Lenin Peak

Lenin Peak (23,406 ft)

Second Highest Mountain in Kyrgyzstan

July 20, 2021

Eric, Andreas, and Andrew

July 1 Fight to Osh
July 2 Shuttle to BC 3600m
July 3 Climb Peak Petrovsky 4800m
July 4 Hike to C1 4400m
July 5 Climb Yuhin Peak 5100m
July 6 Rest at c1 4400m
July 7 Hike to C2 5400m
July 8 Climb Peak Razdelnaya 6100m, return to C2
July 9 Move to C3 6000m
July 10 Climb to C4 6400m, descend to BC 3600m
July 11 Rest at BC
July 12 Rest at BC
July 13 Rest at BC
July 14 Hike to C1 4400m
July 15 Hike to C2 5400m
July 16 Bad weather, descend to C1 4400m
July 17 Bad weather, rest at C1
July 18 Bad weather, rest at C1
July 19 Climb to C4 6400m
July 20 Summit, sleep at C4
July 21 Descend to C1 4400m
July 22 Descend to BC, shuttle to Osh

This summer I was interested in climbing snow leopard peaks, the five 7000m peaks of the former soviet union. I was ambitiously interested in climbing all five of them, but would realistically be thrilled if I could at least get the hardest one, Pik Pobeda. In order to be ready to climb Pobeda it made sense to acclimate on the easiest snow leopard peak, Lenin. Lenin and Pobeda are both in Kyrgyzstan so there would be no cross-border covid-related difficulties getting between them.

Lenin is non-technical, requiring only basic glacier travel, and is popular enough to have lots of infrastructure at basecamp and advanced basecamp. Tour operators sell meals and rent out large tents at these camps, and it is even possible to have horses transport gear to advanced basecamp. Thus it makes a lot of sense to spend time using Lenin to acclimate so fast alpine ascents can be made on subsequent more difficult peaks.

I had planned to climb snow leopard peaks in the summer of 2020, but had to delay due to covid. But travel to central asia was possible again in 2021. We had a team of five climbers for the trip – me, Andreas, Matt, Andrew, and Krystian. I’d climbed Noshaq (24,580ft), the Afghanistan highpoint with Andreas in 2019 and Andreas had actually already climbed Lenin a few years earlier. I’d climbed the Wyoming 13ers with Matt in 2020 and he had high altitude technical mountaineering experience from climbing 6000m peaks in south america. Andrew had already climbed Lenin and Khan Tengri a few years earlier and I climbed most of the Montana 12ers with him in 2020. Krystian is from Poland and had already climbed Lenin a few years earlier. Everyone was interested in snow leopard peaks and on board with climbing Lenin first for acclimation.

There are about a half dozen tour operator companies on Lenin that can help with logistics such as permits, shuttles to basecamps, and meals at camps. Since Krystian had already climbed Lenin he took care of logistics, having Fortune Tours provide permits, a shuttle from Osh to basecamp, and a few nights lodging at basecamp. Our plan was to buy meals a la carte higher on the mountain instead of paying for an inclusive package so we had the flexibility to sample meals from different operators at camp 1. (We ended up discovering Central Asia had best quantity and quality for dinner for $15 a meal while fortune tours was best for breakfast and lunch at $10 per meal.)

July 1

Most tour operators started operations around July 1, so most of the team flew in to Osh July 1. Though Andrew went a few days early to get a head start on acclimation. Matt, Andreas, Krystian and I met up in the Osh airport at 4:30am and Alina from Fortune Tours met us there and shuttled us to TES hostel in town. We gave ourselves a full buffer day in Osh to account for any unforseen travel delays related to covid. Luckily we all made it on time so we had a bunch of spare time in town.

After eating the breakfast buffet we walked around town and Andreas and I headed to Sulayman-Too, a nearby hill with a good view of town. We needed to get to the very summit, but it was surprisingly tricky. We first tried scrambling along the west ridge, but bailed at a 5th class knife edge section. We then went all around the summit but couldn’t find any non-5th-class route up. Andreas was in flip flops and we didn’t want to risk getting injured for the upcoming expedition on this little hill, so we settled for scrambling the lower eastern summit. (Matt later heard of our trip and went up to solo up to the true summit via a marked route, which he said was 5th class).

