The English Bandit

This weekend was the Bayram festival in Turkey, when homes are traditionally blessed with visitors bearing gifts of candy and the cities are afflicted by that peculiar kind of chaos that can only happen when thousands of cars which should have been retired prior to Ataturk's declaration of independence are steered onto the roads loaded with the entire extended family, by a driver who only comes out once a year... This, and rainy weather in the Marmara region conspired to inspire our team, as we headed out into the stony wilds of the east, to the Eskisehir region of Sivrihisar!

Unlike western Turkey, which is home to limestone outcrops for about 200km east of Istanbul (one thinks of Gebze, Hereke, Geyve and Bilecik especially), Ic Anadolu or Inner Anatolia is dominated by igneous rocks including basalt and granite formations which protrude darkly from an otherwise flat and straw-coloured landscape peppered by poultry farms, flour mills, roadside tents selling the local crop of melons and the occasional silhouette of a hill-top statue commemorating a key battle from the Turkish war of independence.

Sivrihisar is one such place. With over 10,000 years of history this small and fascinating place which takes its name from the curious spiky granite rocks that frame its skyline is a climber's paradise. Remote, unspoiled and seldom visited by all but the connaisseur...the potential for first ascents is virtually unlimited, and if you repeat an existing route on the famous Balkaya (canvas for some 2,000 year old horse paintings) you will likely be joining the select company of mountaineers such as Tunc Findik who themselves pioneered here a mere ten years ago.

One other benefit is that with Sivrihisar having been visited in history by the Hittites, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and Ottomans (among others no doubt), and being the birthplace of the celebrated storyteller Nasrettin Hoca, the people of Sivrihisar and surrounds are welcoming of strangers. You can expect to have a friendly conversation with a group of locals out wandering the hills whilst you gear up at the base of a rock tower - no-one will ask you what you are doing, as in the Malatya region for example where the villagers believe all outsiders are treasure-hunters especially those with ropes and strange equipment!

This being our first visit, we contented ourselves with opening up a new trad route on the southern flank of Yazicioglu Kulesi, a 50m tower on which a half-ruined fortress still watches the town. Our route, English Bandit (V+) was a first ascent and a real pleasure offering magnificent afternoon views of the hills and plains. This being granite, and sound at that, protection was easy to find (mainly DMM wires and friends 0.5-3.0). There is a choice of crux - either a nice traverse and mantleshelf at half-height, onto slabs, or a direct layback continuation on flakes, all with a splendid feeling of exposure and wild charm, with the occasional hawk circling overhead. Once atop the easy-angled slabs, belay close to a small pond resembling a baptismal font and enjoy the fact you have just been annointed into the small company of Sivrihisar's climbing brethren...

Wishing you Good Climbing (ve Gecmis Bayraminiz Kutlu Olsun!)

Meditations from Ankara's hidden heights

"A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for." - Marcus Aurelius. Meditations.  Above: on top of the 'Aiguilles de Mamak' so-called because of their golden granite resembling the Aiguilles de Chamonix!

Lately, due to insomnia or too much stress from the winter traffic and the scarce availability of concert tickets, I have been picking up a few too many books at night.  That's not to say I haven't been busy with other things too, though I will save those for my novel.  It would be a shame to mention them here because, as Voltaire said, the secret of being boring is to tell everything...

Somewhere in between times, I headed out to Ankara in recent days and to my pleasant surprise, was able to meet up with friends for an impromptu trip out to the notorious basalt cliffs of Huseyin Gazi.  This area keeps watch over Mamak, a vast poor district, rich only in vegetable markets and giant potholes, the last of which almost claimed our car on the drive back at dusk.

Ankara - so intellectual, so maligned; once so cultured, now declined!  Not entirely: I think some of the criticism is not justified: true, the government bureaucracies (perhaps including the Parliament), party headquarters, fortified embassies and military buildings litter the city, as do half-finished high-rise blocks which have run aground in planning permission disputes, or bankruptcies.  Shopping malls are oversupplied to a population all too keen to live wholly in them.  No thought of the outdoors there (was Marcuse an Alpinist?).  Kizilay is decaying slowly from the supplanting of its commerce; Bahcelievler has no more gardens, only rows of double-parked cars where a generation ago the kids would ride their bikes around and climb up the trees to pick cherries.

