원정 개요

Pat Hollingworth (blog) - 25 Nov 2012

As I alluded to in some of my phone dispatches, Ama Dablam is not the easiest of mountains to climb, and was certainly harder than I was expecting. As my friend and co-director of Himalayan Ascent Sumit describes it, "once you're above Camp 1 it's like white-water rafting, with rapid after rapid and no let-up".

The terrain up to Camp 1 is pretty straightforward although due to a late start from BC on the Wednesday we were only settling into our tents at dusk. We were underway relatively early on the Thursday morning and found the climbing over granite to be nice and interesting as we headed up towards Camp 2. The real sting in the tail however is the a vertical headwall called the Yellow Tower, and it's located just below Camp 2. At over 6000m in altitude it really takes a lot of energy to work your way up it, all the while being well aware of the exposure tugging at our backs. Once in Camp 2 we enjoyed the views and simply recovered, because we knew the next few days were going to be much harder.

And they were! Right out of Camp 2 we reached the foot of the Grey Tower, which is a mixed band of steep rock, ice and snow. This took a few hours to work our way through, after which we gained access to the Mushroom Ridge - a narrow (sometimes only 30cm wide) ridge of snow with immense drops on either side. Above that we placed our third camp underneath an overhanging cornice. It was at least out of the wind and gave us a good night's rest, despite being at 6300m.

The next morning we were away from our tents by 8.30 am and the summit push was underway. Fortunately it wasn't too cold, with temps probably being in the minus 10-15 degrees range. Above the shoulder the route skirts to the right of the hanging serac, and after about two hours of climbing we were above it and out of harm's way (relatively speaking of course) and it was the relentless ridge of snow all the way up to the summit ridge. As I mentioned in my phone dispatch, the guys did a great job as they worked hard and topped out onto the summit just after midday.

Lakpa Sherpa, Jaime McMullen and Atle Lunde topped out at about 12.30pm, followed shortly after by Steve Pearce and Dende Sherpa. Chhiring Sherpa and myself brought up the rear and we topped out at about 1 pm.

The descent was long and at times stressful, but upon returning to BC on Sunday afternoon (or evening in my case!) the relief set-in and the celebrations commenced.