Day 9 Gondogoro La (GG La)!

Ali Camp to Khuispang, 6 miles (total 67 miles), 18.5k elevation @ GG La down to 15.1k

Up at 11 for our 11:30 PM departure. The entire camp was bustling with nervous energy and people probably didn’t get much rest. Our guide and kitchen crew didn’t sleep at all. There was a rescue team at Ali camp that was dedicated to assisting teams safely over the summit and they were ready to go. We were both up a lot of the night listening to avalanches and rockfall all around us …extremely close as the camp was nestled on a the only solid ground but still precarious location on the mountain side. We had our parka jackets on, but it was not cold enough for expedition down. It was a strange feeling for it to not be absolutely freezing at that altitude in the middle of the night.

Before we left, the crew and the porters guided us through a short prayer to wish us all health and safety for the journey that lay ahead. We quickly took off with the kitchen crew and our porters were well ahead of us like always. The first hour and a half we were going uphill over large and medium boulders. It was of course at night so we had our headlamps on as we climbed the side of the hill. We quickly got stuck behind a group of climbers. Both Azam and Ali asked me separately if I wanted to pass and I said no. I did not want to exert myself so early in the hike and I don’t do well going over boulders, especially in the dark. Andy grumbled that it put us in a precarious bottleneck position on a very unstable and crumbling mountain side. We eventually hit a slightly flat spot so I gave the thumbs up to pass, and we quickly ran by to the other team in dismay…. Everyone wants to be first.

Both Andy and I had to takeoff our large jackets as it was unnecessary and our bodies were quickly warming up with the hike over the boulders. The nice thing about hiking at night is you don’t see what is ahead of you so you just focus and take one step at a time.

I had a sigh of relief once we started to cross the glacier as it was easy and relatively flat. I took deep breaths, and I tried to enjoy the flat slow pace as I knew I needed to reserve all my energy for the ascent. There was incredible rime ice that was 8” high in some places. It was shimmering like little sparkly diamonds in the night snow from our headlamps and sounded like shattering glass as we made are way towards the harness and crampon on point. It was just Andy and I, and our four person kitchen crew crossing the glacier. We knew we weren’t the only ones out there, but it felt like it for a little bit and it was very peaceful.

After the glacier, we were hiking on another mountain side in the snow and we started the ascent. We started to catch up with some of the porters and two groups that left well ahead of us. Some of the sections were quite steep, so I kept asking when we would put on our crampons. I didn’t want to slip as I know how much energy that takes and was eager to get the crampons on. Early on, we saw an older gentleman being somewhat carried and pushed up the mountain on either side of him by his two teammates. It was way too early to be assisting someone in the ascent, and I didn’t have a good feeling when I saw that unfolding. We walked for maybe 40 minutes in the snow up and up, before we hit the point of where it was time to put on crampons and fix our harness to the fixed rope. We got to the crampon point right before another group (we were both racing to make it there first knowing that there was only one fixed rope) and our crew was quick to help us put on our crampons so we were able to get ahead of the other group, which was critical because you don’t want to have to pass anybody going up the fixed ropes.

Our four person guide/kitchen crew split into two, so Azam and Ibrahim were on point with me, and Ali and Nazir were supporting Andy. There was no need for our crew or the porters to put on crampons because they wore Balti crampons, which were just socks on the outside of their shoes for traction. So we clipped our harness into the fixed rope and up we went.

The climb was incredibly difficult. It was still dark, so all I could see were some headlamps from the porters ahead and at one point, we looked behind us and saw a long line of headlamps behind us all the way down the hill beyond the glacier. Again, I was happy to not be able to see the steepness that was ahead of us and behind us as that likely would’ve caused me stress. All I could see was right in front of me from my headlamp and what I had to immediately climb up.

