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Tagne 2001 |
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Dan's DiaryDay 17 - Saturday 14th July 2001
Tea was brought at 5am. I lay in my sleeping bag delaying the inevitable. I didn't want to leave the warmth of my sleeping bag for the cold air and darkness that reigned outside. Then suddenly I heard something land on the tent. I sat up, my ears alert. More came and pinging against the outside of the tent. The frequency increased and before long it sounded as if there was a downpour. Rain always sounds worse when you can hear it but it did enough to put us off load-ferrying and go back to sleep. It was 6:50am when people started to emerge again. It hadn't rained during the last twenty minutes, so we decided to have a go at load-ferrying. Steve, Alan and Narinder left at 7am, heading up to Upstairs so they could start to sort out what food and equipment we'd need for the first mountain stage of the expedition. Jon followed on some ten minutes later when he was ready and I left Base Camp ten minutes after him having wasted time looking for my malaria tablets. The ascent was tough, and although it was still cool the sweat flowed off my forehead. I arrived at Upstairs at 7:50am. Alan had done a great job of sorting out the food and equipment we needed. I set about double-checking that we had enough food, while Jon sorted out the fuel and Steve split the bag of rice on a rock losing precious supplies. Once everything was sorted we set about packing everything into our rucksacks. We had trouble fitting everything in. I took a chance and left my waterproofs behind so I could carry more supplies. Narinder was the only sensible one. He had a small rucksack so he couldn't carry that much. We managed to squeeze everything in and left Upstairs at 8:20am.
It was slow going with our heavy rucksacks, scrambling up the steep screes to the rocky staircase before traversing across it. It didn't seem to bad at first, but I had forgotten how the slope dropped away and I soon resembled something similar to a wobbling jelly. I tried not to look down the slope, although I had to look at the ground to see where I was putting my feet. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, hanging on to my Leki pole for balance. The slope eased and the pace picked up but before long we had lost the path. We headed for the next cairn where Narinder was already waiting. A bit further on and we came to the first gully. By the time I'd arrived Narinder had left his rucksack in the bottom of the gully and was coming back up to help cut steps out of the dirt with Jon's ice axe. Jon descended, helping to cut steps as he went, and Steve followed. Narinder and Jon went to the far side of the gully and began cutting steps in the dusty scree slow on the far side of the gully. Meanwhile I set descended nervously but steadily into the gully giving Alan time to settle after having second thoughts at the sight of the route. This was the first time he'd seen the path as he hadn't joined us when we came up for a reconnaissance. I approached the rocky slab and sat on the top, lowering my legs over the edge. I searched for some handholds but could only find small unreliable bits of rock that stuck out from the face. I held on tight with my hands and tried to lower my self down to a sloping ledge just a bit smaller than my foot. I was an agonising few inches away when my large and cumbersome rucksack got caught on the rock. I couldn't reach the ledge and was forced to haul myself back up. I tried again this time swinging around so I faced the rock. The weight of my rucksack threatened to pull me off the rock, but fortunately I reached the rocky ledge before my hand slipped from their holds. Knowing the hardest bit was over I descended the screes into the bottom of the gully where I sat, regaining my nerves and while watching Alan's descent.
Up the other side of the gully wasn't much better for my nerves. Despite steps having been cut, stones still fell away from under my feet, bouncing on down into the gully. I was glad to exit the gully and thankful for the steps! Narinder was sitting down and having a smoke while the others rested. I was keen to press on, wanting to get it over and done with. We walked up and over the spur before heading for the cairn and the path. The descent into the larger second gully was better, but maybe that was just because I knew what to expect. I kept glancing at the other side of the gully as it got closer and closer. It loomed overhead and looked impossibly steep to climb. From the bottom of the gully my whole perspective changed. A well-used path could be seen diagonally up its side, which didn't look so bad after all. There were still a couple of spots where I clung tentatively to the rock for dear life, sweat dripping from the palm of the hand that clutched my walking pole. Steps were again cut where they were needed and where the rock allowed. Relieved to be safely across, we rounded a spur before entering the third and final gully. Despite hearing stories of how bad the third gully looked and yet how easy it was from those who had crossed it on our reconnaissance day I was still sceptical. I took the descent into the gully in my stride although I was not looking forward to the rock wall on the far side. As we approached the wall, It turned out to be set back in a series of narrow ledges that were climbed without too much of a problem, although it did get the pulse racing. We exited the third gully at 10:30am and sat by the shepherds' stone shelter eating breakfast. Two omelettes along with a hard-boiled egg, some nuts and an apple were the rations. Lots of water was drunk. The sun was already high. It had been quite cool in the shade of the gullies but the sun shone fiercely down us now we were on the valley side. We discussed pushing on to get the kit as far up the valley as possible. Steve was exhausted and opted out of continuing so we emptied his rucksack and split the load between the rest of us. We headed off along the side of the valley at 10:45am, following a sheep track. The grassy valley side soon gave way to bare soil and then we returned to scree. The slopes were gentler and the gullies weren't anything like as exposed or as steep as the ones we'd crossed before breakfast. At 11:45 am we came to a large raging stream, some four feet deep in places. Narinder tried to cross between the two shepherd's paths on either side of the valley. I wandered upstream to see if there was a better place to cross and Jon did the same downstream. I returned to where Alan was waiting having found nothing. Narinder hadn't been able to cross where he had tried. I took off my rucksack, much to the relief of my shoulders, and went down to see what the river was like where Jon was. I took my boots and socks off, and exchanged trousers for shorts. I managed to get five sixths of the way across, although I very nearly ended up going in up to my chest. There was no way over the last deep channel and I was soon forced to return with toes that were numb from the icy waters. I staggered back over the wobbly boulders to the riverbank and put my boots back on. Narinder also tried bare foot further upstream but gave up long before reaching the other side.
