Mt.Sahale!

Well, I am back from my climb and I do not where to begin! :) I am back in one piece barring a twisted ankle which fortunately i got just 200 feet from the car on the descend.Embarrassing and a wee bit ironic.huh? I shared my snaps with everyone and people are telling me 'wow! It must have been a fun trip!' .

Well ..to actually tell the truth it was no fun trip. I expected to suffer but not so much.I guess i over estimated my physical stamina, i thought i had trained well and 8700 feet shouldn't be too much of a sweat,but i was given a lesson in humility by the greatest teacher of all -who else 'Mom nature'.Probably it would have been no big deal if done in summer in less arduous conditions,I say 'probably',but that hypothesis is ir-relevant now, I am here to tell what happened and not what would have happened. :)

The first day itself took out almost everything in me!

Landed in Seattle on friday evening at 7.30 PM, had this book 'Into thin air' by Joe Krakauer - its about the 1996 everest disaster which claimed 12 lives. Incidentally it was a group led by Scott Fischer who himself died on this expedition and fischer was the founder of mountain madness ,the organisation with whom i was making this climb.Not a good start or omen huh? :)

Anyways I waited in the airport till 12 AM for Appu to land,once he landed in we rented a car at the airport and by the time we made it to Praveen's house using Google map printouts it was nearly 2 AM. After gobbling in some cold bisibele bath made by Shilpa which was tasting amazingly delicious at 2 AM,we hit bed. We had less time to sleep,we had to be at our rendezvous point with the guide at 7 AM.We got up around 5:30 AM(hardly around 3 hours of sleep) and left the house at around 6:15. Praveen was an amazing host,staying awake till 2:30 am waiting for us and then serving us dinner and again waking up at 5:30 to see us go!

The dynamic Duo again succeed in getting lost and somehow managed to reach our rendezvous point at around 7.20.Appu finally figures out how to use the GPS in his I-phone,yippee!!Talk about necessity is the mother of discovery!! Our guide name was Alan Rosseau,we were surprised to find a very young looking guy,he was hardly 22 or 23,we expected somebody older and experienced.But later on we got to know he was quite experienced,he has been rock climbing since the age of 12 and has been skiing since age of 4 and was going to climb the El capitan at Yosemite the next weekend. That really impressed me and brought down my anxiety a bit,but later it increased a bit when he mentioned he himself was climbing this mountain for the first time.Lol!! What a start!!

Its around 3 hours drive to the mountains from Seattle.After a quick gear check and renting and buying things we didn't have we started off. I conveniently got into the back and dozed off(my regular routine, I dont believe in wasting energy :)) Appu was grumbling and envious of this small coup de tete of mine,poor soul was rendered to the drudgery of driving .After taking necessary permits to climb at the ranger station,we drove into the mountains.

The drive was scenic and beautiful,i think so,I don't know.I was sleeping and Alan was holding onto his pants from dropping! If i remember correctly the words,he said 'His driving freaked me out' . :) tsk,tsk ... I didn't expect this from a guy who is going to climb El capitan! Now,I had serious doubts about his reputation!! :)

We arrived at the trail point and we had a stunning view all around! After a so called lame lunch of salad,apples and bananas we packed in our tents,sleeping bags,water,food,extra clothes,ice axes,crampons,harness .. onto our back packs. After the finals seals were in place ,Appu tried lifting his back pack,he grunted and lifted it a few inches and put it back down and said as a matter of fact 'Oh! Its heavy!'. Alan was looking at him incredulously when Appu made the remark. lol!

Anyways,we started off to a song and rhyme and started our hike at around 3500 ft at approx around 11:45 AM I guess.We made steady progress to 5400 ft to cascade pass.We felt strong and good so far!We had gorgeous views of the mountains from here and after a brief respite and clicking some snaps we resumed out hiking. We had to hike to 7600 ft that was where our camping site was!

This 2200 ft took away all our strenght.As we climbed up to 6000 ft it started raining,the rain did not cease and the rain turned to sleet which is rain turned to ice as we climbed higher,it hurts when sleet touches your skin,its like needles,as we climbed higher this turned to snow,the visibility became very less and the temperatures dropped,the climb was steep,slippery and we didnt know how we were climbing. But our good guide had an altimeter and asked us keep each other in sight and we made our own way up on the rocks.The last 700-800 feet was pure pain! We cannot put a step further,we are drained,its cold,its snowing,there is a steady wind blowing hard and not doing us any good. We don't even know whether we reached the campsite,the visibility has completely detioriated and Alan takes a decision we stop and put up our tents at a flat place.Putting the tent was a very tedious task,unfortunately with our big gloves on one cannot handles the poles,so you got to remove it and expose it to the cold and work with your hands.My hands became numb by the time we were done. We made a mistake of putting one of the sleeping bag in the open when setting up the tents and it got wet when we got it inside the tent,because the snow on the bag melts in the warmer interiors and soaks the bag.But we were too very tired..We didn't care,My head was hardly thinking in all the numbness and pain.

We somehow got our boots off and just wanted to get out of the blizzard into something warm! Well warm is very relative here, Its not cozy like your house ,its slightly better than the outside in the sense you just dont have the wind inside.