There were a couple of traverses, but most of it was significantly up the 50+ degree slope. There were some steps cut into the mountain side but other times we were kicking our crampon toes spikes into the ice to pull ourselves up. Most of the time I gripped onto the rope to pull myself up, but at times I climbed with my hands and crampons up the mountain. We could hear a couple of loud, rumbling avalanches on the mountain right next to us, but it was nothing that we could see so we kept moving on (we were starting the normalize to constant avalanches and rockfall). We came upon another group fairly quickly. They were moving slowly so it was the rescue team’s job to keep our team moving along. It was pretty chaotic in the moment as the other team was saying something quite loudly (not sure what language) while our team was unclipping our harnesses so we could bypass them. I’m not sure if it’s because we never needed help or requested it on the mountain, but the rescue team didn’t need to give us assistance at any point over the pass.

Now we were the first group in the ascent. I couldn’t see the pass, but I could still see porter headlamps hiking straight up the mountain. It was surreal to see the headlamps paint a line up and over the summit. I tried to pay less attention to what lie ahead and just focused on taking a couple steps and then stopping to breathe deeply. We put our parkas back on once we crossed the glacier, and as we were ascending, it was really hot. I didn’t know if it truly was hot, if it was because I was exerting so much energy, or if this was a precursor to something really bad happening to me. I asked Azam if it was cold and he said yes, so I kept my jacket on.

At one of the steep sections of the hike, one of our porters was sitting off to the side, saying something that we could not understand, but did not appear that he was unwilling to move. Eventually, another one of our porters came back down the mountain to help him. We later found out that, the porter who stopped was scared of the mountain and that the last time he did the pass was some 10 years ago. Luckily the porters work as a tight group and were there to help him safely make it over the pass. Yeah … the porters were scared too.

We were maybe hiking up the mountain for two hours with our crampons when we finally reached the pass. It was 4 AM and we rejoiced with our crew not only that we made it, but we were very strong with our hiking and we all made it very safely. The sun didn’t start to rise until 430 and I knew every moment that altitude was putting myself and others more at risk, so after we took a couple group pictures and welcome the Spaniards to the top, I decided I wanted to go down and Andy was going to stay behind for a couple minutes to take some photos. Ali and Ibrahim left with me, and Azam and Nazir stayed behind with Andy.

Our crampons stayed on for the short walk over the pass, which was still quite steep, and I took it very slowly as it was still pitch black and I did not know what was ahead of me. Once we hit the rocky path, this is where the real danger began.

I was between Ali and Ibrahim, and they both helped me secure my harness to the fixed ropes for the descent. No one prepared us for the true danger of what this descend meant. All of the climbers had to wear helmets and now we understood why. The mountain was insanely steep, I’m guessing maybe 60 to 70° in some points. At the top, it was icy on the rope and on some of the rock faces. We had to lower ourselves using our arm strength on the fixed rope. There was no walking down. Luckily we both had strong leather gloves on that were able to stand the force of us letting the rope slip, albeit tightly, through our hands. Then for the final dangerous factor, this side of the mountain was made up of unstable rocks that quickly crumbled into big chunks whenever you exert some force on them (like trying to slow the fuck down). For all of these factors, teams could only descend one group at a time. Ali was yelling at the porters below, trying to understand if they had already moved on to the next fixed rope line, so that we knew they were out of the way, and that we could use the fixed rope for our descent. Once I got over the initial shock of what I had to do to get down, I was quite confident in my arm strength, so I had no problem quickly moving down the mountain. I now understood the advantages of being first to descend. It wasn’t so that the rocks would be frozen to the side of the mountain, it’s so the climbers wouldn’t accidentally kick rocks on your head.

