Ashley Burke, Kazakhstan

KAZAKHSTAN - The Marble Wall and Khan Tengri Traverse

07 Aug 2011 - Steep Climb to High Plateau then Return to Camp 3


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Highlighted area shows today's climbing

Our alarms woke us at 5am after a night of fitful sleep in this very cramped tent. We slowly packed up, everything is an effort at this altitude. I am not eating enough to replace calories burnt. It is very cold and windy. For some absurd reason that they were unable to communicate, we left the tent and gear and climbed back up the steep rocky step. I was unable to convince them that we needed to carry everything with us until we had reached the top of the ridge above this rocky rib. Altercations followed to no avail. Great effort was wasted climbing up these steep pitches in unpleasant weather and high wind. We finally reached the top of the ridge to gain views of the Marble Wall summit and Khan Tengri. My guides must have realised the mistake of coming up here without all our gear, because now we returned down the steep pitches to our tent at 5500m and stayed there. I am now utterly exhausted and desperately hungry. Again I am unable to sleep properly in these cramped conditions. It is very cold.

Leaving everything at Camp 3 we climbed upthis steep slope to the rock crevice from where this photo was taken. I was unable to convince Edik and Danat that this was a mistake, and that we needed to carry everything past this point so we would not have to return to it again.

After a terrible climb above the crevice, blasted by wind and driven snow, we eventually reached the crest of the ridge from where our first views of Khan Tengri and the valley of the North Inylchek glacier could be seen. Because our tent was still at Camp 3, we had to abseil back down to it after this photo was taken.

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Page created 29 Nov 2011, last updated 5 Dec 2011.


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