With a drenched sleeping bag and all the other stuff cramped in the tent and fatigue and pain and numbness taking over, I just propped flat. I didn't care about anything in this damn bloody world. But after an hour the blizzard subsided and Alan who was in another tent got out and made some hot chocolate for us.Heaven knows where he had the energy to do it! He infact melted snow,boiled it,treated it and made hot chocolate for us in the open in freezing temperatures. Never ever had anything tasted so good,you could feel the hot liquid rolling down your food pipe and warming things everywhere as it slid down! lol! To top it ,Alan even made some hot gravy and burritos for us to eat. I just couldn't believe that guy! After gobbling things i just hit the sack, i just wanted to sleep,nothing else!

I am not sure how Appu fared in the night, But when i next opened my eyes i could see it was dawn. The weather wasnt so great,the visibility was better,but the cold wind was still blowing. I got out of the tent and took in the surroundings!We didnt even know where we climbed up and where we camped the previous night in the snow blizzard. We got to know the actual camping sites were about a few 100 yards away. I traced back the way we came up which led to a ledge and went over it and looked and I was stunned! The view in front of me was breath taking! I let out a gasp! We didnt even realise we climbed through all this magnificient scenery the previous day. The wind was blowing quite forcefully and it almost took me off the ledge! I wedged my legs between rocks and stood facing the cold wind and taking in the view. It was one of the most beautiful things i had ever seen. After the eye had captured the beauty,of course my camera had to capture it!! I ran back to the tent,asked appu who was still inside to pass the camera and asked him to get out! I had to pull out the gloves to take the snaps, I started clicking,but i realised the snaps weren't coming great,the camera was screaming for exposure,it didn't know how much to expose,the snow was over exposing and the black mountains were under-exposing,so i turned onto manual and started fiddling around with the buttons,My fingers were numb and it finally reached a point where in I didn't even know whether i was clicking the shutter button,I couldnt feel anything, I hurriedly placed my camera on a rock and pulled on my gloves and started rubbing my hands. After a few minutes i could feel the blood flowing through!

Then suddenly the skies opened up and the sun came through and I looked the opposite way and was appalled at what we still had to climb. The glacier was looming huge and you could see the peak,it seemed that the peak was relatively a very short distance away, but it wasn't!The huge magnitude of everything around was playing that trick.

At this point, I want to talk about the toilet! :) I had to of-course clear my bowels! I very decently went to Alan and asked where do i do it? I asked him 'can i go between the rocks'? :) He looked at me and laughed and said no i cannot and said there must be a compost toilet somewhere around,after searching for a while we found it.I looked at it with apprehension! It was a huge metal box with a hole covered by a lid and it was completely covered by snow.I was wondering how do i pull down my pants in such freezing temperatures. :) But I didn't have much choice ,i cleared off the snow on the lid and opened the lid and yeah of course did it! I had the most spectacular view ever while doing it. I could actually feel everything going cold and numb.:) Now, i can claim to have felt cold everywhere literally! lol!

It was soon time to start the climb to the peak. This is what i had come for,a glacial climb. We put our crampons on - a crampon is like a spiked sole which you place beneath your boots,you need to kick in the spikes into the ice to get a hold and grip,the snow on top of the glacial ice is loose and you slip if you do not get your spikes into the ice and place it on the snow especially in steeper altitudes.
We had our harnesses on,our caribiners linked and ropes connecting each of us.Alan was in the front,Appu in the middle and I was last. After a brief tutorial on how to use crampons and ice axes we started off.Intially it was quite easy,the gradient was less and the sun was shining and we made steady progress!

Things started getting difficult after halfway,the ascent became steeper and the weather again started going for a toss.Glacial climbing is difficult. You need lot of strength in your legs and arms. You need to kick in your shoes into the ice and get a grip.then you use your ice axe in your hands to again do the same ,on more steeper sections you use two ice axes,one for each hand,but this was around 50 degree gradient and one ice axe was enough.

We had a couple of scary moments with sliding and Alan did self arrests to stop us. The way it happened is,Appu didnt dig his crampon spikes properly into the ice,they were on snow and he put his weight on that foot and the snow gave away and he slid, Since i was below him he hit me and I lost balance and I also slid and both of us together with our combined weights pulled Alan.Then what Alan did was he immediately turned on his back and kicked the spikes at the base of his shoes into the ice and jabbed the ice axe deep into ice across his shoulder and stopped us all taking the entire weight of both of us on the rope on his hip.This is called self- arrest. I think you need to be terrifically aware and conscious of things happening to be able to do things like that!Probably even experience! I lost my mind and awareness in the slide and didn't know what to do,it happened too quickly! Then with all three of us stationary with Alan performing self arrest,i kicked in my crampons in the ice and ice axe and got a hold of myself.

