The cliff that lured us to this corner of the Himachal Pradesh loomed nearly straight overhead. Shoshala (ca 4,700m) was first climbed a few springs ago (AAJ 2012). The 750m route, mixed with many bolts, follows a series of corners and cracks in the center of the southern aspect of this spearhead-shaped peak. It seemed the Swiss team did not tag the true summit, and doing so would have required more climbing via a jagged undulating ridge. Speaking to town locals and porters who helped with the previous mission, Whitney Clark, Crystal Davis-Robbins, and I learned that our planned mid-October attempt would have its limitations. No water.

Meanwhile, two nearby valleys had also caught our eyes, all with their lists of pros and cons. In 2010, Silvia Vidal soloed a big wall on the southern flanks of Raldang (5,499m), reaching the top of the wall at 5,250m after 1,050m of climbing (AAJ 2011). We opted to try a line on this instead. The approach involved a long slog straight up a grassy hillside and included a river crossing and a maze of house-size boulders. Whitney and I scrambled to and fro, stacking cairns on the easiest path for our sandal-wearing porters. Siliva’s line, Naufragi, went up the center of a massive sheet of near vertical granite. We were drawn to a pillar on the left side that would give vertical climbing to a ridge, sprinkled with snow and ice. We bivouacked below this at ca 4,000m. Next day we had each led three long pitches to a corner with a splitter crack when it began to rain. On the first abseil, Crystal knocked a basketball-sized rock onto her knee, and at the bivouac site next morning it was stiff and swollen. Later, a snowstorm arrived, easing our decision to bail.

After a few days in Sangla Village, and with Crystal on the mend, we decided to try our original goal, a new line on Shoshala, this time hiring porters to carry up 25 liters of water. We also hoped to be able to melt snow from the new accumulation.

The approach was steep and slippery, and after a bivouac at the base we climbed two pitches (5.10+ and 5.9), then got slowed by vegetation on the third and descended for the night, leaving two ropes in place. I completed pitch three with a mixture of free and aid, then we climbed three more pitches with unique and varied climbing—laybacks, underclings, fist cracks, and heady slab moves—to reach a grassy knoll midway on the wall. We fixed ropes and descended again. The next day the weather was poor, but the day after we jumared the ropes and Crystal added another pitch. However, our pace was too slow, daylight short, it was cold, and we were nearly out of food. Defeated, we descended.

I did get to the top of something. On a rest day Clemens Gogl (Austria) and I put up an excellent three-pitch splitter in the main valley just north of Sangla.

Quinn Brett, AAC