Willis Brown (Canada) and I established what we believe to be a new route in Ala Archa National Park on October 15, 2012. After acclimatizing on an ice couloir on Bachichiki and an attempt on Semenova, we climbed a route on the north-northwest face of Peak 4,300m, a summit along the long ridge extending west from Korona, above the Uchitel Glacier. Our line was well to the right of Discovery (Dashkevich-Kabalin-Tretjakov, 2010). The route was 500m long and provided excellent technical ice and mixed climbing for three sustained pitches (M6+, M5, AI5), sandwiched between lots of 50°–60° ice, and finishing with a nice pitch of M4.

Once on the ridge, we scrambled to an arbitrary high point at roughly 4,150m. Peak 4,300m seemed far away and somewhat contrived, as the real top is the summit of Korona, which is much farther. We were satiated with our arbitrary yet rewarding little spike. We rappelled the large ice sheet to climber’s right of our line and named our route Privet Spasibo, which means “Hello Thank You” in Russian.

P1: 70m, ice up to 65° P2: 100m, 55° ice

P3: 35m, M6+

P4: 30m, M5

P5: 60m, AI5

P6: 60m, ice up to 60°

P7: 50m, ice up to 55°

P8: 50m, M4

P9: 60m, easy scramble

Seth Timpano, AAC