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Mountain photos - amateur
and professional photos of mountains.
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Author:
Sergey Bogomolov, Saratov
Ama Dablam (6856 m)
After in the spring of 1993 a team of Russian climbers, led by Sergey Borisovich Efimov, at participation of an Englishman Rick Allen first summited Dhaulagiri, North Face, and became Piolet d’or nominees something like "vacuum" appeared in my climbing activity, hardly diluted with fall's "jogging" - trekking up to Annapurna base camp. We screamed the real expedition. Vladimir Bashkirov suggested to lead a new route on Ama Dablam. Though the main thing at decision-making was a good financial ability of it, this mountain was very attractive for climbers. In fact everybody of us holds on a sign such beautiful summits as Jannu, Ama Dablam, Machapuchare …
The expedition began from Moscow where we came together with my wife Galina. She was going to see me off and was shocked in Sheremetyevo airport, when did not see the usual Himalayan expeditions size of luggage. She suspected wrong: where were we going? And would we have a chance to summit in general? The final structure of the team looked so: Bashkirov Vladimir, Moscow - the
leader, I knew Botov and Bashkirov well and never met Golubtsov in mountains before. But as a rule problems do not happen to a good person. Nikolay Petrov was going to join us, but right before our departure he was deadly injured in an accident. We cherish the memory of him. The company was added by Bashkirov's wife Natalia and Masha Hlyzova who was carrying out something like producer functions.
All organizational affairs in the Ministry of tourism of Nepal we reduced to a minimum, having specified in plans, that our base camp would be in the settlement of Pangboche and we would not need local cooks and kitchen boys. With the help of yaks first we reached the classical base camp where an Austrian expedition was camping. Unfortunately they seemed to be afraid of Russians due to their prepossession and we couldn’t contact them.
Then we set our own base camp at 5300 m just opposite Ama Dablam Southern - East face and the Southern buttress that goes down from its East Ridge. In the base camp Dmitry Botov and I reminisced with a vengeance our joint winter Pobeda peak ascent. That time their team headed by “Iron Bell” - Vladimir Balyberdin - moved right after my team. The last assault camp they set 150 - 200 meters below than our one. But this, insignificant, apparently, nuance played a significant role, affected on results of the ascent: we could summit, but they - couldn't! Before starting our climbing on Ama Dablam we made acclimatization ascent up to 6000 meters at nearby top. And then, having had a rest a little, we began to climb the planned route: via a snow - ice buttress of the East Ridge that extended to the right from Southeast face. Already at first spending the night we began to unload. Probably, we had heaved the hatchet with food and gear: our rucksacks nearly crushed us. First of all we left part of food allaying ourselves with the thought that at high altitude you did not want to eat at all. This statement, in a principle, is fair though I remember that my organism used to argue against that quite often. It took us 3 days to overcome the buttress of steepness 45 - 60 degrees and covered with rigid ice. Constantly we used ice-screws. The leader used ice hammers. We had a rope for each participant - a classical variant. It was convenient climbing ice: practically always, even on enough abrupt sites we could cut down a platform under a tent or a bandbox for sitting spending the night. We began to meet mixed sites when passed to the East Ridge.
And having finally reached it we quailed at its sight. It was so narrow! How could we go along it?!
All fourth day we balanced on "knife": upwards, downwards, falling and rising. Further we adapted and climbed on the left, on our course, side of the ridge. It was much more abrupt, but we could belay there. Vladimir Bashkirov was constantly shooting a lot. He was rather gifted person, and owned a video-camera more confidently than many professionals did. Till now I consider the film about our Ama Dablam ascent in 1994 that he and Sergey Markin created together as the best mountaineering film. Constantly we had problems with sites for spending the night. We had to cut down a narrow ridge, attaching our tent like a starling house.
The narrowness on spending the night sometimes led to undesirable consequences. After Sergey awkwardly moved his elbow, a helmet and a camera departed to a precipice. Only at the last spending the night we could sleep normally: the ridge became wider, and we could settle down enough comfortably. We were exhausted because of enormous specific loading. But the most of all was fell to Sergey Golubtsov. Every day his climbing ability fell, his face turned more and more yellow. Already after we summited the mountain it was found out, that it was a nepalese hepatites and the peak of it fell within our ascent. The infection he caught for nothing: he was tempted with ice-cream in a hall of local airport while we expected the plane to Lukla. Finally after eighth climbing days on April, 28, 1994 we reached the summit. Excellent weather was a munificent reward to us.
Descent via the route of ascent took one and half a day. We rappelled 40-m pitches 40 times using hangers that added adrenaline: you understand that it is a very safe thing, but it looks haywire. And every time when you had to weight the rope you did not feel sure. However the weariness and desire to descend quicker forced to reject doubt away. During descent Dmitry missed a rope having forgotten to clip it in time. In the rest everything passed quite safely. Having descended up to the base camp, I squatted near a tent, and had no force to stand up. All my forces I lost on the Mountain. Our route we named “The Russian way”. October, 17, 2004 |
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