Trying For the Summit

It was snowing for the whole night again thus it was impossible to leave very early in the morning. About 4 am the snow started to stop falling and at 4:30 Jan found the sky to be clear. Time to go for the summit. We prepared 2 liters of tea (1 for each of us). But cooking / boiling of water at such height means at least 1,5 hrs of time. More to that it was impossible that two people could get ready in the small tent at the same time. Thus Jan left at 6 and I did at 6:30 am. The weather was beautiful. Jan was ahead by tens of meters but his hunger for the summit was stopped by the first eave that was quite a difficult one (combination of steep angle and lot of fresh snow). I took the lead and laboured among the unstable boulders up towards the summit. After that followed a steep slope with some 40 - 50 cm of snow. My walking pace shortened from 20 to 10 steps, at difficult parts even 5 steps, then breathing out. Climbing started to change into a continuous struggle.

And in the sky clouds started to cumulate. At one point Jan even exclaimed: "I'm not going any more". But I still felt that it was possible to reach the peak. Jan changed his mind after a while saying: "I'm not going down without you, I will continue". Through the veil of fresh snow we felt under our boots the old frozen snow which wasn't really helping our will to go on. This deep avalanche snow then changed into ice on a small ridge. That was much better and safer in a way. I stopped counting the steps in between the breath outs, I already broke my limits. That was at the height of 7750 m. After few more vertical meters a second veil arose in front of us. Lot of fixing ropes melted into the ice told us that it was the most difficult point on Shisha Pangma. I entered the area cautiously and tried few meters. But immediately it was clear: "With the unstable layer of all that fresh snow it's impossible to pass through here". Anywhere I put my boot clad with crampons the feet started to drift along with the snow under it. The smooth rock was impossible to recognize under the snow. Any major slip could have ended up in falling from the mountain.

I proposed to try to go more to the left and try from another side and I also tried. But when I saw the slope angle with a literally 'ripe' possibility of an avalanche breaking off under some of the bothering steps or moves I recalled what the Australian mountaineer said about lot of snow and high avalanche danger. I sat down exhausted from the climb and from all those tries to bulldoze the way up through. The Jan said: "Hold on, I will take a picture of you". After a while I turned my head and understood: behind me a giant accumulation of 'ripe' clouds was swiftly climbing up from the valley. In only about twenty minutes the snow started to fall again. When we were coming to the C3 tent it was a total snow storm raging around. The height border of 7800 m was unsurpassable on this mountain.