We soon returned to the hostel and ate a big dinner that night.

July 2

The next morning we loaded gear into a minibus and started the 7 hour shuttle to basecamp. We followed road E007 south over some scenic 4500m passes, then took a break in the rain at the small village of Sary-Tash. We stopped in a restaurant for lunch and the two waitresses must not have seen many foreigners before. The each wanted pictures with all of us.

From there we turned west on E60 to a small unmarked dirt turnoff near the village of Kara-Kavak. We plunged through the Kyzylsu River and followed the dirt road south. This was part of what I call a spaghetti road system. It’s common in Mongolia. A dirt road goes across an open field and whenever the ruts get too deep the drivers just drive to the side and create a new road. The result over time is many parallel roads of varying quality.

Our driver carefully selected the best versions of the road and continued deeper into the hills of an ancient moraine. It was rainy and muddy and at one point he got stuck. But after backing up and trying again he eventually made it up.

We cruised past lots of yurts and camps from Ak Sai and Central Asia, and stopped at the farthest collection of yurts up the road. This was the Fortune Tours camp. We unloaded our gear into one of the yurts, then went out and helped push the bus to get it unstuck as it started driving back to Osh. A big group of 20 Russian climbers had just arrived, and they took two yurts while we shared a yurt with some Polish climbers for the night.

July 3

The next morning after breakfast we decided to do an acclimation hike up Peak Petrovsky (15,800ft). We packed up day packs then jumped across the small stream west of camp. Andrew had hiked up Petrovsky earlier so rested in camp. Matt, Andreas and I followed a climbers trail directly and steeply up the ridge while Krystian and the Polish climbers took a longer, less direct route gaining the ridge to the north.

I’ve heard most climbers turn around once they reach the ridge but we wanted to tag a summit. We turned left at the ridge and followed a faint climbers trail. It involved occasional fun scrambling and soon became covered in fresh snow from the previous night. As we got higher the snow got deeper and soon I was leading the way kicking steps up a steep slope

.

As we crested a small level area around 15,000ft we noticed the skies getting much darker. Very troubling, I noticed Matt’s long hair started standing on end! His ice ax was lightly buzzing and I knew a lightning strike was imminent. I quickly turned around and rushed back down the snow slope, yelling at the other guys to follow. Andreas followed me down a hundred feet though Matt stayed higher. Another climber came up and I told him what happened but he just smiled and continued up. Maybe  he didn’t speak much English and hadn’t understood me.

We waited for half an hour as thunder rumbled and the storm passed, and then it started clearing. It seemed safe so we went back up the slope and caught back up to Matt and the other climber. We climbed more snow slopes and eventually reached some sort of peak at the top of the ridge. I think it was a sub peak of Petrovsky since the ridge continued. We stopped to enjoy the sunny view, but then saw another big thunder cloud approaching.

Given our previous experience we elected to call that summit good enough and skidaddle back down. The descent was fast, plunge stepping down the snow, scrambling the ridge, and scree surfing back to the valley. We headed directly to the Central Asia camp to meet up with Andrew for lunch and just barely beat the coming storm. After lunch we returned to the Fortune Tours yurts for the rest of the evening.

July 4

We were scheduled to take a rest day in base camp but we were all feeling strong so decided to move up to camp 1. Conveniently there are horse packers going back and forth between basecamp and camp 1 every day and they had just started for the season. They only charge a few dollars per kg of gear, which is definitely worth it. We loaded up as much gear as we could, leaving ourselves just small daypacks.

By 9am we were hiking up the valley. The rough dirt road continued another half mile and I think Ak sai actually shuttles people up in a big truck. But we were happy to walk with such light packs. At the head of the valley we passed

some memorial plaques and then the trail steepened. We passed a big group of hikers, then soon got passed ourselves by the horse packers carrying our gear.

