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18 May
1997 Peak
Practices The
world's great peaks were once the sole preserve of heroic climbers; now most of
us can have the world at our feet. By SIMON WILLIS Mountain
mornings start early. "Bed tea, Sir?" inquired a voice which seemed
to be part of my dream. "Milk tea or green tea?" it wanted to know
- not from inside my head, but outside my tent. Predawn decision making is
not my strong point, but in the last week I'd discovered that the local green
tea tasted best at ten thousand feet above sea level. As the sugar kicked in,
I lifted the tent flap and gazed directly upwards, at the still dark summits
of some seriously big mountains. Within a few days, if all went well, I'd
discover what one of them looked like from the top. At one
time, the world's Greater Ranges were the sole preserve of heroic mountain
men. These were accomplished climbers, who'd served long apprenticeships on
cold Scottish winter and long Alpine summer routes. Now, almost any hill
walker with fifteen hundred pounds and three weeks to spare can buy an all-in
holiday to a summit higher than anything in the continent of Europe. The mighty
Himalaya and Karakoram are now being conquered by a new army of adventure
travellers: the Package Tour Peak Baggers. Most head
for Nepal where no fewer than eighteen Himalayan mountains have been labelled
"trekking peaks". Travel companies provide one or two experienced
Western guides to supervise the ascent, while everything else is organised by
a local firm. The Karakoram mountains of Northern Pakistan are less
developed. Commercially guided summits are still quite rare, but this lack of
choice is more than compensated for by awesome mountain scenery, dramatic
enough to bring our group of a dozen assorted hikers halfway around the world
to attempt something the brochure called Gondoro Peak. We'd all
met for the first time at Heathrow airport. Two flights and two hotels later,
we were leaving the town of Skardu and bouncing down an excuse for a road in
a convoy of open top cargo jeeps. Perched on kit bags, our expedition members
finally had a chance to get to know one another. One chap,
well into his fifties, was the Chief Executive of a Training and Enterprise
College. Shouting above the old diesel engine, he explained that he and his
wife were keen walkers who wanted to see the view from something bigger than
a Lake District fell. An older couple, a company director and a lawyer, told
us they'd tried easier treks in Nepal and fancied telling their grandchildren
about a real mountain adventure in Pakistan. Another pair had flown from San
Francisco, seeking an alternative to the Sierra Nevada. As the jeeps wheels
skimmed the edge of track, sending lumps of the crumbling surface spinning
into the river far below, I thought what a rich fund of stories we'd all
have. If we returned. Our trek
began at the end of, what seemed like, the world's longest cul-de-sac. The
jeep track has only just managed to reach Hushe village. Ten thousand feet
above sea level, it's an isolated settlement of about one hundred homes built
from stones and mud. Life for the locals has always been hard, battling
extremes of sun, snow and altitude to grow barely enough food to feed
themselves and their animals. Before the jeeps, the nearest neighbours were
two days walk away, and they didn't like their daughters marrying Hushe men,
because they knew they'd live hard, short lives. Hushe could not have been
further from the tourist trail. So it was precisely the sort of place that
adventure tourists sought out. While we
ate breakfast, men appeared from their homes and gathered around us. These
were our porters, the people employed to walk with us to base camp. While our
rucksacks would carry just a few belongings, such as cameras and waterproofs,
they would lug all our heavy gear, our tents, cooking stoves, our food and
their own rations for the next ten days. I watched a man, old enough to be my
father, hoist onto his back a kit bag that I could barely lift. It was more
than embarrassing, it screamed exploitation. As we
walked together, Abdulla Javed corrected me. Politely, but firmly, he pointed
out that this was fairly easy work compared to what he and his friends had
been used to. Javed was born in Hushe and had grown up working as a farmer
until, about fifteen years ago, the mountain tourism business arrived. From
porter to cook to high altitude porter, he had worked his way up, and he was
now an experienced mountain guide. Wages are regulated by the government and
at eight pounds a day for a guide, four pounds for a porter, Javed considered
them to be good money. Most importantly, he insisted, it had made the
difference between a life of subsistence struggle, and one with some sort of
quality. "Breathtaking"
is a word too often used to describe dramatic scenery. At ten thousand feet
above sea level, it's not a cliche, it's a scientifically accurate
description. Walking, let along climbing, leaves you gasping for breath. The
air is thin up here. Package tourist and mountain men alike must allow time
for their bodies to acclimatise to the altitude. Most people suffer a
headache, nausea, and a loss of appetite, but these pass quite quickly. As do
the porters who, totally at home in such rarefied conditions, stroll past
with their loads, smiling quietly at the wheezing westerners. Consequently,
each day is divided into two halves; walking and recovering. Breakfast usually
consists of porridge, eggs and deep fried chapatis. Then rucksacks go on and
the hard business of hiking lasts for about four or five hours. Along the
way, the cook team overtakes in a clanking blur of stoves and kerosene cans.
