elected to head up the left-hand side of the glacier on a mixture of steeply rising boulders and rock covered ice. The ascent was hard work but we managed to keep going at a slow pace. I could hear water gushing down the slope under my feet, putting doubt in my mind as to how strong the rock and ice was that I was walking across. We joined the glacier at the side as it started to level out. The sky had clouded over and a cold wind blew across the glacier. I stopped to put my waterproofs on and my crampons soon followed. I exchanged Leki pole for ice axe before making my way onto the glacier. Jon and Narinder had started to make their way across the flat glacier above the snout, and I followed in their footsteps. I had once again expected the flat ice to be easy to cross, but the surface was littered with ice mushrooms and carved by stream channels containing running water. The glacier soon started to rise, increasing in gradient up to and around a rocky buttress that sat in the middle of the glacier before levelling out again. We ascended the ice on the left-hand side of the rocky buttress. The increase in gradient caused our pace to slow. Even this didn't prevent us from frequently stopping, as our bodies fought to get oxygen into them. I zigzagged backwards and forwards across the slope reducing the gradient I was walking up.
At the top of the slope, Jon and Narinder were sitting on a rocky patch on top of the rock buttress, resting. I sat down heavily beside them, eager to remove my rucksack. We ate lunch while looking towards where we thought Tagne was. There was no obvious way up that we could see. A jumble of rocks and intermittent ice patches led up into the clouds, which covered the upper slopes of the mountain. The peak we had earlier had our eyes on was still a fair way off and some five hundred metres above us with no obvious easy route to the summit as we had first thought. A cornice just below the summit and steep chutes on the mountainside were the main obstacles we could see. This along with the deteriorating weather and sore feet meant we decided to head back to advanced Base Camp. We left the top of the rocky buttress at 10:30am and descended the ice slope. It was so nice to be going down. We descended quickly, as no effort was required; you could just let gravity do all the work and because it had started to snow and the cloud was coming in. As we descended so the trickles of water turned into streams, which had carved deep into the ice. Before we knew it we had crossed the flattish lower section of the glacier and were approaching the snout. We veered across to the side of the glacier and took our crampons off. It turned out that Jon and I had come off the ice too early and found our selves staring into a black hole some five metres long in the icy moraine. Water could be heard gushing through the bottom of the hole. We rounded it with care avoiding the sloped glacier side, which if we slipped on would send us plummeting into the black hole. We descended the boulders and rocks by the side of the glacier in no time. It had seemed like a long way on the ascent but now it felt as though it wasn't very far at all. We walked along with the river to our left over a trail of rounded boulders. Before long I got cramp in my left toes, the descent having squashed my toes in to the front of the boot, so I stopped and removed one of my socks. The instant relief made the faff of taking my boot off all the more worthwhile. I carried on a little further down to where Jon and Narinder had also stopped.
Back down in and amongst the moraine we had the joy of crossing the river, which was now in full flow. Jon jumped across easily, for he had long legs. Narinder attempted to copy Jon but fell short making a large splash. I found what I thought was a slightly narrower place to cross and jumped across having taken a run up. I very nearly over toppled into the next river channel but I managed to keep my feet dry. The second stream channel was again made to look easy by Jon despite a wobbly take off rock. Narinder tried to take off from the same wobbly rock but again fell short, this time getting his feet wet. I ran and jumped across the stream further upstream where a large angled rock stuck out into the river channel. I had intended to grab hold of the top of the rock with my hands but my rucksack prevented this. Luckily my feet held firm on the slanting rock and I was sufficiently balanced to prevent falling backwards into the river. We decided to follow the river back to the campsite rather than clambering up over the pile of moraine. The river entered a gorge and suddenly the route didn't seem like such a good idea. Boulders tumbled down from under our feet into the bubbling waters below, threatening to take you with them if you didn't move fast enough. We made our way slowly and surely through the blocks, keeping close to the river. The river flowed around a large plain of rounded boulders before cutting through more moraines. We stopped following the river and cut across the plain heading up the pile of moraine towards Advanced Base Camp. The pace quickened as it started to rain, since we were close to our tents. We didn't want to get our clothes and rucksacks wet, because they wouldn't dry again until the sun came out. On reaching the top of the moraine pile the three yellow and grey tents could be seen sitting on the river terrace. During the descent off the moraine pile I came face to face with a boulder almost as high as me. There appeared to be no way up its smooth vertical side. As I turned around to head back and try a different route I came face to face with an equally high boulder behind me. Suddenly I became too tired to walk the ten metres or so around the large boulders and decided to risk bridging my way up with one foot on the boulder in front of me and one on the boulder behind me. My plastic boots didn't hug the rock very well and the rain made the surface slippery. I slowly inched my way up until I could stand on top of the first boulder. I jumped down the other side and walked down across the screes and into camp. I set about finding large rocks to put on the pegs to stop them coming out of the stones. It was 12:50pm when I retreated to the dryness of my tent and took off my wet waterproofs. We then ate nut and chocolate bars for lunch. Steve, Alan and Andy returned wet at 2:25pm.
I dosed in and out of consciousness until 5pm when Narinder opened the tent zip to get things for a brew. I got up and the others started to appear from their tents. It had stopped raining now. We set about cooking dinner and eating it. Golden vegetable soup followed by tuna and rice with mango chutney and chilli sauce. Custard was made for pudding but it wouldn't thicken. Despite this it tasted good. We decided on a 4:30am wake up time to recce the 5800m peak Jon, Narinder and I had seen earlier that day, and have another look at the south face of Tagne, since the others had reported even less favourable prospects on the north side. Washing and clearing up followed and it was into bed by 8pm.
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© Copyright Steve Jolly 2001. |
