British Arjuna Expedition 20l7

by Ben Silvestre

In Sep/Oct 2017 Pete Graham, Uisdean Hawthorn and myself organised an expedition to climb Arjuna South (6100m) in the Indian Kishtwar Himal.

On 2/1/2017 we set off to ABC with light bags. We packed a reasonably big safety net of gear, in case we needed to bail off the route at an impasse, and chose to bring rock shoes for the leader, and jumars for the seconds, treating the climb like a Patagonian spire.

Uisdean jumaring the crux pitch, with myself visible above the steep crack
Photos by Ben Silvestre

The following morning we left our tent at dawn and climbed a gully to the right of the pillar, using chossy ramps to access snow ramps, which led to a steep gully, preceding a notch at the base of an imposing rock wall. Featured cracks gave three excellent and steep pitches to a point at the base of the arete and we were glad of our decision to bring jumars, which, whilst Iess enjoyable than rock climbing were undoubtedly the fastest method. A further three pitches on lower angled ground, which we could second in boots, brought us to a palatial bivouac below a wide chimney. Whilst Uisdean cleared the ledge of stones, Pete set about fixing a pitch to a steep right facing corner.

After a restless night, I ascended the fixed rope, and set off up the corner just as the sun began to hit it. It provided a fantastic technical exercise, with a small roof to pass at the top, and I was surprised to find myself already at the blank looking section. Here, the few cracks that we had spotted from below seemed disconnected, and it looked like we might not be able to continue. But the rock was more featured than granite tends to be with lots of chicken heads providing face holds and traversing around the arête, I found cracks which led me up the arête to a small ledge below a menacing chimney. This was avoided by some technical face climbing, to access another good stance near the arête. This last pitch was the crux of the rock climbing. Whilst the others were ascending the fixed rope, l gave myself a loop of rope and investigated a continuation around the corner. I found twin cracks which shot off somewhere into the sky, leading to lower angled terrain. Having retrieved the gear from the previous pitch, I set off up the cracks, which gave a full 60m pitch of astoundingly high quality climbing on Chamonix style granite, Above this Uisdean took over, and led us up easier angled, though still complicated terrain, and we eventually reached a small snow arete at dusk.

The rock section of the route showing bivouacs

Here we spent a cold night with freezing wind. When morning broke we were more than happy to get going and as we started climbing on the third day, the wind seemed to die. Pete took us to the top of the pillar, via a couple of excellent looking pitches on huge chicken heads. Here we had to abseil 30m into a notch, finding an anchor which the Polish team must have left in '83. There seemed a few options, but we chose the most direct one, up the middle of the headwall. The following two pitches were plumb vertical and very intimidating but with an abundance of chicken heads. Stopping to catch my breath, and to put on my big boots, I climbed a further couple of pitches on steep snow to a bivouac a short way beneath the left of two ‘horns’ which dominated the top of the mountain.

Here our tired bodies allowed us to spend a good night and we rose feeling fairly refreshed the following day. We decided not to climb the left-hand gully, choosing instead to traverse to the right-hand gully, which was gained via a very steep and strenuous mixed step. Above this a further two pitches on steep ice took us to the summit ridge, which led to the summit in a final short pitch. We were extremely pleased about having reached the top and allowed ourselves a short break basking in the sun. We were especially satisfied to have climbed all of the pitches free, given our original suspicions that the route might require a lot of aid climbing. Before too long the prospect of descent became pressing and we traversed to a point on the south east face, from where we started abseiling. Pete led us bravely down the face in 12 long pitches, until we eventually reached a glacier south of the mountain a short while after dark. We walked down this until a steepening required a further 5 abseils, and we stopped in a notch atop the approach gully, to brew up. Deciding that we were too tired to descend the final 300m to our tent we decided to stop and wait for the dawn which proved to be the right decision when we descended down steep, choss-covered slabs the following morning to reach the first of a further 4 abseils.

An airy bivouac

Arriving back at our tents we felt extremely satisfied to have climbed such a beautiful and imposing line on our first trip to Asia. The quality of the rock was excellent throughout and it looks as though this will be the case in the rest of the cirque.

With thanks to AAC(UK) the Alpine Club, the BMC and the Mount Everest Foundation for their financial support. For the fulI report see here

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