The trail up to travelers pass was very snowy and muddy, but we eventually made it up and over to drier terrain on the sunny south side. From there the trail traversed steep scree slopes and was actually kind of narrow and sketchy. I would be very nervous riding a horse through that.

We eventually got off the scree slopes, crossed a few small streams, and hiked back up to a small plateau. We had to posthole through fresh snow, then passed by Ak Sai’s camp and one other camp to finally reach the Fortune Tours and Central Asia camps. These camps have the best location of all the operators in camp 1 because they are the farthest up the route towards camp 2, just on the edge of the glacier.

We picked up our gear from the horses at Fortune Tours, then went and had lunch in the Central Asia tent. Andrew had bought the economy package with Central Asia, which included a few meals at camp 1, so it made sense to all eat together. We also decided to splurge on the convenience of the sturdy yellow tents from Central Asia, so paid for a few nights of those. We ate dinner there and slept in the yellow tents that night.

July 5

The next day we did an acclimation hike up nearby Yuhin Peak (16,800ft). The peak is a nontechnical, glacier- free hike just above Ak sai’s camp that many climbers use for acclimation. It is pretty snowy, though, so I went up in my Olympus Mons 8000m boots while everyone else used hiking boots. We started out up a nice dirt trail, then soon went directly up the steep southeast face.

As we got higher the face turned to snow and I was happy to have my big boots on. There was actually a fixed rope on an area that wasn’t really steep enough to warrant it, which makes me think a lot of guided parties hike up that peak with inexperienced clients.

I passed a few slower groups, then eventually reached the summit ridge. Interestingly there were five tents set up on the ridge just below the summit. It looked like it was for a guided group. I figured out the guided groups often camp up there for acclimation instead of making a first trip to camp 2. I think that is because many clients don’t have glacier or high altitude experience and it is much safer to get them just high altitude camping experience first. It is much easier for a client to bail from the non-glaciated Yuhin Peak than from the heavily glaciated camp 2. But I wouldn’t feel safe camping up there with so many thunder storms passing through.

Just past the tents I hiked up to the flat summit and admired the view. I could see our entire upcoming route on the north face of Lenin. Clouds swirled around and it didn’t last too long though. The rest of the team soon caught up and we all admired the view. More climbers started trickling up and l I eventually started descending to avoid the crowds.

For the descent I really appreciated the Olympus Mons instead of hiking boots since I could quickly plunge step the whole way down. I even got a little bit of boot glissading in. We all soon got back down to Ak Sai camp by early afternoon, but by then the snow crossing back to Central Asia camp was a swamp of slush. Fortunately I could wade through in my big boots, which kept me dry despite a few knee-deep sections. Everyone else unfortunately either got soaked or had to walk way around.

We managed to get back for 2pm lunch and hung out in the main yurt the rest of the evening. That night it snowed a few inches and we were happy to have the comfort of the dinner yurt and the sturdy yellow tents.

July 6

We took a rest day the next day to help with acclimation. It was snowing and thunderstorming all day anyways so was an easy call to read books and play cards in the dinner yurt all day.

July 7

It was time to move higher up the mountain and we decided to get an early start. Camp 2 is located in a big bowl at 5400m and can turn into an oven by late morning. Andreas, Krystian, and Andrew remembered this from their previous climbs up Lenin and strongly advised beating the heat to camp. Thus we arranged for Fortune Tours to prepare breakfast for us at 2am and we were hiking up by 3am. We split into two two teams for efficiency – Andrew and I on one 30m rope and Matt, Andreas and Krystian on another 30m rope.

The snowstorm that night had just let up, but only after dropping 6″ of snow. This made for some tricky navigating and trail breaking at 3am since we were the first group up and there were no tracks to follow. I had the most experience with that kind of terrain from winter mountaineering in the cascades, so I took the lead. It was slow going but I eventually made my way to the end of the flat part of the glacier and the start of the seracs.

