Day 8. April, 17. Shigatse - Shegar
In our car except for Sergey Bogomolov and the driver, there are also Anatoliy Menskiy from Tyumen and Ivan Dusharin. About Dusharin (Иван Трофимович Душарин) you can read in Wikipedia. He and Bogomolov know each other more than 30 years, and I've become a reluctant witness of interesting conversation of two popular soviet mountaineers about the sign ascents of the past, about mutual acquaintances, psychology of an ascent and descent. Need to add, that overwhelming majority of their mutual acquaintances are not alive, unfortunately. This is due to the age, partly: Bogomolov is 64, Dusharin - 67; and partly this is due to their profession.
A lot of Sergey's and Ivan's colleagues-mountaineers perished in mountains, and the circumstances of their deaths vary. In the forthcoming ascent and descent of Everest I worry a lot about the ropes: why is so happens, that even experienced mountaineers as Alexey Bolotov and Murad Ashurly were killed, trusting the ropes, which had been visually examined, but became the reason of their death? The conclusion we've made after the discussion is not comforting: it is not always possible to correctly determine the resource of the rope.
In 2007 on our way to the Everest BC from the south we were the witnesses of large avalanching. In case of avalanches: even if you don't ask for troubles, there is always a chance to say goodbye to life. For example, this happened with the film crew of Sergey Bodrov Jr. in Kolka-Karmadon rock ice slide in 2002.
Everest is easy to be seen in the middle in the background. In this avalanching were hundreds of thousands tonns of ice; the resembling one was the reason of 16 sherpas' death in spring of the last year.
Fissures tought me a good lesson at the time of the ascent of Elbrus in 2012. Bogomolov, Khabeev and I had been climbing up together, when we met the team of the '7 summits' club led by Abramov.
The team of the '7 summits' club on Elbrus in 2012.
The team walked in chain fastened to the rope, despite the fact, that the path was tread out well, and only Aleksandr walked aside, not fastened to the rope.
- Sasha, why do your guys are fastened to the rope on the flat path?
- You shouldn't make joke out of it, Jack. There are a lot of fissures here.
I only grinned in response, but less than 2 minutes (!!!) after that the snow swallowed my foot. I thought it was a brook - the sun was shining and the snow was turning into slush. I quckly pulled out my foot to not become wet - but that wasn't a brook.
There was a bottomless hole under my foot, going deep into the mountains, and 15 meters later there was a outcrop of a fissure in about 5 meters from the path; the width of the well here was about 1,5 meters, the well was bended and it was impossible to see its bottom.
The one, who has never looked into a fissure, is unaware of its guile and danger with full external well-being of the surrounding landscape.
Once in my practise during the ascent of Ojos-del-Salado on January 16, 2014 (the day of Abramov's 50th birthday) I experienced a fall. There was a snowy slope on a rock couloir, which becomes more and more steep and ends with rocky rise to the top. Before the rise the guys hang a rope, and only one or two meters were left for me to reach the beginning of this rope.
It all happened in a flash: it was a little snow-slide under my feet and I fell and slid down very fast on my ass. It was so fast, with no time to say 'one-two'... I understood, that I'm not able to stop it using crampons on my feet and arms, so I widely spread my legs and arms and straightened my back. I had a backpack, so the snow stucked under it and I stopped sliding. In a few seconds Abramov was next to me, he put his foot between my legs, thus not letting me to slide down again; at that moment he was much more pale than usual. Now I can say that in general it is quite terrifying to slide down - there were too much space where I could slide to, and also I could badly bump against the rocks.
The next unpleasant moment of that day was later when I ascended the top and had to descend; it is psychologically uncomfortable to descent on the bare rock on the back claws of your crampons, right after you had slid down on your ass very fast and against your will. It is very frightful, especially when the rock is steep and you go down on the back claws of crampons on rocks for the first time in your life.
Well, I overcame myself - won't I be standing there on top of the highest volcano of the world for ages?.. Collected the strength and went down. But I had no breakage of the rope in my practise, so I'm terribly afraid of it after what happened to Bolotov. Our goal - mine and Bogomolov's - is to conquer the summit, the highest summit of the world, and after that without any mess and unexpectednesses to descend the mountain alive and healthy. We will work so.
