JAPANESE ALPINE NEWS 2013 ●
MAX DÜNßER
DAV Expedition October 2012 to Sichuan
―First Ascent of Pk 5,910m in Minya Konka (Gongga Shan) Massif― (Maps and Panorama Pictures are supplemented by Tom Nakamura) Nobody is packing Risotto or any other rice dish. It᾽s probably because we have been acclimatising in a valley in China for two days and have eaten rice almost twice a day. We are packing our rucksacks for our summit attempt of an unclimbed peak in the Gonga Shan Massive in Sichuan. We have been planning this expedition, which marks the end of our time in the cadre of the German Alpine Club, for half a year, and now we have deposited our climbing gear at 5,000 m and have been acclimatising well for the past two weeks. Finally we are on our way! However, our high altitude food for the next few nights will certainly not be rice but dehydrated pasta. It is the beginning of October and autumn is slowly moving in, the needles of the larches further down the valley have already turned yellow and temperatures have dropped below zero; but the conditions on the mountain are good. There has been little snowfall over the past few days and we can see that the face further up is covered in ice. The weather forecast, which we receive from Innsbruck, also does not predict any precipitation for the next few days, just a bit of wind. From our base camp at 4,000 m we climb up a long valley via moraines and big boulders until we get to the beginning of the glacier at 5,000 m, where we have set up our Advanced Base Camp. We stay another night here observing the face and looking for an objectively safe line for our ascent. Our group consist of our expedition doctor, Uli Steiner, David Göttler, our coach Mirko und me. Dario, Felix and Reini are attempting a ridge on another mountain. After a calm night the wind picks up again in the morning when we ascend over a heavily crevassed glacier to a Col at 5,500 m. This marks the start of the West Face, which we are attempting. While we are digging up a platform for our tents just below the overhanging wall, the wind is reaching such a force that it is almost impossible to see without our skiing goggles. We pitch our tents using Abalakovs and pitons to protect them from being blown away. After we have melted two litres of water and have eaten a bag of high altitude food, we are trying to sleep to be ready to start at the crack of dawn the next morning. We are still worried about the weather and are hoping that the wind will abate. At four o clock in the morning our tents finally stop flapping and we are slowly beginning to melt snow. Just after dawn I climb up the first pitch, which did not look very inviting from down below but is actually good to climb in the compressed snow. After we have crossed a flat area we reach a snow and ice gully, which we climb up for about 300 metres until we get to a pretty broken area that we have to traverse over to the right. Now the terrain is getting steeper and we follow the icy line, which we had identified from lower down, reaching up to about 50 metres below the summit. The ice is getting thinner and placing ice screws is getting increasingly difficult. At the belay points we use pitons, which we leave there for our abseil later on. Clouds are slowly starting to move in from the West and the wind is picking up again. 19