Andy made his way off the peak at 4:15am and quickly started his descent with Nasir and Azam. There was already a rush to be to the next in line to clip in and get off the summit. Once they started down the rock fall they quickly hit a couple points where other teams were prematurely trying to descend as well which turned into a screaming match as they kicked rocks down on them. They descended even faster to get out of dangers way. Long sections of rope were tied together to get past some of the sections and union knots were randomly placed to fix broken line. This would mean that we would have to release and reattach our harness in the middle of a steep descent (didn’t read that fucking point anywhere). At one point, Andy was moving so quickly that he didn’t see a union knot coming and he got yanked super hard and had to pull his entire bodyweight up 6ft to a foot hold to be able to release his harness and then make his way down unclipped to then reattach it on the other side. Another fun factor was during certain rope transitions, they were so far apart, there would be a rope that was cut at the end so you could swing over to the other fixed line. This rope was not clearly marked, and Andy quickly realized when he attached his harness to a free rope, which could have resulted to him falling to his death if he treated it like a fixed line. Again, so many ways people could have made serious mistakes. As we were descending, if a big rock was knocked loose and started to fall, it was up to that team to catch it so that it didn’t continue to fall down the mountain and inadvertently hit someone below. Andy’s team stopped about 10 large rocks from falling on our team below. Our guide later told us stories of people killed on that section by rockfall…  perhaps knowing that ahead of time would not have been wise. Both of our glove were thrashed and thank god we both had leather gloves or the descent would have been a different story.

Finally morning light was upon us and we could start to see the beautiful mountain range in the valley that we were descending upon. With the morning light we saw a massive  avalanche dumping into the valley below filling the valley floor with a white plume. Our whole team was moving quickly, knowing the faster we got down and away from the falling rocks the safer we would be. In the distance on the other side of the valley, there was just continuous rockfall that we could see and hear that also reminded us how dangerous this mountain was.

It took us probably an hour and a half to descent on this section, part of it was because we were waiting for those below us to move on. Once we reached the bottom of the fixed rope portion, our strenuous descent was not over. We still had to traverse the rockfall mountain and although I wanted to celebrate, I did not feel we were yet in the clear. We traversed and descended down the side of the mountain for another 30 minutes or so until we hit the top of the glacier. Holy shit what a relief. It was at this point I felt somewhat safe from the rockfall, but we still had to make it to camp.

This is where Andy and I finally took a breath to start to process what we have been through. I was exhausted, and my body was unsure of the what I had just put it through, and my brain could not really process what we had just accomplish and the dangerousness of it all as well.

Although we thought the hard part was over, we still had to walk an hour and a half over very rocky and undulating glacier. We were completely exhausted and I was just happy the sun was not yet out. We had not had any food or drink since dinner the night before. It took every bit of energy we had to make it to camp. We arrived at 7:30 AM which meant that it took us eight hours to go from Ali camp to Khuispang. The porters had already arrived and set up our tent and the food tent. They also had set out a mat for us to relax outside upon our arrival, to which once I reach, I just laid down in complete and total exhaustion.

This valley and the camp was absolutely beautiful. We walked through so many different wildflowers and funny enough, the fields had edelweiss growing. We drank tea and ate some cookies as we tried to process what just happened to us. To add to our entertainment as we awaited our fellow climbers, the mountain just across from us on the other side of the valley had almost constant, massive avalanche and rockfall.

We were the first ones on summit and the first ones to camp. While we relaxed and slightly napped, we would awaken to the sound of another team finally getting into camp and noted the time of their arrival. The next people didn’t arrive until 930am, 2 hours after our arrival. We could only imagine the trouble the other people had descending that mountain, assuming that not all of them had perhaps the confidence or the arm strength to quickly or safely descend. The next team arrived another hour later and then all the other team after the 12 hour mark. There were many porters running up tea and cookies for teams too exhausted to continue and donkeys were finally sent up to retrieve people who could not make the trek back to camp. The weather was mostly cloudy, which meant it was a perfect day for napping with some sunlight shining throughout the day. We napped and we ate, we ate and we napped. An early dinner meant an early bedtime as we were totally done and had no more energy to give the day. Our dinner was fantastic, and Ali made us a “congratulations for GG La” on his delicious flan dessert. Andy and I just looked at each other in disbelief at what we had just gone through with almost a loss for words … and then we passed the fuck out. That was no doubt, the hardest and most dangerous activity we have ever done, and now that it is over, one of the most rewarding.