In our car except for Sergey Bogomolov and the driver, there are also Anatoliy Menskiy from Tyumen and Ivan Dusharin. About Dusharin (Иван Трофимович Душарин) you can read in Wikipedia. He and Bogomolov know each other more than 30 years, and I've become a reluctant witness of interesting conversation of two popular soviet mountaineers about the sign ascents of the past, about mutual acquaintances, psychology of an ascent and descent. Need to add, that overwhelming majority of their mutual acquaintances are not alive, unfortunately. This is due to the age, partly: Bogomolov is 64, Dusharin - 67; and partly this is due to their profession.
A lot of Sergey's and Ivan's colleagues-mountaineers perished in mountains, and the circumstances of their deaths vary. In the forthcoming ascent and descent of Everest I worry a lot about the ropes: why is so happens, that even experienced mountaineers as Alexey Bolotov and Murad Ashurly were killed, trusting the ropes, which had been visually examined, but became the reason of their death? The conclusion we've made after the discussion is not comforting: it is not always possible to correctly determine the resource of the rope.
Karyakin, Urubko (14*8000+), Bogomolov (13*8000+), Bolotov (11*8000+), Vidro and Plyuschikov in Deboche. May 9, 2013, a week before Bolotov's death on Everest.
Mountaineers face many dangers on their way to the top; the dangers from above - rockfalls and avalanches, the dangers from below - fissures, and immediate dangers - falling or breakage of the rope. And if rockfalls and avalanches are the matter of luck in some measure, a fall is the fault of the mountaineer, as a rule (not anough safety equipment, etc.), in case of fissures a trouble can happen for both reasons, but the case of the rope breakage isn't clear for me.
In 2007 on our way to the Everest BC from the south we were the witnesses of large avalanching. In case of avalanches: even if you don't ask for troubles, there is always a chance to say goodbye to life. For example, this happened with the film crew of Sergey Bodrov Jr. in Kolka-Karmadon rock ice slide in 2002.
Fissures tought me a good lesson at the time of the ascent of Elbrus in 2012. Bogomolov, Khabeev and I had been climbing up together, when we met the team of the '7 summits' club led by Abramov.
The team walked in chain fastened to the rope, despite the fact, that the path was tread out well, and only Aleksandr walked aside, not fastened to the rope.
- Sasha, why do your guys are fastened to the rope on the flat path?
- You shouldn't make joke out of it, Jack. There are a lot of fissures here.
I only grinned in response, but less than 2 minutes (!!!) after that the snow swallowed my foot. I thought it was a brook - the sun was shining and the snow was turning into slush. I quckly pulled out my foot to not become wet - but that wasn't a brook.
There was a bottomless hole under my foot, going deep into the mountains, and 15 meters later there was a outcrop of a fissure in about 5 meters from the path; the width of the well here was about 1,5 meters, the well was bended and it was impossible to see its bottom.
The one, who has never looked into a fissure, is unaware of its guile and danger with full external well-being of the surrounding landscape.
Once in my practise during the ascent of Ojos-del-Salado on January 16, 2014 (the day of Abramov's 50th birthday) I experienced a fall. There was a snowy slope on a rock couloir, which becomes more and more steep and ends with rocky rise to the top. Before the rise the guys hang a rope, and only one or two meters were left for me to reach the beginning of this rope.
It all happened in a flash: it was a little snow-slide under my feet and I fell and slid down very fast on my ass. It was so fast, with no time to say 'one-two'... I understood, that I'm not able to stop it using crampons on my feet and arms, so I widely spread my legs and arms and straightened my back. I had a backpack, so the snow stucked under it and I stopped sliding. In a few seconds Abramov was next to me, he put his foot between my legs, thus not letting me to slide down again; at that moment he was much more pale than usual. Now I can say that in general it is quite terrifying to slide down - there were too much space where I could slide to, and also I could badly bump against the rocks.
The next unpleasant moment of that day was later when I ascended the top and had to descend; it is psychologically uncomfortable to descent on the bare rock on the back claws of your crampons, right after you had slid down on your ass very fast and against your will. It is very frightful, especially when the rock is steep and you go down on the back claws of crampons on rocks for the first time in your life.
Well, I overcame myself - won't I be standing there on top of the highest volcano of the world for ages?.. Collected the strength and went down. But I had no breakage of the rope in my practise, so I'm terribly afraid of it after what happened to Bolotov. Our goal - mine and Bogomolov's - is to conquer the summit, the highest summit of the world, and after that without any mess and unexpectednesses to descend the mountain alive and healthy. We will work so.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий