Professional Documents
Culture Documents
thoughts &
suggestions
1988
2 and 4
2010
This I think was the stumbling block in 2010?
The main problem in the autumn is the fact that there is a substantial river run-
ning under the scree but quite close to the surface in places making the central
part in particular rather unstable ...
if I remember correctly we fixed a handrail for the porters at this point.
The upper photo shows the porters crossing and the lower one looking back after
the first recce ... figure on the skyline indicates scale.
The section after the landslip is initially easy but after a couple of hours the route
finding becomes decidedly awkward eventually leading up toward fairly imposing
cliffs. A path round the foot of these is tenuous and in fact we had to build cairns
with which to convince our porters that people had been over before. A slip here
would not be funny ... we lost one barrel which was rescued by a couple of the
lads a couple of days later (an outstanding effort).
On the upper photo figures can be seen exiting this section onto a flat and
spectacular campsite. Although of course nothing like it ... the big towering
slabby cliffs above and the spectacular drops below add to an atmosphere that
we all likened to that of the Eiger north wall. A strange and imposing place.
The picture below shows the gorge which we never saw into in the seven or
eight weeks we were in the area ... apparently tried by a Polish party in the
early ‘80’s as a route in! Bad move I think!
Our cook died from pulmonary oedema here ... no way to lose height for two days
... I backtracked half way back down into the jungle to meet up with (Dr) Iain Tat-
tersal who had stayed on in Kathmandu to see his medical kit through customs ...
despite an heroic sprint back by Tat ... I at least was acclimatised ... the lad was
dead when we got back. He is buried here ... adding I suppose to its oppressive
atmosphere. The pic below shows a rock shelter just below the col ... which even
in the autumn had snow on it. The col itself is flat and in cloud could be awkward to
navigate across.
The upper picture looks across to A3 from high on the Machapuchare ridge
...somewhat above the col.
The lower looks down into the valley where we had base camp. To the best of
my memory it was about 3500 ft down and I suspect that radio reception even
by sat phone could be very awkward.
Upper pic looking toward ABC from BC and the lower looking toward BC from
ABC. I have a feeling that if you use a helicopter to get in that you may not be
able to call one in to evacuate you should the need arise in which case the route
finding on the Pokhara side of the Machapuchare ridge could do for you... un-
less you had prior knowledge. The section of grass seen to the left of the bam-
boo wand in the upper picture was the only place where we used fixed ropes on
the entire trip .... steep greasy and with a fast flowing glacial river waiting for any
slips!
Back in 1988 we were a young and
relatively unheard of team... only
Mal having any significant repu-
tation in the Himalaya ... We got
nowhere on this trip (though history
now counts getting to BC as quite a
reasonable achievement!) because
approaching the ridge was impos-
sible due to constant heavy
avalanche action.