By then two other guys caught up and passed us. I was a little frustrated since once they were in front breaking trail they went slower than I had been and forced me to slow down. But I guess it was ok since they were now doing the work of trail breaking. We put crampons on and slowly climbed up the seracs. There was a ladder on a steep section that kind of just got in the way, then there were some fixed ropes on an exposed traverse.

Above this the terrain eased up and we eventually caught back up to and passed the other two climbers. The sun was starting to come up by then and things were heating up. We reached more level terrain and traversed right. The group needed to take a break on the traverse and a bunch of other groups soon caught up. It’s amazing on a big mountain like this that trail breaking is such a thankless job. I had been working hard for the past five hours to find the route and break trail, finding a handful of crevasses en route with my hiking pole and figuring out safe ways around them, but all groups behind us were oblivious to this effort. In fact, most of them were hiking up unroped! They were lucky someone was ahead probing the freshly formed thin snow bridges for crevasses. I got pretty annoyed when some unroped climbers tried to pass us and stepped on our rope. It’s amazing more people don’t get hurt on Lenin, with so many inexperienced people going up with no clue how to safely travel on a glacier.

By then several groups had come down from camp two so there was now a broken trail the whole way. We let the inexperienced groups pass (they now had a broken trail to follow), then continued. By 10am we finally reached camp 2 and started looking for a campsite. In 1990 camp 2 on Lenin was unfortunately the site of a huge avalanche resulting in 40 fatalities, one of the worst tragedies in mountaineering history. The old camp 2 was located in the flat basin at 5400m and an earthquake had triggered an avalanche that wiped out the camp.

Now camp 2 is located higher on a slope above the basin and out of the avalanche path. However, with all the fresh snow of the previous days and the early season snow still not melted off from the slope, we noticed the two dozen tents set up were actually still in a dangerous location. The slope above them had clearly recently slid, with the debris only feet away from the edge of camp! I noticed directly above the tents were cornices that could fall any day and trigger new slides. Maybe later season that side slope is safe, but it was currently very dangerous.

We chose a location below the slope and out of the danger zone of the slides, but still above the bottom of the basin. I would argue there is no perfectly safe campsite location at camp 2, but we chose the safest of the options. I probed for crevasses and found one just uphill from us, so I carefully marked a safe perimeter and we set tents up there.

Next I set about digging a latrine. We were pretty far from the standard latrine area for camp 2, and that area is disgusting. Climbers generally traverse a snow slope to go behind a rocky area, but many are lazy and just go on the side of the trail. I imagine by August it gets really bad. So I dug a deep hole near camp and built a big privacy snow wall around it. I’m sure everyone in the team appreciated this.

As expected it soon started getting really hot (the area is nicknamed “the frying pan”) and we retreated to our tents. The tents can actually get nice and cool if we lay our sleeping bags  outside on top.

Around 4pm we noticed a team descending from camp 3 down the steep slope above camp. They actually triggered a large loose wet avalanche that wiped out part of the route and ran a few hundred feet! It was a southeast-facing slope, which probably didn’t help with it baking in the sun. We made a note to make sure to be off that slope by mid day in the future. We spent much of the rest of the afternoon reading and napping before cooking dinner and going to bed.

July 8

The next morning we set out for another acclimation hike. Razdelnaya Peak is a 20,000ft summit just next to camp 3 and seemed like an appropriate objective. We started around 6am to try to beat the heat, though Krystian decided to sleep in and catch up later. I noticed virtually all groups go unroped above camp 2, but the route still crosses glaciers and I could even see some obvious crevasses near the route higher up. So I insisted that we rope up.

We followed the trail steeply up from camp until reaching a broad gradual ridge. We followed the ridge south until it hit a very steep slope leading to camp 3. By this point it was starting to get hot and Matt decided to turn around. Andrew, Andreas and I then continued on one rope. We made slow progress but eventually topped out at camp 3 around 11am.

