Trip Reports

Peak Lenin - 6 to 29 Jul '18

Written by Leader Andy Chapman, August 2018

The expedition assembled on the 6th of July in Osh in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. This year trip was an international affair with members from South Africa, Australia, UK. France and Germany. We travelled to Peak Lenin base camp where we met up with our local guides who were to help us climb this huge 7135 meter peak. After three days acclimatisation at base camp we walked to camp 1 known as ABC (advanced base camp), which would be home for the next two weeks while we attempted to climb the mountain.

This was luxury, in mountain terms, set amongst glacier moraine. The first few days at base camp we had some bad weather with electrical storms. Thankfully they subsided before we started climbing the mountain properly.

We had three rotations on the mountain. The first to camp 2 took 7 ½ hours along the glacier, and this proved to be one of the harder days. During the course of the expedition, the glacier and crevasses became more treacherous with some crevasse ladders being in place on three occasions. In August I suspect that the glacier would be very challenging. We noticed on several occasions that the crevasse had got larger and further apart during our three trips up and down the mountain. Our second rotation took us to camp 2 again, and then onto camp 3, which would be our launching pad for the summit attempt.

Returning to base camp we had two whole days rest before climbing the mountain and attempting the summit, setting off on day 18. We climbed to camp 2 for the third time, slept the night and ascended to camp 3 for a more comfortable nights sleep. At around 2 am we started melting snow for water and left at 4 am. We started our summit bid. Matthew and Mandy were away ahead, with Andre, myself, Jeanette, Chris and Jessica following.

Slow and steady progress is made along the ridge. At around 12 pm the second team reached the section known as the knife. This is a 45° snow pitch with fixed lines, and on it from there the route goes around small sub summits and outcrops of rocks.

At around 1.30 pm we heard on the radio that Matthew had successfully reached the summit along with Andre. Sadly the weather deteriorated so at around 1.40 pm we decided that that we had gone far enough and that we would start to descend.

The descent was a long and exhausting experience. In all we had a 16 hour day by the time we got back to high camp.

Next morning, we packed up and descended to ABC. During the night it snowed very heavily and we packed up, leaving at 10:30. The trip down to base camp was in the snow, and thankfully the horses came up to ABC to pick up our bags.

All in all a good successful expedition despite not everybody getting to the summit, but it’s fair to say that everyone had pushed themselves physically more than before on this very challenging and usual mountain… It's always there for next year.

« Previous report | Next report »

Jagged Globe Newsletter

We publish an email newsletter with trip reports and latest availability, plus features, competitions and general news of our climbing, trekking & skiing activities.