An
alternative more sporting approach to
the Everest region is through the remote and mysterious
Rolwaling Valley - described in Tom Weir's book "East of
Kathmandu" and also visited by
( Sir ) Chris Bonington on an abortive expedition in search of
the legendary yeti.
It
was at the trailhead at Charicot that I
first met Nima when he was recruited by our sirdar Lal
Bahadur as a porter on his very first trek. I watched in
disbelief as the two huge kitbags of Horst
and his wife Ursula tottered off on a pair of spindly brown legs.
However Nima was to accompany me
for 32 days all the way to Gokyo and back to the roadhead at Jiri.
From
Charicot we headed up the scenic,
steep-sided valley of the Tamba Khosi. High waterfalls
cascaded from the heights and rudimentary bridges crossed the
many side-streams. Ahead, the twin
summits of Gauri Shanker, once thought to be the world's highest
mountain, provided a prominent
landmark.
Beyond
Nima's home village of Tashinam we
walked for two days on faint, little-used paths through
dark, gloomy forests before reaching the Rolwaling Valley and
Beding, the main village of the local
community of Sherpas with its large chorten ( Buddhist shrine ),
gompa, and stone-built houses with
their fluttering prayer flags.
The
gompa serves as the birth control
centre - when the population of the isolated valley starts to
exceed the available food supply more young men are put into the
gompa to become lamas
( Buddhist monks ).
Lal
Bahadur had been left behind at the
police post at Semigaon to sort out problems with our
climbing permits and had not been seen for three days. Nuru,our
cook, was worried. "Much danger in
forest - bears - tigers". A search party was dispatched but
shortly afterwards Lal Bahadur turned
up safely - despite having walked all night through the forests.
High
in a side-valley, above the summer
settlement of Na with its yak pastures and stone-walled
potato fields, we encamped in a wide snow-basin enclosed by the
ice-bound Chugimago and Yalung Ri.
A magnificent outlook extended across the Rolwaling Valley to the
imposing Chobutse and Kang
Nachugo lining the northern border with Tibet.
At
our high camp Horst was suffering from a
slight touch of altitude sickness and I set off with
Lal Bahadur for Ramdung Go - the first of our two climbing
objectives. Successfully negotiating a
verglassed boulder field we gained the broad, easy-angled neve of
the upper glacier but our efforts
were then frustrated by the recent snowfall of deep, soft snow.
We pushed on to reach a rocky
prominence ( c5600metres ) to enjoy our packed lunch encircled by
a tremendous himalayan
landscape: Gauri Shankar, Kang Nachugo, Chobutse and Chugimago
all resplendent in dazzling
marble-white against an azure sky. Only a short distance away the
steep prow of Ramdung soared
above the glacier but we had run out of time - a further high
camp would have been necessary and
this was outwith our schedule.
Two
days later we left Na to continue our
journey up the Rolwaling Valley to encamp in a grassy
ablation valley ensconced beneath the large Tsho Rolpa lake at
the terminus of the Trakarding
Glacier. Scrambling up the loose, rough scree of the moraine wall
next morning we gained a dramatic
view the length of the lake to the huge triangular east face of
Kang Nachugo. In the opposite
direction the white massif of Piphera Go Char and our second
objective of Pharchoma formed a great
barrier sweeping up at the head of the glacier. A level walk
along the crest of the moraine soon
came to an abrupt end and we dropped down to pursue a tortuous
and hazardous route across narrow
ice-bridges between huge, yawning crevasses splitting the
corrugated surface of the glacier.
Clearing the zone of continuous stonefall cascading from the
rotten cliffs of Chobutse we
climbed above the glacier to pitch our tents on a set of small
platforms levelled out by previous
groups.
An
easy rock buttress and ice-bound couloir
by-passed the foot of the ice-fall tumbling from the
Drolamboa Glacier but ropes were then required to negotiate a
short ice-wall before we emerged onto
the gentle gradient of the upper snowfields between an avenue of
magnificent peaks. An arduous
ascent of a steep, hard-snow slope attained the 5,800metre top of
the Trashi Labtse sandwiched
between Pharchoma and the sheer rock precipices of the
neighbouring Tengi Kagi Tau. Just below the
col an overhang provided a shelterstone for our tents. Below us
to the east the twin peaks of
Thamserku and Kantaiga glowed a golden orange in the final rays
of the setting sun.
The
steep, blue-ice taxed my nerve and
cramponing ability to the limit but at last I stood with
Lal Bahadur on the narrow, corniced, summit ridge of Pharchoma.
Far below snaked the lateral
moraines and white-ice of the Drolamboa Glacier flanked by the
avenue of great rock and snow peaks.
Beyond the nearby Chobutse we could see Kang Nachugo and the twin
summits of Gauri Shanker. To the
east the tops of Everest, Lhotse and Makalu protruded like
islands from a sea of lesser peaks. With
difficulty we could distinguish Chamlang, Baruntse, Ama Dablam
and also Kang Taiga and Thamserku
the sentinels above Namche Bazaar. Across the pass loomed the
unclimbed, spire of Tengi Kagi Tau.
On
the col our camp had already been
vacated. Horst had again been suffering from the altitude and,
with Ursula and the rest of our trekking crew, had descended into
the valley of the Thame Khola.
Not
until well after dark, leg weary and
foot-sore after a 2000metre descent and 14 hours on the
go, did Lal Bahadur and I rejoin them in the village of Thame.
It
was then only a half day downhill to
Namche - and a further eight days hard walking across four
passes to the roadhead at Jiri.