The city's inner roads are a warren of tunnels, with minute place-signs too small to see until it is far too late, which explains the high incidence of smash-ups and near misses all over town.  Driving Dikmen Caddesi, home of the venerable Murat Yildirim's Alpinist shop, is like white-water rafting in the Kackars or paragliding in Baba Dagi - your life is not in your hands once you enter the cauldron.

And what of the night-life, famous ten years ago, now surreptitiously going downhill?  A couple of beers in the No1 Newcastle Pub at the fag-end of the Besiktas-Fenerbahce derby match may restore your confidence!  But there is less theatre and cinema than there should be these days (not counting the drama from the Inonu Stadium).  Charm abides in the cafes around Argentine Caddesi (but at what price?) and when there is snow, this extends to the city centre and the parks, robed in white and less corrupted by the acrid smoke of chesnuts and fish that will billow back once the thaw liberates space for the grill-stands to return. 

As we wait for our friends to appear from the anonymity of the incoming Halk Otobuses, rucksacks and all, like Marxist guerrillas in the movie 'Z', I shiver in the cold air full of the smell of coal and exhausts.  A typical urban morning in Turkey, not unlike Kayseri perhaps, although I did not have a hangover in Kayseri.

We drive out through Kizilay under the Is Bankasi overpass and past numerous bus stops and taxi stands, and sporadic Ankara Halk Ekmek huts (though none were distributing bread).  It's fairly quiet at nine in the morning, and this reveals a more historic Ankara before our eyes, one of sad green parks, men converging outside bakkals, covered women and girls mixed with young couples rushing out to shop, students with their books, ragamuffins, beggars, simit-sellers, balloon-vendors and of course now the Mamak vegetable market which spills onions onto the roads as we pass in clouds of diesel.

A haze envelopes the city even as we leave it behind and follow the winding pock-marked roads through the last outskirts of habitation.  It is dusty, sun-drenched country we find ourselves in beyond the last hilltop; and up above, the dark brown outcrops suddenly appear against a clear blue sky.  We have done our archaeology of Ankara, now we want to climb these fierce stone relics while the day is still young.

Above and below: delightful crack climbing on a granite section with an alpine sky above us, reminiscent of the French Aiguille du Midi (but considerably shorter, unfortunately!).

No bolts here, only traditional methods apply - the ethics of Huseyin Gazi endure, like the rock, and ascents are the richer because of it.  For some notes on routes see http://www.tuncfindik.com/

I recall how Pascal once meditated that human evil emanates from the inability of man not to sit still a room (according to my friend, however, this is the precise reason why Ankara's crags do not see any crowds - because most people are staying indoors, probably in those malls).  To his credit, Pascal also noted that 'imagination decides everything'.  In climbing this is certainly true, nowhere more so than on these beautiful igneous cliffs which we climb compulsively for six hours or so, by all the classic routes, enjoying the sunshine and camaraderie high above the haze of civilisation and memory.

Wishing you all the best for Bayram...

My Grandmother, a pioneer of the Bernese Oberland

 Above: the south flank of the Jungfrau (4,158m) sparkles high above the Jungfraujoch.

This week I was in Switzerland, where the first snows have already capped the peaks of the Mt Blanc range and during a couple of days of sunshine, my appetite for the winter season has been gathering force under the dazzling skies around Lac Leman.

Historically, it is not here but further east that my climbing history begins.  Seventy years ago, in September 1939, my grandmother's diary records of her trip to climb in the Bernese Alps and, incredibly, of her return home to England on 3 September, the day Britain declared war on Germany.  The years leading up to this point marked a defining period in the history of Alpine climbing, and typically for the 1930s, as the world became more polarised economically and more torn politically,  it was contrasting ideologies that underscored many of the routes pioneered in rock and ice and snow, across the range known for its extreme difficulty as 'The Little Himalayas'. 

Above: the ghostly north face of the Monch (4,107m) laden with ice and snow, with the famous eisnollen embossing the north-west spur.  The north-east spur is home to the challenging but less-frequented Lauper route (TD+). 

Little over a year before my grandmother's adventures, July 1938 had seen the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, with four climbers from Austria and Germany 'uniting' en route (and, ironically, little more than three months after the Anschluss of those two countries), surviving two days of fierce storms battling the upper third of the face, and finally planting the German swastika (no less) on the summit of the Eiger at 3,970m on 24 July 1938. 

