Trip Report - Peak Lenin 2015

Peak Lenin trip report – 27/06/2015 – 14/07/2015

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Our Expedition to Peak Lenin starts in the busy streets of Bishkek under the mid-summer sun where the first part of our team met up and after doing the usual preparations such as changing monies and buying supplies for the expedition. The following day saw us taking a short flight to the historic Silk Road city of Osh where we explored the Bazaar for any great deals in dried fruit and nuts as well as meeting the second part of our team.

It is also from here where we started our journey in earnest to Base Camp. A route which took us over three passes. This took us through very dramatic landscapes and sights of the famous Kyrgyzstan nomadic horse herders and traditional Yurts.

Before too long, we crossed a rusty old sign “Pik Lenin” and entered a maze of roads that lead to a range of mountains shrouded in clouds. With an air of uncertain directions, we entered a broad flat valley with the occasional yurt breaking the horizon eventually, with no sign of the mountains; we turned past a hill and entered Base Camp. After a welcome cup of tea and getting a sense for where we are while wandering around the alpine pastures, the clouds suddenly rolled back presenting the first sight of a beautiful and indomitable mountain, our climb, Peak Lenin.

We spent a day acclimatizing at Base Camp before taking the trail to Advance Base Camp aka Camp 1. This saw us winding up through the beautiful onion glade which gave us time to draw in the flowers and green pastures before a baptism of a muddy trail brought us into the rock and snow of the high mountain.

Advance Base Camp aka. Camp 1 was to become home for the remainder of the expedition and was furnished with a Yurt and wood stove where endless cups of tea soup would be drunk and attempts at roasting hazelnuts would be made.

Here it must be mentioned that every expeditions to a mountain has a distinct character and this was certainly the case for Peak Lenin. While we will have the help of the horses to get our equipment to our more permanent home at Advance Base Camp and the luxury of a cook. We will have the mules, carrying loads to the higher camps whilst we deal with the delights of melting snow and preparing rations in our tents.

We took our first steps on the mountain, carrying loads to make a “depo” of equipment close to Camp 2. With an alpine start we roped up and started up one of the main feature of the climb “The Steepening” a 60⁰ slopes topped by a broad crevasse, just as the sun reached the slope. By mid-day we reached the day’s high point and with the heat of the sun on our backs, we stashed the equipment and descended.

Inevitably the weather turned and resulted in a very welcome rest day before we committed to the higher camps. Camp 2, our next stage, which is situated at the foot of a small rocky buttress and at the head of a large open glacier aptly named the “frying pan” a name it lived up to in full! Leaving the snow deep and soft and us as the caramelized climbers’ on top.

After a day collecting our senses and getting use to our new facilities, the team collectively decided to climb on to Razdelnaya to make our second depo without descending to ABC. A decision which did mean a bit of a stock take on all the kit we had in hand but saved a lot of deep snow wading.

Razdelnaya on the map and by the book appears a good mountain day. However considering the depth of snow we had a stiff start to the day climbing to the ridge which led to the rise to the 6400m summit of Razdelnaya. This small(ish) convex hill could have easily be considered  one of the harder sections of the climb with each one of the team break their own trail up to the top in the soft snow, utterly exhausting! However the view from the top rewarded us with our first view of the summit ridge in full and a panorama of the surrounding peaks and a dramatic close to the day with the clouds of the afternoon build wrapping around the peaks.

We received our weather update on the rest day at Camp 2 and all seemed good for a summit push. However as we started to consider the final push to the summit it became evident that this would be a herculean effort in the current snow conditions and may thus take some time to get there and a hefty thought to ponder for the day. By late afternoon the decision was made by half of the team, having had their success on Razdelnaya, to descend back to camp1 while the rest would return to camp3 and take up the challenge.

So the following day after a cup of tea, the two teams headed out from Camp 2 on their respective routes. On the descent it became clear how over the course of the last few warm days a number of the snow bridges had softened significantly and made for some really interesting crossings which was smoothly done by the now well-practised team. Similarly the team ascending to Camp 3 made excellent time arriving at the high camp and bedded in for the nigh in anticipation for a summit push the following day.

Making a solid attempt at an alpine start, Piere and Andrey from the summit group descended down to the col and ascended the main ridge of Peak Lenin but got the full brunt of wind and cold as they moved along the first plateau and made their stance at 6410m before heading back to Camp 3. At Camp 1 on the contrary the day was passed waiting for radio calls from the climbing team and cryptic crosswords with the occasional speculations about Wimbledon.

Large expeditions like Peak Lenin always seem to finish in a whimper after great what seems to be months on the mountain. Having descended at a record speed from Camp 3 the entire team was reunited at Camp 1, sharing notes on the climb and dreams about shashlik (barbequed kebabs) and beer.

With all the kit packed and horses organised we made our final descent down the moraine and along the dusty track back to the onion glade. Where the remained of the expedition faded in the warm haze of summer, the smell of flowers and the sight of green plains.

Barend Engelbrecht