COVID was terrible for some people, but for many of us it was just tedious. As a climber who focuses on expedition climbing, the lack of international travel was very frustrating, especially as I’ve reached an age where you start to wonder just how many more big trips you have left. In addition, internal travel restrictions in the United Kingdom made it hard to get out rock climbing, at least for those of us who live far from the crags, leaving me with far too much spare time on my hands. Spare time often ends up as time spent online, researching possible climbing objectives.

I often get asked how I find the routes I climb, as if I have a secret source of information, when in fact it’s all about methodical hard work, studying climbing journals like the AAJ, cross-referencing with the internet, and endless cruising around on various forms of satellite imagery.

One day during lockdown, while flying over the Himalaya on Google Earth, I spotted a very steep face in the Jugal Himal that I had never noticed. Zooming out on the satellite image, I realized the face was an outlier to the south of Dorje Lhakpa (6,955 meters) and represented a very significant peak itself. The mountain was marked 6,563 meters on the map, and was quite possibly the nearest 6,000-meter peak to Kathmandu. Studying the maps, I realized that a nearby trekking route crossed Tilman’s Col into the Langtang region. A search for “Tilman’s Col” on Google Images gave me some very distant low-resolution images of what appeared to be a very steep face. Clearly, the face I’d found did exist and wasn’t just an all-too-common fiction of Google Earth. The peak was then filed away in my ideas folder for future consideration, marked “Jugal Project.”

A few years ago, I was asked what I was doing to encourage young people to take up exploratory alpine-style mountaineering in the greater ranges. The answer was nothing, really.

In the U.K. there is no national alpine team, as seen in many European counties. The amateur emphasis prevalent in Britain has limited the appetite for formal mentoring structures within the climbing establishment, and the anarchic nature of our young climbers means they are unlikely to organize anything like this themselves. Partly as a result of that question I was asked, in recent years I have gone out of my way to encourage and, where possible, informally mentor young British alpinists who want to go on and climb Himalayan peaks.

Back in 2019, as part of a British Mountaineering Council (BMC) exchange, I was asked to help shepherd a group of young British and Polish climbers in the Scottish Highlands and during a visit to the Polish Tatra, and I met some very keen and talented climbers. Tim Miller was one of the more enthusiastic of the bunch, and though he was about half my age and we never actually managed to climb together on those trips, we got on well. He was super excited about an upcoming expedition to Pakistan, although I had reservations, as the objective looked dangerous and over- committing for a first serious expedition. Sadly, not everyone returned from that trip, a traumatic experience that, fortunately, I have no experience of.

Amazingly, after a year’s reflection, Tim’s enthusiasm for mountaineering was undimmed, so I suggested that maybe next time he should climb with me and that I could perhaps show him the ropes, as it were. After some discussion, we agreed to head out to a project of mine in Nepal’s Rolwaling Valley the following year. Then COVID hit, and suddenly it was two years later.

The U.K. government was dragging its heels badly regarding international travel, so by the time we were cleared to leave the country, I had learned that another team had departed for the same objective. They were a high-caliber group, and it seemed quite possible the route would be climbed before we got there—which it subsequently was— so after much debate I canceled the trip the day before we were due to leave.

Our frustration was massive, so Tim and I agreed to get out to Nepal as soon as we could in the spring, which is not a season when I normally climb, as I am rarely free at that time of the year and understand that conditions then are not always good on the north faces of 6,000ers. But I was desperate to climb and just couldn’t wait for the autumn! We also needed a new project. I consulted my ideas file—maybe that peak in the Jugal would fit the bill?

We arrived in Kathmandu in the first week of April. In the years that had passed since our first planning to climb together, Tim had gone from being a student and climbing wall instructor into an aspirant mountain guide. Climbing with guides is always difficult—something to do with their constant critical appraisal of your ropework and belay anchors. Maybe he would know it all already and not need any advice from the old boy!

I think our peak is visible from Kathmandu, but I never had a chance to find out, as the pre-monsoon weather was much worse than I’d expected. For the whole of the expedition it rained, hailed, or snowed at least part of every day, if not all day.

From Kathmandu, a half-day bus ride takes you to the trailhead at Bhotang, where an increasingly popular trekking route leads in three days to the lakes of Panch Pokhari. Along the way I spent a considerable amount of time explaining to locals and trekkers alike that we weren’t a father and son team, and Tim spent most of the trek in the far distance, racing around like an excited puppy.

From the Panch Pokhari lakes you continue along the much quieter Tilman’s Col route toward the Langtang Valley. After another two days, we set up our base camp at the junction of the streams below the Lingshing Glacier. It’s a surprisingly long trek for the nearest mountains to Kathmandu.

From base camp we could see the south side of Peak 6,563m, but we couldn’t see our objective on the north face. An acclimatization outing on the west ridge of Dorje Lhakpa allowed us to see the north face for the first time and we were impressed, if not slightly concerned. The face is a huge sweep of very steep granite. Normally this would be the preserve of big-wall climbers, but after very careful binocular study we realized that a steep ice line did exist, crossing the face from the lower right corner to the upper snowfields just below the summit. The line looked steep—very steep—and enough sections appeared devoid of ice to make us doubt whether it was possible, but it clearly was a very impressive objective. As a bonus, Tim was acclimatizing without any major problems other than the usual exhaustion, nausea, insomnia, headaches, and general misery.