Don't expect to find mention of these aspects (including the flag, Harrer's SS membership, the athletes' subsequent feting by Hitler at Berchtesgarten, the memory loss after WWII despite continued ties with former Nazi figures) in Heinrich Harrer's book, The White Spider, or in most accounts written since.  Whether by choice (as it seems) or by the curse of association that belonged to the times (the Schmidt brothers who made the first ascent of the Matterhorn's north face in 1936 had also been congratulated and rewarded by Hitler and his acolytes), it is difficult to say, but generally memory loss seems to evoke guilt rather than innocence or duress, just as the ice-fall of the Eigergletscher threatens more than it is beautiful. 

More surprising than this, is the fact that on 22 July, as Harrer's party struggled hidden in the stormclouds, an Italian trio led by Ricardo Cassin arrived quietly at the base of the mountain, intent on making the first ascent.  When news arrived of the Harrer party's success, Cassin immediately set a new objective: the 'last great problem' of the Alps, the unclimbed Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses.  Cassin completed this climb on 6 August, 1938 with his companions Esposito and Tizzoni, a postcard photo their only guide to conquer a mountain none of them had ever seen before.  Two of the six classic north faces had been climbed in the space of three weeks, but it was the people's hero Cassin, survivor of the Badile just a year earlier in 1937, who solved the last great problem of the Alps.

After 1938, Harrer went on to tackle Nanga Parbat, the Himalayan peak which had been beseiged obsessively by German expeditions since 1932.  Notoriously in 1934, the Nazi government had lavishly sponsored the second expedition to the mountain, which included Willo Welzenbach, whose first acscents of the Bernese Alps still stand out today for their extreme difficulty and bravery in the face of objective dangers.  Trapped in a terrible storm at around 7,500m sixteen of the expedition began to battle their way down the mountain in a blizzard, at the loss of Welzenbach, Uli Wieland, half a dozen sherpas and the expedition leader and three-time Nanga Parbat veteran Willy Merkl.  For its 'protracted agony', this would have been undoubtedly the worst Himalayan tragedy of the times, were it not for the fact that a worse disaster was to befall the fourth German expedition in 1937, when all sixteen members of the team were overwhelmed and killed instantly by an avalanche as they camped high on the mountain's Rakhiot Face. 

Harrer and three companions, while conducting the much smaller sixth expedition to Nanga Parbat in 1939, were arrested in September, following Britain's declaration of war on Germany (no doubt as the latch dropped shut in the yard as my grandmother returned home).  Harrer himself soon escaped from an internment camp in India into the Himalayan winter, his north face epics no doubt helping to sustain him in flight through to Lhasa, friendship with the Dalai Lama and post-war fame as a (selective) writer on subjects ranging from his exile in Tibet to a history of the Eiger and musings on the last great problems of the Alps. 

Ricardo Cassin, the blacksmith and boxer from Lecco who was so close to depriving the Nazis from seizing their measure of glory on the Eiger, volunteered to fight Fascism in his own country when war broke out, applying his alpine skills to maintaining links between the partisans operating in the hills and in the cities, rather like my hero Robert Jordan from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Cassin's closest climbing companion from the 1930s was killed in a street-fight; Cassin himself survived the war, and was decorated for his actions in the campaign against the 'Salo' republic after it came crashing down in the partisan uprising of April 1945.

My grandmother's adventures remained locked in our family memory, until I found out about them earlier this year.  Seventy years have passed, and the Bernese Alps are little changed from their wild, intimidating early days.  The currents of history run deep, like frown lines, across their tremendous limestone faces clotted with ice and snow and shrouded in spectral clouds.  Far below, dark green paint is peeling from the eaves in Kleine Scheidegg, where crowds of skiers flit around the slopes and the fogged-up train carriages reek of schnapps and the small affluence of bliss.  I am standing there, in boots, while all this goes on around me, watching the afternoon sun bleaching the faces of the Eiger and the Monch, quietly wondering if Harrer, or Cassin, or my grandmother have stood in this place and felt the same sense of wonder.

Above: In front of the Eiger's vast and complex north face at Kleine Scheidegg in February 2009, little more than seventy years after most of the pioneering drama in this area, but still feeling close to it.

