In September, Dmitry Grigoriev, Sergey Nilov, and I climbed a new route on one of the most famous and beautiful mountains in the Indian Himalaya, Thalay Sagar (6,904m). As far as I know, nobody has ever climbed the north face of Thalay Sagar to the summit without using a portaledge. We stopped using a portaledge for our climbs after No Fear on Trango Tower (AAJ 2012). It was an extra challenge for us, to try to achieve our routes with only a two-person tent.

When I first started looking at Thalay Sagar, I was pretty sure the buttress left of the central couloir had been climbed. But then Lindsay Griffin sent me a picture showing all the lines, and, to my surprise, it turned out that it had been climbed only in part. Our decision to go didn’t take long.

We took a flight from Moscow to Delhi, a taxi from Dehli to Rishikesh, a jeep from Rishikesh to Gangotri, and, 40 hours after leaving Russia, we were discussing prices to Kedar Tal base camp with porters. At first we had no success, and we spent a day carrying part of the stuff ourselves. (The route to Kedar Tal takes one and a half days.) Next day we managed to hire some porters but immediately faced another obstacle: They had no food or tents, since they expected we would provide them. We were not prepared for this and had to open our high-altitude supplies to feed them.

Once we were finally in place, we started up our route on September 9. The first 500–600m were on a steep snow and ice slope. We then hit the first vertical rock buttress. Due to the wind and weather, even the steepest sections were covered in snow and ice. If we could see the rock, it meant it was probably very steep and smooth. It took us two days to climb 200m.

Above, there was 300–400m of mixed climbing at 70°–80°. On one night we had to cut away ice from under overhanging rock in order to excavate a ledge, and there we discovered ropes and aid equipment, which we assumed had been abandoned by the 1994 Italian expedition.

Eventually we reached the summit barrier, which is loose black shale and overhanging at 110°. We tried to climb around it but were unsuccessful, and in the end had to climb it directly. Above, we were on the final slopes, and eventually snow led us directly to the summit. We reached the top on September 17, nine days after starting

We descended the original route on the west ridge, assisted by Indian fixed ropes, and got back to base camp at midnight on the 18th. We named our new route Movable Feast (1,200m, 1,400m of climbing, 6B/ED2, 5c A3 WI5 M7). There were five pitches on which we used aid (from A1 to A3).

– Dmitry Golovchenko, Russia

Editor's note:The new route climbs to the left of the 2003 French Route, One Way Ticket (Benoist–Glairon-Rappaz) and in the upper part crosses both the 1994 attempt on the northeast ridge (Rosso-Ruffino-Vanetti) and the 1983 Norwegian-Polish Route (Czok-Doeseth-Guidal-Nesheim-Skorek).

Thalay Sagar from Golovchenko Dmitry on Vimeo.