A simple lunch of soup, cheese, crackers and meat or fish-spread is waiting
on arrival. Photography, lazing around and breathing deeply takes up the rest
of the day until dinner. Served in a big mess tent, with metal plates
balanced on knees, the menu alternates between Western and Pakistani food.
The latter usually tastes best. It is by no means a luxurious lifestyle, but
it is pretty comfortable, particularly when the location is taken into
account. To walk
from Hushe into the mountains is to rise through layer after layer of
landscape. At first, it is lush and green, with every available piece of land
cultivated and carefully irrigated by an extensive network of mud channels.
Each evening, the older children shovel the sludge gates which direct and
redirect the flow of water around the crops. A little
further up the valley, dog roses and small pine trees scent the air and
provide welcome shade when the sun climbs over the steep rocky walls. In just
such an oasis, at a place called Saitcho, an entrepreneur called Hakim, has
built a small shop and restaurant where he sells drinks, biscuits and chips
to hungry, thirsty trekkers. It sits at a crossroads of two mighty glaciers,
and marks the entry point into an entirely different world: a world without
trees; without grass; without any visible life. Hakim's is the cafe at the
edge of our Universe. What lies
beyond is creation in action. An unfinished symphony of shattered rock and
ice, where God is still at work. Here he wears a hard hat, not a halo. The
continental plates are still shifting, pushing up these peaks by a few
millimetres every year. Mountain sized heaps of moraine are ground out by the
glaciers, great highways of ice driving through the rubble of this almighty
construction site. For four days we toiled up the ice filled valley,
sometimes hiking on the rubble spat out to the side, at other times stepping
carefully on the ice itself. With no clear path, and with every boulder
likely to be loose, admiring the scenery came second to carefully calculating
each footfall in this ankle snapping terrain. But when we did stop - the view
was utterly fantastic. A panorama of pinnacles and spires, sharper than
sharks teeth, forcing clouds to rise to avoid being impaled. Gondoro
Peak is not in quite the same league, but is challenge enough. Base camp was
tucked away in a small, attractive, half hidden valley, on probably the only
spot of grass for fifty miles where the hazard was not avalanches, but
something altogether more basic and human. The beautiful little stream which tumbled
over the ice wall into the campsite had been used by a previous trekking
group as a toilet. Delightful. Fearing infection, we decided to attempt the
climb that night. There was
no bed tea this time, just the alarm clocks and the adrenaline of an uncertain
group of hill walkers who wondered if they were really up to what lay ahead.
One of our Western guides took the lead, the other walked at the rear, and
our curious crocodile started its single file ascent, like a bizarrely well
equipped school outing. For the first two hours we laboured by the light of
our head torches to cross a boulder field. Then we reached the snow, and had
to pull out ice axes and strap spiked crampons onto boots to make sure we
didn't slip. It was the first time some of the group had worn these foot
fangs, and they had to practice the waddling walk needed to avoid skewering
your own ankle. A long,
rolling snow field lay ahead, still crisp and frozen as the first light crept
into the sky. Slow and steady was the best technique. Count the paces, pause
and count again while the breathing returns to normal. From the valley,
Gondoro peak didn't look as impressive as its neighbours, but from its
slopes, this was a very fine mountain indeed. The top section is shaped like
a pyramid, one side of which is climbed in a series of twenty to thirty foot
high snow steps. Some of these steps were relatively easy climbs. On others
our two guides fixed ropes to which we could clip safety devices to arrest a
fall. It was remarkable how quickly beginners took to all of this, front
pointing their crampons and daggering their new ice axes, all the exhausting
way to the top. Looking at
the faces around me it was clear everyone shared the same two reactions to
reaching the summit - satisfaction and genuine, utter surprise. We shook
hands, took photos, and gloried in our location and our achievement. There we
stood, on a point four times higher than anything in the British Isles;
higher even than any European mountain. We were eighteen thousand, five hundred
and thirty seven feet above the level of the sea. And if we could do it, then
almost anyone could. Simon
Willis travelled with KE Adventure Travel of 32 Lake Road, Keswick, Cumbria
CA12 5DQ. Tel:
01787 73966 Fax: 01687 74693 TRAVEL