Above: the crux section of the Eiger's Miteleggi Ridge, the last of the great Alpine ridges to be climbed in 1921.  The ridge leads via a series of difficult gendarmes to the precarious summit, above the steep north-east face which has its own fair share of extreme routes.

Above: the Schreckhorn from the south, showing the south-east pillar in the centre of the face.  A sustained grade V climb, this is one of the classic rock climbs of the Bernese Alps, with a long glacial approach and descent, like so many of the routes in the Oberland.

Above: the classic view of the Monch from a more benign south-westerly angle.  The south-west ridge offers the normal route to the summit but, as with everything in these high mountains, is a serious undertaking.

Above: The enormous west pillar of the Scheidegg-Wetterhorn seen in profile, from Grindelwald.  The pillar offers 1,000m of fabulous, committed climbing at Grade V-VI and is one of the best routes in the entire Alps.   

Roads to Freedom - the Ecrins Part 1

'I'll take one road from here on in...' - Woodie Guthrie

Above: Morning cumulus boils up alongside the northernmost peaks of the Ecrins, as we look down from 3,600m at our tracks in the spring sunshine.

The signs were not good, as I drove toward Grenoble - a week of punishing hayfever had laid me so low as to be subterranean and very much sick at home, and as of two o'clock in the morning on Friday I had developed a bad head cold on top.  Arriving in La Grave on Saturday afternoon, I checked into the two-star Castillan hotel and promptly crashed out under a blanket for two or three hours, the best sleep I had had for days. 

When I pulled myself together towards six o'clock, and stepped out into the street, the weather was perfect and the north face of La Meije towered above miles of blue-white glacier in a teetering pinnacle of rock and snow, while thick plumes of cloud rose from the southern side.  It was the most impressive scene I could have wished for, as I soaked up the sunshine on the patio of the Pierre Farabo restaurant, took photograph upon photograph and polished off spaghetti bolognese followed by apple pie and a bowl of hot chocolate.

Above: La Meije with the Grand Pic (3,982m) clearly visible against the clouds which were a feature of the spring weather all weekend.  Surprisingly, the north face receives little attention from alpinists these days, but it offers exciting and difficult mixed climbing possibilities in contrast to the rock walls of the mountain's south face.   

But we were not here to climb La Meije, inspired though we were by the tremendous views and calm weather.  We were here for Le Rateau - the twin summits of which rise to 3,809m and 3,766m respectively out of a long crenellated ridge resembling the razor teeth of a mantrap.  In summer, the north-west arete would offer a pleasant ridge climb on red-brown granite and a chance to take in panoramic views of the whole Ecrins massif - this being along with La Meije, one of the most northerly peaks of significance in the range. 

Above: The north face of Le Rateau and the east summit (3,809m) seen from nearly 2.5km below in La Grave.  Like all of the northernmost peaks of the Ecrins, it is wonderfully glaciated, fearsome seracs barring the approach to the north-east col. 

All night I attempted to sleep but a mixture of illness and anticipation provided more than ample fuel for an insomniac experience.  At one point, I recall saying out loud 'Toni, es geht los,' an infamous line from the movie Nordwand where Hinterstoisser announces that the clouds are disappearing...noises from the floor above finally woke me up at half past seven, and I limped down the carpeted stairs of the Castillon to a breakfast of croissants with nutella, and one under-boiled egg. 

Above: Approaching 3,000m via the cable car, the scale of the mountains begins to dawn on us as we near our jumping-off point for the climb on the Rateau glacier.

Boris, who had just arrived from Moscow the day before, and looked about as off-colour as I did after a week in the urban pollution, performed some emergency repairs on his boots with the aid of some steel wire, as we enjoyed the long cable car ride from La Grave to near the top of the ski slopes.  Occasionally, the cars stopped - presumably while the crew unloaded the crates of eggs and champignons we had seen crammed into the first run of the day.  I took in the preposterous views of La Meije while the stationery cars wobbled on their cables in the light breeze. 

We exited into the ski area a little incongruously, wearing snow shoes and waddled a short distance along the piste.  Here, beside a small 'danger' sign we roped up on an 8mm cord and stepped off the pisted track onto a shallow-angled snow slope.  So subtle was the terrain, so immaculate, that one could be forgiven for not realising that we were now on top of the glacier - from here to the col at 3,500m we were treading on crevassed terrain, where only the largest apertures were visible.  How many crevasses we trod on, light as feathers in our snow-shoes, six metres of tense rope between us, I will never know unless I go back in summer and count them...

