Sixth day on the mountain. 2:30am and we are getting up after 5 hours of sleep into complete darkness and temperatures around 5 degrees below zero. In that moment the “ordinary” guy inside you is wondering “Why I am doing this!!”
Fortunately because of warm in the hut I finally had a quality sleep without any fever shaking, so I was quite ready for challenge. We had some quick porridge, put all available clothes on and headed into the dark. Jaro didn’t have his head lamp, so we had to go slow and I was every five meter stopping, turning back and showing the way. But even with this speed we were almost same fast as Jana & Marcin and just before the sunrise we were already doing the first pitch under torchlight.
Route finding was not a big problem, our problem was the speed again and….weather!! We started at 5:30am and at 9am we were at ¼ of the climb. Terrible progress…and what more? Because Jaro was carrying our only heavy backpack with all gear like climbing shoes or sleeping bag in case we get stuck up there, he partially dislocated his shoulder again…and what more? Of course that after one sunny week, exactly today, came rain and snow already at 9am!! “ JARO…let’s pull back. There is no point in going further” I shouted into our walkie-talkie, a while after Jaro tried to lead a bit more up through “One o’clock gully”. “I think you are right. I’m coming down” sounded his voice through whizzing show flakes. We shouted the same to Marcin who was one pitch below us, left one of our slings on a horn there and with help of other old leftover gear and later of couple of installed chains we made it in two 60 meter rappels back to the ground.
We felt sadness, anger, tiredness and waste. “Why us!!” I thought when I remembered one English guy we met at Mintos hut who summited two days before us with a guide. He didn’t even planned to go up, but when he saw the mountain he thought “Yeah…could be cool to get there. Let’s hire a guide and do it!!” We felt cheated.
Once again we crossed Lewis glacier back to Austrian hut and started a debate “What shall we do now”. Everybody had a different opinion, but at the end won our collective will to not to give up and we agreed that we rest for a day and try again the day after tomorrow.
Another two days from our spare week were gone and what more, we were running out of food, because we took supplies only for six days!! But fortunately all other groups and especially group cooks had surplus and were more than happy to cook also for us J For a small price of course! So we had a quality dinner with fresh fruit, vegetables and meat and our determination to prevail grew even stronger.
Powered up with good sleep and food, I woke up at 7am the next day, when all others were still sleeping and went up to Point Lenana. Everybody says “I’ve been on Mt. Kenya”, but they only have been to the 4985m high, third highest peak of Mt. Kenya and the only one where you can just walk. It was not enough for us, but “If anything goes wrong tomorrow, I can at least say the incomplete truth!” I comforted myself when looking from the top to Nelion, which seemed so close.
After I got back we went with Marcin to climb 4993m high sharp horn Point John. The weather was nice again, so we enjoyed quite easy 6 pitch climb only with one tough pitch, which became immediately the best one once I’ve lead it J From the top we saw again Nelion in the clouds which brought more worries onto our minds. We didn’t find any scramble descent route, maybe there was not any, so we climbed down couple of pitches and left three slings to made three rappels back to where we started.
In the meantime Jana and Jaro climbed Lenana also and arranged another quality dinner from the cooks J So after a “rest” day when we all got to bed we felt ready to face everything what comes to make this expedition a success!!
Eight day on the mountain. 2:30am and we are getting up after 5 hours of sleep into complete darkness and temperatures around 5 degrees below zero. In that moment the “ordinary” guy inside you is wondering “Why I am doing this!!”
Same story as last time, but with one big difference..the speed. We started again around 5:30am under torchlights, but at 7am we were already at ¼ where we ended the first day. There is nothing better than a clear sunrise high on the rock. And exactly that we had. We felt luck that dayJ
Jaro because of his shoulder couldn’t carry our this time much lighted backpack, so I was going second and he was leading all the way and in the beautiful sunny day we were progressing fast up and enjoying the climb. At 9am we reached Baile’s bivouac in the climb’s half. Almost there J We crossed the ridge and headed towards the crux of the climb, De Graaf’s variation. At least according to the topo! It was really nice pitch around IV, and especially in this height when you see all around hundreds of meter below!
But the next pitch became critical, because the altitude or exhaustion made claim on Jaro and he started to feel z bit dizzy, were leading very slow and after he made a stand and I climbed up to him he said “I can’t go further”. We were three pitches below the summit and was 12pm. During the last pitches we slowed down rapidly! “Do you want to try it on second?” I asked already taking the gear from him and getting ready to lead the rest even with the backpack. “We are so damn close…let’s go!” commanded Jaro and I jumped in.
The next pitch was a short traverse III+, but immediately I climbed few meters I found myself trapped a bit and didn’t know where to go next. “WTF…this is hard” I swore. But then I looked under me and instantly declined to try to climb around. “It has to be this way. When I get after that ledge, will be easy again” and I forced forward. It was a bit tougher, I think much tougher that the crux J, but somehow I was pushed by the summit itself and its proximity!
From a close stand after the tough section I watched Jaro struggling also, but with same result. He also overcome all fears and physical limitations and pushed himself closed to the summit. And then it was a piece of cake. Two almost walking pitches and……WE WERE THERE J
At 1pm we fulfilled our dream and filled ourselves with accomplishment, joy and and ethereal feeling of uncontrolled happiness…”JARO…WE MADE IT. WE ARE HERE!!” I shouted to walkie-talkie while making a final stand on the top.
We felt indeed a bit pity, because the bad weather caught us directly on the top, so we didn’t see anything. No even summit of Batian just 200m from us. We hid into a small metal bivvi and were waiting for the storm to calm down. We didn’t know if Jana and Marcin gave up or not. The bigger joy we felt when they knocked on the bivvi’s door J We started together, we progressed a bit separately, but at the end we finished together. That’s how it should be J
We had some rest at the bivvi, made pictures and when even at 3pm the snow and rain was not over, we headed down. There supposed to be a bolted abseil route down, but we knew the problem was to find the bolts. I saw some bolts on the way up, but we didn’t find the first one. So we started again to leave slings behind and rappel down.
Probably because of lack of experience and underestimation of the terrain our double ropes got terribly stuck at the first rappel, with no way how to get them back. So we left them there and continued with the third rope only, leaving the last as a backup. And you can imagine how fast it is when four people are rappelling 400m on one 60m rope!! We were 1/3 from the ground when it got dark.
The last portion of glacier crossing and scrambling up back to the hut was complete pain and when we finally got back at midnight we realized that we were 22 hours out there climbing almost without break!!
Really nice surprise prepared one of the cooks, who saw our light on the rock, waited for us and warmed up leftovers from his group dinner. Warm food and tea was exactly what we needed to calm down and cheer up a bit. We made it there, we got back, but these feelings were overridden by cold and exhaustion.
Like the first day after such duty, the sleep is not very deep, so I somehow managed to wake up when the “our cook’s” group was heading to Nelion with guides and asked them “Good morning...excuse me? Would you be so kind and bring back our ropes if you have a chance?”, “Sure…we’ll try” they replied and ran into the night.
I don’t remember when we got up and packed all our stuff from the room which we appropriated for four days and started our rainy descent to McKinder’s camp, but it had to be very late J It was only a short two hour descent and again our appropriated cook was waiting for us with delicious meal from fresh commodities. Our happy day got rounded up by arrival of those two guides who smelled reward up on the mountain and spent the effort to get our ropes downJ
First and main part of our expedition was over. We were silently sitting in our tents and replaying all what happened, what we experienced, what we learned, looking at Nelion in the sunset and thinking that it was an unforgettable trip. Especially because it was not for free…and that is what makes trips unforgettable J