We returned to base camp, where more unsettled weather trapped us for longer than we wanted. I read while Tim spent time on his satellite communicator texting friends. I have a hatred of satellite communications and have no desire for any form of external influence on my trips, so Tim would skulk off to the cook shelter to do the deed. I made it clear to him that weather forecasts were strictly banned, as they always lead to indecision and general dithering; it’s far better to look at the sky and make your own decisions. Eventually a slightly brighter morning saw us departing on the two-day approach to the foot of the face.

From below, the steepness of the face meant that we couldn’t see any ice at all after the first few pitches, just a vertical wall of granite rising into the cloud. The only good thing we noticed was the complete absence of rockfall during the day. Tim’s enthusiasm was infectious, and he seemed to be unconcerned about what awaited above.

As we climbed the lower snow slopes to get started, the snowfields slowly narrowed before petering out into steep, icy runnels; in places the ice thinned to nothing and forced us to make unprotected and delicate mixed moves. Nearing the end of the first day, we arrived at a fine snow patch below an overhanging rock wall, and with a bit of digging we had the perfect tent ledge: flat and protected from rock and ice falling from above.

Day two on the face saw us taking on the steep rock wall that had most concerned me during our binocular study from the west ridge of Dorje Lhakpa. While most of the route had an obvious line, with at least a suggestion of ice in the corner or steep grooves, this rock wall had just looked steep and blank. We traversed left from our bivouac the next morning with a growing feeling of suspense. Fortunately, our luck was in: A series of chimneys hidden behind a line of flakes led up the steep wall. Over three intense pitches we squeezed, thrutched, and generally groveled our way up Scottish-style icy chimneys. Tim was in his element, despite very little protection in the wide cracks.

The climbing was hard enough, but hauling up our rucksacks was horrendous as they repeatedly jammed in the cracks. We felt exhausted as we topped out of the chimneys, but confident that we had overcome the most uncertain stretch of the route. I should have known that mountains never give in that easily.

That night we rigged the ice hammock and pitched the tent in what we thought was a perfect location, but as soon as we got into our sleeping bags we realized our tent was located in a spindrift avalanche runnel. Very quickly we had to evacuate the tent and begin digging the ledge back out. After hours of work, we gave up and just stood there, in the pitch black, as our tent and equipment were buried. Toward the middle of the night, the snowslides finally stopped, allowing us to dig out and crawl back inside our ripped and deformed home. The mountain was getting the upper hand again.

Dawn after an unpleasant bivouac is always a fair test of a climber’s will. Tim passed nicely and clearly had the desire to keep going. More tired than we should have been after just two days on the route, we set off to climb steep, thin ice up never-ending granite grooves. The weather was improving, the ice was good, and confidence slowly improved. An excellent lead by Tim, over a steep rock bulge on very thin ice, linked our line to the foot of the summit icefields. We erected the hammock again and hoped for better luck with the spindrift, which this time thankfully did not materialize, and we enjoyed a beautiful sunny evening on probably the best weather day of the entire expedition. Our tent was no longer usable as a tent, so we just wrapped the fabric around ourselves and settled in for the night.

The summit slopes should have been easier, but the bulletproof ice made the climbing slow and tedious, and the heat of the afternoon sunshine drained the last vestige of energy from our bodies. We were trying hard to make the summit that day, with the hope of a flat campsite, but at nightfall we found ourselves still climbing. Then, about 50 meters below the top, we found a natural rock cave that allowed us to crawl inside and spend the night protected from the elements, with a beautifully flat place to lie down. I have never seen anything like it—the mountain was being generous that night to a team without a tent. Initially Tim had been somewhat bemused about my systematic and precise approach to bivouacs—everything must be in the correct place, and everything must be done in a precise order and in a specific way. However, by this stage in the climb, it was all starting to make sense and we had become a slick snow-melting, tea-making machine. Thunder rumbled outside the cave that night.

A short climb the following morning brought us to the top of Peak 6,563m. As far as we understood, this summit had not been climbed before and was unnamed. Provisionally, we called the peak Jugal Spire, though I later learned that some people refer to the peak as Dorje Lhakpa II. We called our route The Phantom Line, due to the ephemeral nature of the ice and the way the line appeared and disappeared under different light conditions when viewed from a distance.

Now all that remained was to get down. Fortunately, a series of Abalakov threads in ice led down comparatively easy slopes to the south, meeting a gully dropping west to the Lingshing Glacier, where we spent the night before carrying on to base camp the following day.

Climbing with someone half my age was an interesting experience. As a mentor, there is inevitably an enhanced feeling of responsibility, far greater than you might feel with a climbing partner your own age. The generation gap is unavoidable, no matter how well you get on. My middle-aged man’s moans about work, pensions, and mortgages just resulted in looks of bemused confusion! All that said, it also was a real pleasure to climb with someone full of enthusiasm, open to new ideas, and who was excited about climbs yet to come.

SUMMARY: First ascent of Jugal Spire (a.k.a. Dorje Lhakpa II, 6,563m) in the Jugal Himal of Nepal, by Tim Miller and Paul Ramsden (U.K.). The two climbed the north face via a route they called The Phantom Line (1,300m, ED) and descended to the south and west. Leaving base camp on April 23, they began climbing on April 25, summited on April 29, and were back in base camp on the 30th.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Based in Leicestershire, England, Paul Ramsden lives the somewhat schizophrenic lifestyle of a mountaineer funded by work as a safety and industrial hygiene consultant. He and his partners won four Piolets d’Or between 2003 and 2017. He credits his success to a very tolerant wife and family.