Slowly, we climbed the approach slopes to the Col de la Girose without incident, passing over a large crevasse covered in enough snow to wade through without falling in.  The final slope was steeper and we removed our snow shoes to deal with it, re-donning them near the col to coast smoothly over the easier-angled (but still invisibly crevassed) slopes.  By this time, the mountain had become enveloped in the cumulus clouds which had received an innocuous mention in the otherwise spotless weather bulletin ('cumulus may cause isolated problems in some areas', or some such remark). 

Above: Boris just below the start of the mixed ground, during the last spell of clear weather.  A pleasant scramble in summer conditions, the ridge would confront us with increasingly difficult mixed climbing on snow over rock, in proportion to the height gained.  Our route followed close to where the cloud can be seen converging with the ridge.

Above: High on the ridge, in low visibility.  To the right of the snow-crest is a 600m sheer drop down the north face, to the left a similar abyss down to the Selle glacier - in a way, we were thankful we could see neither.

Above: On a knife-edge.  Looking back on what we have just climbed from around 3,700m and beginning to wonder how we will reverse the passage.  By this stage, the ridge had become a series of impressive granite gendarmes, which we had no option but to climb direct.  In summer, parties can cut around these difficulties on the south side of the ridge.  Soft, unprotectable snow slopes ruled out this option.

Above: A rock gendarme offers the only route to the summit.  We climbed two of these wet granite towers consecutively with mountain boots and rucksacks, in a mild snowstorm at IV+ and V.  Before I got used to the freezing effect of the snow, my fingers quickly went numb and I could feel my one hand start to slip as I tried to warm my other while balancing on wet, sloping footholds.  Once I got past the cold, the climbing became enjoyable.

Above: Snow or sky? Manouvering between gendarmes, a brief clearing in the storm affords us a view north.  We were negotiating the thinnest section of the ridge by now, a few metres below the final summit crest.

 Above: The final gendarme tapers into abyss and cloud, caked with fresh snow.  I remember climbing the right-hand side of it confidently and rationally - the footholds in particular were very small for my large mountain boots and I had to trust them constantly in order to progress. 

The muffled sound of metal on metal rang out along the ridge as I waited and watched snow accumulate on my jacket and gloves as I belayed once more into the mist.  Somewhere up ahead, Boris was hammering in a piton and each blow reverberated along the ridge.  The emptiness of the south face was scarcely visible in the storm. 

As I surmounted the final gendarme just below the ridge-top, I noticed a narrow snow crest come suddenly level with my face as I pulled up.  There was a puncture hole going right through the snow - and into thin air.  I was looking straight through the ridge, and down the north face.  The drop was about a foot away.  Carefully, I contoured along the south side, on wet slabby rock, to where Boris huddled in an improvised rock belay.

We discussed the situation.  We were perhaps 20 metres short of the summit, and from here the ridge was flat.  However, Boris recalled, it was strewn with loose blocks which were now covered in snow, and the whole passage would be immediately on top of the north face.  The decision was an easy one: we were not going on.  Somewhat relieved, we shook hands on our 'technical summit' and prepared to abseil down the south face.  By so doing, we could regain the ridge lower down, admittedly by crossing the rather intimidating snow slopes below the gendarmes - but by now, it was our only escape route.

Above: Jubilation on the 'technical summit' of Le Rateau at around 3,750m, although we knew all too well that a delicate and precarious descent was ahead of us, as well as the need to get down from the Col de la Girose as quickly as possible, given the accumulation of fresh snow. 

Above: Rapping the Rateau. Boris leads the abseil retreat from the summit ridge into the mists of the south face.  We descended 50m and traversed round the large gendarme via a delicate snow slope, partially visible to the right of the photograph below.  Plunging one ice axe full-handle into the snow, I would punch my other hand into the snow and clinging on, gingerly traverse round, trying not to stare into the bottomless gully beneath me...

Above: About to reverse the lower section of the ridge, where we moved together, looping the rope over the obvious rock 'spikes' to afford some measure of protection on the way down.  Reversing this long arete of snow-covered rock and thin exposed snow-crests over steep gullies always threatened to unnerve me, but never quite succeeded!