BRIEF KE
Adventure Travel took the first tourists to Hushe Valley and also raised
money to install a clean water pipeline to the village. Consequently, a
special, friendly relationship has grown up between the people of Hushe and
this firm. In 1997 they have four treks to climb Gondoro Peak, each costing
£1595 plus £60 insurance. Other Companies: Many other companies offer tours
to peaks in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges, among them: Himalayan
Kingdoms: 20 The Mall, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4DR Tel: 0117 923 7163 Exodus: 9
Weir Rd, London SW12 OLT Tel: 0181 673 0859 Explore
Worldwide, Aldershot, GU11 1LQ Tel: 01252 344161 A wide
range of smaller operators regular advertise in specialist hiking magazines
such as TGO -The Great Outdoors. There and
Back Again Getting to
and from the trek is an adventure in itself. Pakistan's national carrier is
PIA, and it flies from London and Manchester to Islamabad. While trying to
clear customs with piles of kit bags and climbing is a time consuming
experience, it serves as an effective cultural introduction, Asia for
beginners. Half an hour in a mini bus takes you to Rawalpindi which, although
considered a separate city, is really just the older and more interesting
part of Islamabad. Most treks and expeditions stay in the Shalimar Hotel,
where the lobby is always piled high with equipment. It is fairly basic, but
rooms have telephones, televisions and alcohol free mini bars. Your
travel tour will have told you, quite correctly that, since this is a Muslim
country, you can't bring in alcohol. However, you may notice your Western
trek leader swigging bottles of local beer. No-one has ever fully explained
to me why a Muslim country has a brewery, even if it is in an old British
hill fort town, but in fairness, they do make the brew difficult to purchase.
You have to register yourself with the authorities as a "Christian
alcoholic", and then you are allowed to purchase a certain number of
bottles each month. In view of the mountain of Pakistani paperwork this registration
process requires, you ought to be staying for a while and be very thirsty
indeed. Gondoro
Peak now lies in a restricted area which tourists need a permit to enter. The
tour company will arrange this, but the group will have to attend a briefing
session at the tourism ministry on the afternoon of arrival. The following
day, if the mountain weather is clear, a Boeing 737 will fly your group from
Islamabad to Skardu, the capital of one of the ancient mountain kingdoms of
Baltistan. This is
the world's most amazing, some would say terrifying, flight. The plane
doesn't go over the mountains, it goes through them. As the pilot threads his
way down long, winding valleys, the passengers stare up to the summits. As
the last valley narrows, its sheer sides of solid granite edge closer and
closer to the wing tips, until finally the aircraft bursts out into the open
at Skardu. The
alternative to flying is a two day drive along the Karakoram Highway, the
famous road between Rawalpindi and Kashgar in China. This journey is one of
those adventures which is great once you have done it, but is not so much fun
at the time. Bottles of fresh water, snacks, loo roll, books, and a Walkman
are survival essentials. In Skardu
most groups stay in the K2 motel. It is basic, but is steeped up to its
crampons in mountaineering history. The view from the garden over the Indus
could have come straight from a brochure for heaven. The drive
to Hushe takes two days, with a camping stop in Khaplu. It's tempting to try
to grab a seat inside one of the jeeps, but they can be hot and noisy. In
good weather, lying in the back on a pile of kitbags is a comfortable way to
travel, providing you don't have an ice axe digging in the ribs. Altitude
sickness is a constant consideration for group leaders. In the jeeps, and
during the trekking, you gain height all the time, so progress has to be at a
pace which permits acclimatisation. From London, it can take five days to
reach the start of the trek in Hushe, and a further nine or ten days to reach
the summit of Gondoro Peak, that's two weeks after setting out. Because the
return trip is downhill, it can be completed quickly and it's possible to
travel from Gondoro base camp to Skardu in just three days. Again, depending
upon the weather, the group will either fly back to Islamabad or take a bus
down the Karakoram Highway. In exceptionally bad weather, the road can become
blocked. On one occasion, four of us and nine kit bags squeezed into a series
of tiny jeeps and spent several days shuttling from one landslide to the
next. We waded through waist deep mud slicks which had washed the road away,
but we made it back to Islamabad in time for our flight home. |
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