We were just about to head back up the side of the river valley to find a place to leave the kit bags when we saw a shepherd on the skyline. He started to descend the far side of the river valley, paying little attention to the scree, often happily sliding down the slope with the rocks and dust. He half walked, half jogged down the far bank before skipping and jumping from boulder to boulder crossing the river in shoes that were little more than a pair of slippers. He made it look easy but there was no way we could jump across like that with our heavy rucksacks. Narinder walked downstream and met the shepherd. They had a chat and then Narinder returned to where we were sitting. He told us that the shepherd had advised us to cross before 10am when the water was lower. We put our rucksacks back on and ascended the screes until we were out of the river valley. Meanwhile the shepherd re-crossed the river and headed back up the screes on the opposite side. We emptied our rucksacks and put the food and equipment back in the kit bag and covered it with a tarpaulin, which was held down with rocks. We headed back along the side of the valley at 12:30pm. Narinder went on ahead as his pace was faster than ours, although now we'd lost all the weight from our backs we did feel as though we could fly. We reached Steve at 1:10pm. He had built a sunshade using his survival bag, leki pole and rocks. Steve told me that the shelter had looked better than what we saw, but five minutes before we arrived many of the supporting rocks had fallen down, narrowly missing him! We had a quick breather while Alan ate his apple and I ate a chocolate bar. Then it was time to cross the three gullies again. Progress was slow as Jon cut more steps with his ice axe, but the crossings were definitely easier. I had forgotten to take my sun hat so I applied lots of suntan lotion to my face and neck.
On reaching Upstairs, after descending the rocky staircase, Alan decided he would keep on going to Base Camp. Jon and Steve covered what was left at Upstairs with a tarpaulin before heading down after Alan. I finished packing the things that had to go down to Base Camp into my rucksack before following on. The sun had brought out lots of yellow and violet flowers at Upstairs. The colours were lovely to see after days of nothing but the odd patch of grass in a dirty and dusty landscape. Even the rivers were grey where they were laden with silt. The flowers might have been out in the morning but I didn't see them. I was probably still half-asleep. I got back to Base Camp at 3:15pm. A quick dunk of my face in the river refreshed me. Vegetable noodles and rice salad was waiting for us for lunch in the mess tent. The chef must have been bored because the vegetables were perfectly diced into 2mm cubes. Andy had spent the day doing washing and reading his book. After lunch I made a stone backrest outside the tent so I could sit inside the tent on the floor with my back against it. Jon had a rest in his tent while the rest of us played cards. Tea and biscuits were served at 4:30pm and I went to ask Jon if he wanted any. I put some biscuits to one side and when I was asked what I was doing by Andy I explained they were for Jon. They weren't really. Jon didn't want any. They were for me and Andy didn't realise until I'd eaten them all. We continued to play cards up until teatime. When Alan vacated the tent I fixed the dealing so he would lose although I don't think he noticed. Come 6:17pm Alan declared that we would play a new card game for a change. He was bored with "Alan wins" as it became known because he, well, kept winning. (Unless we fixed the dealing.) "We'll play Hearts," Alan said. "Do you know how to play that?" someone replied. "No. But I'll try to make the rules up as we go along." We tried several times but I don't think we ever got the rules right. A green-grey soup was served for starters. Rice, mash, dhal and mutton came for tea. It was all very nice but I ate too many noodles at our late lunch to fully appreciate it. Pudding consisted of tinned cherries in syrup. After tea we sat and talked about various things not least the problem of the toilet tent being downstream but upwind. I came up with some new ideas, which included a therm-a-rest body suit as an alternative to down and a potential buoyancy aid and tying helium balloons to your rucksack to counteract the weight of it, thus never suffering form aching shoulder again. I retreated to my tent at 8:40pm looking forward to a rest day.
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© Copyright Steve Jolly 2001. |