Above: Safely down and off the glacier, we look back at the ridge which now bears a plastering of fresh snow from the day's storm, the cloud which plagued our ascent having retreated to the south. 

Above: To the victor, the spoils - about to enjoy more spaghetti at the excellent Pierre Farabo back in La Grave, while the north face of La Meije beckons into the future.

 

As I drove back through the Romanche Valley toward Grenoble, reflecting on the risks we had taken (eating the under-boiled egg) and the lessons we had learned (never to trust a weather bulletin),  I stopped the car for a few moments to appreciate the French Resistance memorial in Oisans.  Alpinism is seen by many as an especially bold form of recreation, even foolhardly.  Perhaps because we were out to enjoy our climb, and were not motivated by taking a summit at any cost, our climb felt remote from this perception. 

I mused on the significance of alpinism as I stood beside the road.  True, alpinism was a thing to be enjoyed, and if it was something to be admired then so much the better, but my feeling is that the sentiment of admiration would be better directed at those whose names are remembered in the shade beneath the sun-flecked walls of the Romanche Valley, and who set us off on our roads to freedom.

A Sandbag full of honey - Aladaglar Part 1

'The climber is one who goes where his eyes lead him - and comes back.' - Gaston Rebuffat.

Above: Travellers pause to wet their feet on the salt beaches of Tuzgolu near Aksaray at sunset.

Trusting our bulging rucksacks to the bowels of the bus, the two of us piled boldly onto the Nigde Aydoganlar 'express' at lunchtime amid a cluster of bodies, sweat and luggage.  Fifteen minutes later, we still had not left the berth in ASTI as a desperate mother pleaded with the skeptical driver and his sidekick to hold the bus for her two missing children (three eventually showed up).  Innumerable coaches motored past us as we stood on the tarmac; bags were unloaded and then reloaded at the side of the bus; we cursed in various languages, cramped in our seats (this was not Kamil Koc rahat).  I could tell it was going to be another epic trip into the mountains. 

In Turkey, it is always the travelling which proves the mountaineer's commitment to the cause.  I have felt more acute danger on the overland approach than on the actual climb many a time.  Bus travel, rather than steep or overhanging pitches, tends to heighten my feeling of being alive (especially since the provincial buses normally operate at double the standard capacity, with humans, vegetables and, yes, even animals jamming the aisles and keeping the driver company on the dasboard).  If Peru is indeed worse than this, as my mother's stories would suggest, I would rather not go to the Cordillera Blanca (just yet).  But our objective today was the Aladaglar - the Dolomitic mountains of central Anatolia triangulated in between Kayseri, Nigde and Adana and home to some of the best, and most committing, alpine climbing available within the four points of our compass, and in reach of our elite means of transportation. 

We scrambled out onto the dusty Nigde-Camardi road after a tortuous potholed tour of the backroads and villages, where it was strange to see people returning to land that used to be cultivated, bearing bags of onions, beans and lentils purchased in Nigde.  Dusk arrived, and with it Recep in a cloud of dust.  In keeping with the last six hours, we found ourselves wedged into the jeep with two villagers and a two-metre long steel bar coated in oil, which urgently needed to be ferried over to Cukurbag; after a near-miss or two on the decapitation front, we managed to fit it in diagonally across the front and back seats, and as Recep gunned the engine I prayed there would be no mishap this late in the journey.

Above: Adventure travel takes many forms - from the ramshackle to the bucolic - on any approach to the mountains; riding the tractor over stones and ruts, deep into the forested silence of the Emli Valley added to the feelings of excitement and isolation which had been building up to this point of 'no return'.

   

Early the next morning, we tipped our loads into the back of Salim abi's tractor, as the infamous summer heat of the Aladaglar began to coalesce all around us.  At least we were going to be climbing north-facing rock, meaning most of our work could be accomplished in the shade and the brutality of the sun's rays.  Until now, the idea of climbing north faces had never seemed so refreshing.

Above: Evening light softly illuminates the upper reaches of the Emli Valley, home to itinerant shepherds husbanding scarce water supplies and climbers willing to pit themselves against the towers and buttresses of the surrounding peaks.

Above: Exposed scrambling during 'reconnaissance activities' on day one, as we explored an adjacent valley, in search of new lines on its unclimbed limestone walls.

To Be Continued...