| 1998
Mugs Stump Award Winners:
Beckwith/Buhler/Price/Isaac/Edwards—West
Kokshaal-Tau Range
Christian
Beckwith, Carlos Buhler, Mark Price, Sean Isaac & Guy
Edwards
This year, suported in part by a Mugs Stump grant, we went
to the Kizil-Asker valleys. Bad weather prevented us from
achieving two of our objectives—the north ridge and
east face of Kizil Asker—but we did manage to climb
10 new routes on eight new mountains. Four of the routes and
three of the mountains were climbed from the West Komorova
Glacier, which we reached in half a day from our basecamp.
One of them was the pyramidal peak we had tried the year before.
Carlos, Mark and I climbed it via the north face (V AI4, 2000
feet) while Guy soloed it via the west ridge, the route we
used for descent. Though we left ABC the same morning (5 a.m.),
Guy reached the top first and named the peak Butterfly Peak
(Pik Babuchka, ca.5220m) for all the butterflies he found
in the snow as he climbed. Guy then soloed a new route via
the southeast ridge of Peak Jerry Garcia before returning
to ABC. We topped out at sunset (9 p.m.) and did not get back
to ABC until 4 the next morning. Guy met us at Window Col
with water and clothes, then, after accompanying us back to
ABC, soloed an ice couloir (600 meters, AI3/4) on the east
face of the Ochre Walls and traversed the tops of two peaks
before descending a broader couloir roughly half a kilometer
to the north. He was back in camp by mid-morning, and named
the peaks Peaks Zuckerman (4750m) and Carnovsky (4700m) after
the Philip Roth book, Zuckerman Unbound, he was reading.
After a return to base camp, on July 10 I went with Sean and
Guy to a peak across the valley from Kizil Asker. The west
face was approximately 3500 feet; the bottom half was rock,
while the upper half was broken and probably would have yielded
moderate to difficult mixed climbing. We climbed 9 pitches
of rock up to 5.10d A1, one of moderate mixed and two roped
traverses/scrambles before finding a scree-covered ledge at
8 p.m., which we managed to even out just as a storm converged
on us. Sean and Guy had sleeping bags and bivy sacks; I had
a bivy sack. A lightning-ridden night ensued. In the morning
the storm continued, so we rapped down through waterfalls,
reaching ABC in the early afternoon.
On July 14, all five of us were back in ABC. Sean and Guy
began up the route again, while I with Carlos and Mark started
up the north ridge of Kizil Asker. We climbed some 800 meters,
including three pitches on the ridge proper, before we found
a slanting ledge to bivy on. A storm moved in that night;
when it showed no signs of letting up, we descended the next
morning, leaving behind four days of food. We reached ABC
in the storm to find that Guy had taken a 25-foot fall onto
a ledge, hurting his back. His rope had been nearly severed
by rock fall. The two had managed to descend, but he spent
the next two days on his back in the tent, unable to move.
By the 20th, he had recovered, and I joined him and Sean for
another session at ABC. By now, we had grown accustomed to
the very small windows of reasonably stable weather and decided
to concentrate on some day routes. Guy soloed Peak Bagger
(4600m) in an hour and a half on the evening of the 20th,
noting what looked like a cairn on top. The next day, the
three of us climbed Peak Ecstasy (ca.4700m) and Peak Yurnos
(ca. 4725m). The three pointy, picturesque mountains were
not technical, but offered fun routes to the tops, from which
the views would have undoubtedly been impressive had there
been any. The next day we were slated to climb a pointy mountain
at the foot (north) of Kizil Asker. I was sleeping at a camp
some half an hour from theirs; when my alarm failed to go
off, the two climbed Peak Ljosha (ca. 4600m, named for our
cook) via the north face (III AI3/4 5.8, 600m) without me.
After resting in BC for a day, we returned to ABC for a try
at the north face of Kizil Asker. On the 25th we ascended
to ca. 4800m via the glaciated slopes and bivied in a snow
cave. The next morning we began climbing, encountering a 400-meter
traverse on 50¯ snow that brought us to the col between
the north ridge and the summit. White-out conditions forced
us to wait in an ice cave and then later at the col for two
hours. When visibility ceased altogether, we decided to descend,
and continued down to ABC, arriving in the evening. That night,
a storm deposited a foot and a half of snow. I returned to
BC the next morning, followed by Sean a few hours later. The
others remained at ABC.
Though the weather the next day was the calmest we had seen
on the trip, illness and general disinclination prevented
me from returning to ABC the next day with Sean. Guy had started
out to solo the west face of Panfilovski Division, but had
felt ill as well and returned to his tent. (Bad mutton remains
the suspect.) Carlos and Mark began up an ice line on the
west face of Peak Carnovsky. When Mark lost the bolt from
the head of one of his ice tools, the pair, who had only three
ice screws, began moving quite slowly, and endured an open
bivy in a chimney on a small ledge. The next day they continued
the one and a half pitches to easy terrain which they followed
to the top of the ridge. On the descent, they rappelled near
the line of ascent, getting their ropes stuck twice and reaching
ABC at 8 p.m. That same day, Sean and Guy had climbed the
peak we had tried at the beginning of the trip, reaching the
top (ca. 5000m) via the west gully/north shoulder and naming
the mountain Peak Gronk. They returned to BC that day, followed
by Carlos and Mark the next morning. The truck had already
arrived, and we loaded it for departure and left by 5 p.m.
The Mugs Stump grant supported the costs of the three Americans,
as well as offsetting some of the costs of the Canadians.
We were able to climb and explore an area that offers amazing
unclimbed alpine and big-wall potential for the perservering
climber. We are all indebted to the Mugs Stump grant for helping
our adventures come true.
Christian Beckwith
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