In late July, Alexander Klepikov, Stas Lazarev, and Alena Panova launched an expedition to the Ikatsky Ridge, east of Lake Baikal in Siberia, with the aim of climbing the biggest wall in a line of impressive granite faces: the north face of Pik Ostrog. This would be Klepikov’s second attempt on the face. In February 2011, he and three other climbers made the difficult approach and climbed three pitches before retreating when the temperature dropped to -40°C. Three years later, he returned in April with Vasily Ilyinsky and Ilya Resnyansky and did the first ascent of the north face of the Bayonet, southwest of Ostrog. [See AAJ 2015. Despite the grueling conditions, winter climbs are not unusual in this area, because approaches are easier when the rivers and ground are frozen.]

After rejecting a helicopter approach as too expensive, Klepikov spent weeks negotiating a plan to use horses to reach the wall, which would require the presence of Dzherginsky Nature Reserve rangers for the entire expedition. At the last minute, the team was informed that flooding in the area made it impossible to get horses to the rendezvous point.

Plan C was to take an airboat up the Barguzin River as far as possible, then walk the remaining distance to the wall. On July 27, after eight hours and 120km in the boat, the climbers unloaded their gear and said goodbye to the boat crew. The trio began to set up camp in pouring rain and only then realized they’d left their tent in the boat. Fortunately, the boat crew returned to drop off the tent. They would be back to pick up the climbers on August 5.

The river rose during the team’s first night on the bank, carrying away a bag of food, a dry bag with their electronics (including the satellite phone), and one of their stoves. During the search the next morning, Klepikov came across one of his mountain boots—which he had assumed was safely stowed—and then realized the other must be lost. The team explored about 2km of the flooded forest, taking several inadvertent or mandatory swims, and eventually—and somewhat miraculously—found all the lost gear, though the dry bag was no longer dry.

This occupied most of the day, but as the rain paused in late afternoon, they decided to carry loads up the valley and cache them, whistling and shouting to alert bears, of which they saw many signs. The distance to the wall was 12km in a straight line, but it would not go quickly in the trailless taiga. After two and a half days of labor, they established base camp at 1,600m, about 2km and two hours through thick vegetation from the wall (an approach that had taken half as much time in winter). For days, rain kept them in camp—a period enlivened when a smoldering log in the campfire ignited the fly of their tent.

Finally, on August 2, seven days after starting up the river, the weather broke, allowing them to approach the foot of the wall at 1,980m. By 9 a.m. they were climbing. It would be a very long day.

After the team simul-climbed the first 100m, Lazarev led until 6 p.m., completing five difficult pitches, almost all aid climbing on wet rock. Klepikov then took over and finished three more pitches by sunset. Having overcome the steepest part of the wall, they hoped to find ledges on which to sleep, but were disappointed. With a thunderstorm approaching, they decided to climb another pitch but again did not find a ledge. As the storm worsened, with lightning striking nearby, they decided to race for the summit ridge, hoping to bivouac on the opposite, lower-angle side of the mountain. By dawn, after another six pitches of difficult climbing, they had reached easier ground and scrambled amid cold rain and wind to the top, where they found a bent carabiner left by previous summiters.

Now there were plenty of places to bivouac, but the weather wasn’t conducive to hanging around, so after eating a large meal, they started down to the west, descending a huge chimney system into the cirque below Bayonet. After much scrambling and five rappels, they reached the base. By 4 p.m. on August 3 they were back at their camp.

There was little time to rest. The next day they had to get back to the river to meet the boat. They loaded huge packs and started down the approach that had taken them two and a half days on the way in. The hike out “was not particularly memorable,” Klepikov wrote at Mountain.ru, “except
for the feeling that I had become a few centimeters lower, [as the pack] at the exit was over 40kg.” For the last few hundred meters before the rendezvous point, they followed tracks of a bear with cubs.

The adventure wasn’t over. All day on August 5, they waited for the airboat. By dinnertime, with little food left, they were contemplating how to escape on their own. Walking out would be impossible, so they decided to build a raft out of larch logs, cut with a small hatchet and lashed together with climbing rope. After four hours of work, they all climbed aboard the craft they’d named the Unsinkable Dreadnought.

They made it about a kilometer down the river before suddenly hearing a boat motor. The crew was “surprised, to put it mildly,” to see the raft, Klepikov wrote. The climbers disassembled the raft to retrieve their ropes and climbed aboard the airboat. And with that, “the part of the expedition that depended on us was over.” The new route is called Water World (Russian 6A). [Klepikov’s tale of this expedition at Mountain.ru is a great read, even using Google translation, and includes many photos.]

— Dougald MacDonald, AAJ, with information from Mountain.ru and Alexander Klepikov, Russia