Nikolay Totmyanin. Melungtse expedition, spring-2005 / Climb / Mountain.RU

For the first time I learned about Melungtse through an internet-release of the on-coming project organized by Jury Koshelenko and Il'iyas Tukhvatullin. I read about it and forgot right the moment.

The Team: Jury Koshelenko, Carlos Buller, Nikolay Totmyanin

It was the early March when the Everest expedition that I had been invited to take part in and for which I had been training all the autumn and winter long not even thinking about other walls except for Everest North Face, was planned to start in a little while.

Jury called me on March, 29 and told that Il'iyas had some medical problems; his participation in the expedition was doubtful and in case of doctors would convince Il'iyas to refuse the trip he suggested me to go instead of him. On April, 1 I found out that Il'iyas would not go and literally "jumped into a leaving train". I had no time to be rapt in contemplation, but made the decision after the weighted analysis of the situation. I wanted to go to Nepal, and destiny gave me this chance.

I was in a good shape, mood and organizational context to climb a high- altitude mountain on a complex route. I had never met the participants of our forthcoming ascent in mountains before, but it did not confuse me, as for 14 years of working as a guide I have got hand in ascents with foreign climbers: two Russian masters of sports can find a common language. It is not a troublesome problem.

Approximate a two-week approach up to the base camp made us got acquainted. We literally found common language: English with Rostov-St.Petersburg -Montana accent and made a style of mutual relations that suited all of us. It was my first nonalcoholic, vegetarian expedition :-).

The every day of the expedition had been thought out beforehand. We got the foot of the mountain, set the base camp and started to make reco of climbing area, mountain, weather conditions and everything, that could help or prevent us to summit.

The base camp was installed at 4700 m directly opposite to the mountain. Despite of the huge size of Northern Face, we determined only two variants of the route of ascent which were less riskful for us to be buried under ice collapses from many hanging glaciers every minute.

One of the variants coincided with a line which Americans tried to pave in 1999. It is a beautiful ice route and, probably, the shortest way to main Melungtse summit from the North. The temptation was great, but we had to refuse this variant because in the top part of the route, almost under the summit, a huge serac with an inclination in the "right" side was formed and it could fall and "clean" the entire mountain up to the foot at any moment.

The second variant was a line on the right part of the wall: longer and more technically complex, but safer and not less beautiful. The beginning of the route presents a vertical ice cascade of about 250 meters. Complex ice, especially its part formed with a system of icicles in the middle of the cascade. We had to climb it accurately trying not to drop all this beauty, and tried to organize safe belay at something fragile and openwork. After the cascade, on the right side of a rocky ledge there is a convenient place for spending the night. The next pitch went via a snow-ice slope with several verticals ice and mixed sites and a place for spending the night under the main rocky wall.

This vertical rocky wall with overhanging and cornices is dissected with a narrow, inclined small ice river - float - in the average part of the route. Up to the float there are three ice-snow and mixed pitches. The exit on the float is an excellent snow ledge under a cornice, "Hotel Melungtse". You would not invent the better place for spending the night on the wall!

The float represents long sites of excellent tough ice alternating with very difficult mixed sites. There are not any convenient places for lying spending the night on the float and upper on an ice slope. The passage from the float to the ice slope is the crux of the route: two pitches of vertical rocks and ice. Further 3 pitches up to the shoulder on the ridge. The ridge is abrupt with good ice on rocks: we climbed it with pleasure and safe belay. There are 15 pitches from there up to the summit.

We started climbing right the way we conceived. As we had planned to work against 10 days we took only necessary gear: nothing superfluous.

The entire route we free climbed leading by turns. Everyone worked both on ice, and on rocks doing ourselves proud. Personally to me our company appeared very comfortable.

Jury and Carlos are the reliable partners, competent climbers and just good people.

We climbed the wall but did not summit. We had enough gear, food, gas, clothes. The altitude did not "oppress" and the weather was tolerant. But for the sixth day of our ascent Jury got some health problems due to his old backbone trauma.

The doctor's consultations did not give us encouraging results, and we made a decision to descend via the route of ascent. I felt OK at the high altitude and below, Carlos was OK too, but we did not consider the variant of summiting by reduced strength of our team as it would be unreal to make a summit push from the last place of spending the night and descend for one day.

That is why we started to descent at an easy pace but then gathered momentum and just jumped off the ice-fall having got under a cold falls.

If we had reached the summit it would be possible to speak about a new route of 6-th-grade that can be compared to the routes on Khan Tengri North Face.

While my recollection is lively, I've got a strong desire to come back once again to this surprising, remote and differ in appearance corner in Tibet and to climb this beautiful mountain. Actually, I do not know how it will happen in reality.

Anyway, ascent on new summits and climbing new routes were, are and will be the most attractive sides in mountaineering.

After Jannu ascent nothing can surprise me. I even can not imagine the Mountain that can cause similar sensations. And my opinion about styles in mountaineering is that the master key is necessary for each lock.

It seems to me that contrast, comparison, opposition of styles reduces competition of a man with nature to competition between people that contradicts the essence of mountaineering: if one style is bad, and another is good, the one who goes good style is a cooler climber.

From the Melungtse ridge I saw Cho Oyu and it fell into my mind to climb this great altitude: up and down, there and back, quickly and easily. I'm going there in autumn...