원정 개요

Evelyn Camrass McNicol (by email) - 12 Jan 2005

The climb [Gyalgen Peak] involved ascending through an ice fall, traversing an open glacier, then ascending another icefall with a difficult crossing of a very wide deep crevasse to establish the highest camp from where the summit was reached in one day. Stormy weather kept us at this high camp for two days before we could return to base camp.

We estimated that our base camp was at about 15,000 ft, so our first camp at the entrance to the lower ice fall was probably 500 ft lower. From here we established camps 2, 3, 4, and 5 at a days climbing apart and estimated our highest camp was less than 2000 ft below the summit. The reason I cannot be more specific is that we did not have an altimeter which read more than 8000 ft.! We arrived at our base camp on 22nd April 1955 and made an exploratory trip of the Phurbi Chyachumba glacier, returning to base camp on 29th April. Left base camp for second trip on 5th May and climbed Gyalgen Peak on 11th May.

Evelyn left base camp on 17th May and with Ang Temba climbed a peak on the Chaksil Danda ridge which she called Bidean Nan Nighean (the Scottish Galic for "the hill of the maiden") estimated to be between 17,000 and 18,000 ft.