K2 : The Journey of a Lifetime – 4
Episode 4
The blog covers the story of our epic journey to Concordia K2 which was my ultimate desire. It’ll be a five episode blog & I’ll try to cover the details of my experience of this memorable journey.
Fear, worry, scary, nervous, afraid, anxious & tense, that’s how the day started on a bright sunny morning in Concordia. Today it was a big day & the most challenging day of our trip. Crossing Gondogoro LA is considered to be a technical climb & this very thought had always created ttttrrrrr in my mind. Don’t ask me what this ‘ttttrrrr’ is. I hope you can understand my inner feelings. The plan was to take an early start & reach Ali Camp at noon, to take some rest & then resume our journey to Gondogoro LA top, starting midnight.
Just for your info, that Gondogoro Pass is a 5585 meter high mountain pass & connects the Gondogoro Glacier on the southwest and the Vigne Glacier on the northeast.
We were on the trek early morning & our first milestone was to cross Baltoro glacier & enter into Vigne glacier. It wasn’t an easy ride for the first hour of the trek & we had to cross a number of difficult ascends but slowly & gradually we were moving forward. The trek was started with six of us but soon, one of the individual had a feeling of pain in his chest. It was a symptom of altitude sickness so we decided to send him back & now we were five, even more conscious & scared. The only good thing was the view of mighty K2 which opened himself up for some exquisite views today. It was like a dream coming true.
We stopped at a number of places to sit quitely & watch this epic scene. K2 has that power to stop everything & that’s what was happening to us. One can sit hours to see the King in full glory. Our porters told us about the adjacent peak on the left of K2 which is called as “Son of K2”. It’s quite similar in shape & may be that’s why called his son.
The trek was widening up & a white motorway of glaciers was visible to us. We were taking turn to Vigne Glacier & it presented some out of the world scenery to us. This was extreme wilderness & one can lost himself in the beauty of this place. The glacier is named after Godfrey Vigne & made up of clear white snow. Initially, it starts with some stones but then transforms itself into a giant white road of extreme beauty.
The trek now is not that difficult but it’s a bit slippery at some points so one has to be careful all the way. The water streams are all around & it looks to beautiful to see blue waters roaming around around white snows. We saw some really awesome landscapes & these memories will never fade away. The crunchy sound of walking on this semi-hard snow, was a delight. We would have definitely missed these places, had we decided to return from Concordia.
It was a long walk on Vigne glacier but, Gondogoro LA was like an evil, always on our heads despite passing through these magnificent views. And this fear was making us, ask so many nitty gritties of the pass from our porters. The reply was very polite from them… “Ho jaye ga sahab” meaning “Don't worry, you’ll do it”. Little did we knew at that time, what Gondogoro LA will do with us.
The sky was changing its colors & in a matter of no time, there was cloud cover which converted into thick dark clouds. The trek also converted into soft snow & we had to be very conscious in lieu of any crevices. We were strictly following the footsteps of our guide & it was the first of such experience. The snow was around 2 ft deep & it was tricky to move around. However, the scenes were just amazing, something that we might not see anywhere else. The place was serene & we alone, were moving at snail’s pace. Simply magical!
The portion of reaching the top of Ali Camp was really tough as there was a fresh landslide which made it really scary. Somehow, we all managed to cross it & finally we were at Ali Camp. The rescue team at the camp warmly greeted us in their stone made hut. The hospitaility of the team was amazing & they served us Kashmiri chai which was awesome in this cold weather.
We reached Ali Camp at 2:15 PM & had completed the first milestone of today’s journey safely & successfully. Now was the time to take some rest & relax ourselves so that we are ready for tonight’s adventure.
So, after taking lunch we went inside our camps to have some sleep. I kept my eyes closed for ~1 hour but sleep was like very far away. Or may be upcoming adventure ride of the night was all over my mind & not making me sleep. Finally, I came out of the camp & tried engaging myself by chatting with rescue team & Umair who was quite relaxed, as always.
We had tea & snacks in the evening, roamed around Ali camp where the weather was clearing up finally. A over-sumptuous dinner was served, despite the fact that we were at 5000 meter altitude. And dessert after such a heavy dinner was just beyond any of our expectations.
We finally got ready at 10:30 PM, fully equipped with our gears & had a cup of tea before embarking on this adventurous ride of our life. It was 11 PM when we were there on the trek slowly moving up the hill. It was a dark night with some odd clouds here & there. A snow trek, most firm in the start but later on it converted into a soft fresh snow. At few points, the snow was really soft & my feet went more than 2 ft inside. But slowly & gradually, we were moving forward under the light of our headlamps, following the suits of rescue team guide. It wasn’t that frightening now, we were following each other & taking rests in between. The guides of the rescue team have developed a unique method of remembering the trek. They have placed sticks after every 100m of the trek which they put in vertical position, when they cross these points. In around 45 min, we crossed Munir camp, but didn’t stopped as it wasn’t that difficult trek at that stage. In that dark night, with snow all around, one can feel his relationship with that Universal Power that controls everything. After an hour from Munir camp, suddenly we saw a dark line in front of us. On getting close to it, it revealed that it’s the start of that steep ascend that is famous of this trek & that dark line was the ridge of Gondogoro pass.
The ropes were there but the challenge was to lift our bodies up & up & up. It was tough. Really tough. It was climbing, in fact a technical climb. At the end of the first climb I got extremely exhausted, only to see many more ascends ahead of me. It was hell scare now.
My heart was literally beating at 500 & I was pushing myself with every pound of force, I had in my body. After climbing a few ascends, I realised that my feet are all wet despite wearing gaters & now I had to lift myself up with ice-cold feet. In the last stage of the climb, the ascend was 75 degree & at one point, there was no rope. All I had to do was to keep faith & push myself with whatever force left in my body. During our ascend, snowfall started which made things even worse for us. Exhausted, dead tired & drained to the core, I reached to the top of Gondogoro LA with my frosted feet.
The top of Gondogoro LA is a plateau, all covered with snow. We spent only 5 min at the top because of snowfall & went to the other side from where our descend was about to start.
It was a heart-throbbing look of the descend that we had to made. It was miles down & it felt like we need power of Hercules today, to go downstairs. Equipped myself with harness along with helmet & was ready to go down in these tough conditions. Climbing down at almost 80 degree, using ropes is an art. It was extremely difficult to place feet at a firm point as it was slippery because of fresh snow, coupled with mud. One can’t take rest during this descend, as there’s a constant danger of falling stones from the top.
The most riskier part of descend was to move carabiner from one anchor point to another & one has to be very conscious during this activity.
Can’t explain in words, how I manage to get down safely. It was all due to Mehdi Bhai who literally took me down to the ground & when I saw the top from ground, it wasn’t even visible, covered in thick dark clouds.
We landed ourselves to a beautiful glacier & now we had to walk for another two hours to reach to Khuspang. The descend of Gondogoro LA took almost one & half hour & now we were moving at snail’s pace on glacier. The views were just exquisite, but I didn’t had an ounce of energy to take any photograph.
We stayed at GGLA high camp which wasn’t at all a camp, a few stones placed at one location that’s high camp. But we had our breakfast there & normalised ourselves.