At this point Appu decided he will not go any further and said he had lost all his energy and did not think he could safely make it to the top without jeopardizing the safety of all three of us.So we took a decision to leave him at a safer location and me and alan make it to the top. We got down to a safer point and left appu there.By this time it had started snowing quite heavily and Alan was afraid that Appu might get hypothermia,because if you are sitting still without doing anything the body cools down really fast and all the sweat will just cool you faster,so alan removed his jacket and gave it to Appu as an extra layer of protection.He asked Appu to do sit ups in case he felt cold to warm himself up. We left food and water with Appu and continued. It was hardly another 300 feet to the top when appu took the decision.Alan and myself make myself up in the blowing snow along the steeper ascent.After a climbing a few hundred feet I looked down to see Appu and i couldn't see him anymore,the snow and wind had brought down the visibility to mere couple of meters. The last 100 feet of the peak is a rock scramble,its a low 5th grade rock climb,but considering the conditions,the rock was wet and slippery,snow and wind blowing,Alan decided to rope me up setting up belays. This was his forte - his speciality! We did the rock climbing in two pitches. He climbed up first tying the rope around himself and stopped mid way and tied the rope to a rock using his links and shouted me to climb up. I could not see him because the visibility was hardly a few feet and i started climbing up,it was slippery but i somehow managed till the half way point,he asked me to steady myself against a rock so that i do not lose balance with the wind blowing,then he disappeared .After sometime he tugged the rope and shouted to me to come up. This was a steeper vertical section and i was struggling for footholds and handholds, i was halfway and suddenly the clouds cleared and what i saw just froze my blood,I saw that on one side was a sheer 1000 foot drop and the other side was a 200-300 foot drop.One small mistake and you are a goner! I was suddenly so happy that i had a rope secured to my waist! I really do not know how Alan climbed it! I was really glad he was there,he suddenly felt like my closest friend and saviour! I made it to the top,its hardly around 3 feet by 4 feet,the peak, I saw alan grinning and he gave me a whoop saying 'We made it' . I gingerly half stood on the peak afraid of being blown away though i still had the ropes secured to my waist. I could see nothing,the clouds had covered everything and i couldnt see beyond 4-5 feet. I saw there was a brass seal placed on the peak 'Mt.sahale - geological survey of washington - 1939' The height of the mountain was scratched off.

We hardly stayed for 2 mins and decided to turn back. He was particularly worried about Appu down. Its been about an hour since we left him and been more than 55 mins since last saw him. Infact i saw him briefly down when the clouds cleared while climbing up. Climbing down was faster for me as i was tied to the rope and all i had to do was rappel down.But Alan downclimbed the rock section.Downclimbing is free style climbing down which is very difficult is steeper sections. Normally people come down the ropes and discard the ropes on the mountains on steeper sections.Anyways if he is climbing the el capitan(3000 feet vertical cliff) this should be no big deal.

The descent was faster and we were back down with Appu in about 20 mins.Fortunately there was another 4 member roped team which was also climbing and they were near Appu. After a few hello's and chit-chat about route to the top we started back to the camp . This 4 member team were a bit more professional. Considering the bad weather and crevasses around they had left flouroscent markers every 50 feet to find the route . The weather got really bad on the descent, i was leading,Appu was in the middle and Alan at the back. We were following the markers left behind by the other team. Halfway down, the visibility was hardly 3-4 feet and i could not lift my face as the wind was very strong and heavy snow blowing,i lost complete visibility of the markers. But Alan had a GPS and he had marked the camp and asked us to go in a particular direction.Fortunately i could see a bit of the ice axe marks of the previous group and we somehow scrambled to our tents.

We had earlier planned to descend down the same day to the bottom,but considering the conditions Alan felt it safer to wait out the blizzard! You could hear the howling of the wind and the tent covers going pata-pata-pata in the wind! I think the blizzard subsided around 1 AM in the night, I am not sure. I had lost all sense of time.

The next day morning we woke up to a glorious sun lit morning with absolutely no wind. This was photo day and i immediately did not loose the opportunity and went around clicking, you never know when the weather might turn.And as i anticipated within an hour the clouds covered everything and the winds started and the temperatures dropped. We packed our tents and made our way down.

The path down was again painful as it puts a lot of pressure on your knees,but the visibility held and i was astounded to see all the beautiful scenery. The lake called doubtful lake which you can see from the top,we infact passed beside it two days earlier and we didn't even realise it.Lol!

At around 5000 odd feet we had another incident. We were tired and concentrating on the ground to see where we were putting our foot,the trail winded around into a mountain and came out on the other side,on the other side few people were frantically waving at us,Alan and Appu were concentrating on the walk and did not see them, I saw them and thought it was a friendly wave and waved back!As we took the blind turn I saw the bear right in front of us,Alan who was in the first didnt even see it as he was busy looking down, I stammered and shouted bear,bear .. hearing me shout both Alan and Appu looked up and we did a turn around and started running backwards.Seeing us the bear also started running fortunately in the opposite direction and it climbed up the mountain.

The rest of the climb down was uneventful except for me tripping on a root of a tree about 200 feet from the car and twisting and spraining my ankle.

Then we headed back,thanked Alan profusely for the excellent trip and stayed overnight at Praveens place. Jayant had come over too,had pizzas for dinner and woke up at 4 AM as we had 6 AM flights to catch. I landed at Minneapolis at 12 PM and limped into office carrying a backpack and a story to tell. :)