Asia, India, Kashmir and Jammu, Nun, Northwest Ridge and West Face

Author: Galen A. Rowell. Climb Year: 1977. Publication Year: 1978.

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Nun, Northwest Ridge and West Face. The highest summit (23,410 feet) between Nanga Parbat and the Garhwal Himalaya, Nun, was climbed by a 15-member Mountain Travel team, led by Galen Rowell. Five climbers reached the summit and twelve got to the 20,500-foot High Camp. The mountain was climbed semi-alpine style, not according to plan, but because of an unexpected shortage of tents and Sherpas. We lacked the tentage and manpower to fix the necessary two camps above 17,500 feet on the normal French route. Instead, six of the strongest climbers attempted the northwest ridge and west face in two days with only enough gear for one camp. Climbing was alpine style except for the assistance of three Sherpas who made a carry to High Camp, then returned to a lower camp the same day. Above the camp, we followed the 1976 Czech route up the northwest ridge for a few hundred feet and then veered away from the ridge, where the Czechs had fixed thousands of feet of rope, onto the unclimbed west face. At 22,000 feet progress was slowed by a long traverse on 55° ice. After the traverse, one rope of three elected to go for the summit and the others went down. Maynard Cohick, Peter Cummings, and I reached the summit late on the afternoon of June 18 in a localized blizzard. We descended in the dark to the High Camp. Two days later Kim Schmitz led another rope of three up the same route. Schmitz and Pat O’Donnell reached the summit an hour earlier in the day than we had, but Malcolm Jones, who waited below, was so exhausted that darkness caught them higher on the route than it had the first team. At ten P.M., with no lights on a moonless night, the rope of three was still above High Camp descending an ice bulge. Jones inadvertently jerked O’Donnell from his tracks and both men plummeted past Schmitz, who stood on his front points in the ice, realized that his axe wouldn’t hold in that spot, and made a desperate effort: he wound the rope around his arm so that the jerk, when it came, wouldn’t pull directly on his body and yank him out of his tracks. Somehow he was able to hold the fall of both men. O’Donnell fell 200 feet and Jones about 150 feet. Other than scratches and bruises, no one was hurt. The expedition made a happily uneventful retreat through icefalls, newly green hillsides, and villages, back to the luxury of a houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir.

Galen A. Rowell



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