There were a handful of tents set up, mostly by porters for Ak sai. Guided clients pay to have porters carry tents up and set them up for them. This meant, since we were still early season, most tents were actually empty and the only climbers up there were porters. I managed to convince everyone to join me to go tag Razdelnaya, even though it was only a little higher than camp 3. We broke trail over and admired the view into Tajikistan from the broad summit. We thought we might be able to pick out Communism Peak in the distance, though it was hard to be sure.

We soon turned around and descended. The steep slopes went by much more quickly and we got down to camp 2 by early afternoon, before the snow got dangerously soft. The rest of the afternoon we draped sleeping bags over the tents again and read and napped.

July 9

We started early again the next morning, this time packing up all our gear to move camp. Krystian decided to sleep in again so the rest of us headed up on two rope teams. Progress was much slower this time with the heavy packs. But we eventually reached camp 3 and started looking for a tentsite. There were several apparently open level sites, but the porters told us they had just cleared them out for clients and weren’t open.

So we went just past the tents and made our own site. I had fun constructing a big snow wall to protect my tent from the wind, and then relaxed in camp. That evening we noticed two climbers coming back from the upper mountain and the porters all clapped for them when they got back. I later heard they were from ak sai and were the first to summit this season. They had wanded the route and it should be easy to follow now.

I was actually feeling surprisingly strong and amazingly the weather was clear with minimal wind. I proposed going for the summit that night. On Noshaq we had climbed above 7000m on day nine, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to do the same here. Andreas was interested but nobody else was feeling up for it. We eventually got convinced that the team should stay together and wait to summit until after a Russian rest.

That evening we met a group of Russian guides (Sasha Dusheyko and friends) who were planning on the same summer itinerary as we were – climbing Lenin then Khan Tengri then Pobeda. We expected we’d probably bump into them again later in the summer.

The plan for our group was to descend all the way to basecamp the next morning. This strategy is called a Russian Rest and had worked surprisingly well for me and Andreas on Noshaq. But before descending Andreas and I decided to tag a higher elevation that night to trigger an even better acclimation response at basecamp.

July 10

We left camp at 1am with Andrew and set out to tag camp 4 at 6400m. Unfortunately the wind picked up by then and the tracks all got blown over. There was one guy ahead of us going for the summit but I heard he turned around before making it. Andrew turned around before long but Andreas and I took turns breaking trail. After a few hours we made it to the 6400m plateau. It was extremely cold and windy at 3am and I’m glad we weren’t pushing for the summit in that weather. We soon turned around and were back to camp by 4am.

After taking a short nap we packed up in the wind at sunrise and all headed down. Our plan was to rest a few days at BC and then head back up. To save energy on the next ascent we stopped at camp 2 and set up our tents there. We stashed extra food and gear in the tents before heading down. I had a second sleeping bag stashed at basecamp so was actually able to leave my sleeping bag up there also.

As we were almost ready to leave we heard people yelling and noticed an avalanche ripping down the north face of Lenin. It was sort of heading towards camp so we quickly scrambled higher up the slope. The snow ended up only reaching the flat bottom of the basin a few hundred feet from camp, but the debris cloud washed over camp and was a bit scary. Not as scary as the experience from a handful of climbers on the trail, though. The snow nearly reached the trail and I later saw chunks of snow

from the debris cloud scattered over the trail. Several climbers roped together had just frozen in place, too scared to move. But one solo porter had dropped his pack and sprinted away up a hill. Luckily nobody was hurt. But I understood why camp 2 was moved in 1990. That relatively small avalanche likely hit the old camp 2 location. We vowed to move quickly through the danger zone just below camp.

But that relatively small avalanche was only foreshadowing what we were about to see later. We roped up and left camp 2, but within an hour we noticed the trail was obliterated under fresh avy debris. It turned out around 2am that morning, just 6 hours before we got there, a serac had released near the summit ridge on the north face and triggered a massive avalanche that ran all the way to the flat glacier above camp 1, 6000ft lower. It completely wiped out several thousand vertical feet of the route, including the fixed rope section through the seracs. It was a miracle it ran in the middle of the night when nobody was on the route.

A few groups had made it up that morning and we were able to follow their tracks down. But it got tricky at the serac section. Below us the snow had been scraped down to ice, leading to a big cliff. We took our time downclimbing facing in, and at one point I started downclimbing a narrow snow bottleneck between ice patches. While in the middle of the narrow section a solo unroped russian climber decided to try to squeeze by me! The man was an idiot. I hadn’t even noticed him until he was right next to me. He almost knocked me over while above an ice cliff. I’m not sure what’s more dangerous on Lenin – the avalanche hazard or so many rude and inexperienced climbers. (Of course a majority of climbers are polite).

We managed to get down the icy section, then traversed back to where the route was unaffected by the avalanche, then after a few hours made it down to camp 1. We ate lunch there then Matt, Andreas and I continued descending to basecamp. A Russian Rest is most beneficial if you can descend as low as possible after you tag a high elevation, so your body can recover and acclimate the quickest. However, Andrew and Krystian decided to stay at camp 1 for the rest since they didn’t want to hike farther down to basecamp.

We stashed our glacier gear at camp 1 then had a relatively easy hike back down a few hours to basecamp. The only difficulty was the stream crossings. In the heat of the afternoon there must have been a lot more snowmelt, and some of the crossings were thigh deep on me! We made it down by dinner time though and paid for a few nights in the central asia tents.

July 11-13

Over the next two days we relaxed in Central Asia basecamp doing a lot of reading and eating. Unfortunately I got a little bit sick with a cough and soar throat, but luckily it was at relatively low elevation and I recovered before needing to go back up. Krystian got very sick at camp 1, bad enough to hike down and take the next shuttle back to Osh. It turned out he had somehow contracted mono and would soon fly back to Poland.

By July 13 a big group of climbers arrived at Central Asia and they no longer had tent space for us. So we packed up and walked over to Ak sai. We had originally planned to hike up to camp 1 that morning, but it was raining and snowing all day at basecamp, probably worse higher on the mountain. We decided to give the upper mountain snow an extra day to settle in the wake of the recent avalanches, and also give ourselves a more pleasant day to ascend.

Ak sai had a different food setup than central asia – an all-you-can-eat buffet. It looked great at first and I was definitely happy to go back for seconds and thirds. But the problem is other climbers likely don’t wash their hands and they are handling all the food. That night the food didn’t agree with my stomach and I had to make a lot of trips to the outhouse. I wasn’t the only one, from the sounds I heard all night.

July 14

By morning I was feeling better and we started our hike back up. The Ak sai truck shuttled a bunch of people up to the end of the road and we had to pass lots of hikers on our way up. We were already acclimated so hiked up much faster than everyone else. This time travelers pass was melted out and dry, and the stream crossings were much lower and more manageable. We made it up to Central Asia camp by lunch and hung out with Andrew the rest of the day in the yurt before renting some yellow tents for the night.

July 15

We started up at 5am the next morning. Based on our previous trip up to camp 2 we’d learned progress was much faster if we could see where we were going to navigate. A few porters had left at 4am so we were able to follow their fresh tracks, which would also help with navigation. We made relatively quick progress, following the new trail over the avalanche debris. By 9am we reached camp, but I couldn’t find my tent!

It must have been a nasty storm up there the past few days because it had flattened my tent and covered it in snow. I carefully dug it out, then crawled inside and propped the poles back up. Luckily the poles survived unbent and unbroken. Unfortunately, though, the door had been left open and snow covered everything. That took a while to clean up. But it was nowhere near as difficult as recovering my shovel.

I’d left the shovel in the vestibule, but the snow must have melted to slush around the shovel and then refroze. So the shovel was now half immersed in ice! It took me 45 minutes chiseling with my ice ax to get it out, and in the process I accidentally nicked up the shovel quite a bit, creating lots of burrs. I then spent a half hour filing the burrs away, and was finally finished cleaning up the camp 2 mess.

We hung out at camp 2 the rest of the day, with our plan to ascend gradually to the summit camp by camp to hopefully give us good long-term acclimation. I filled time by constructing a snow wall around the tent and a nice kitchen. My old latrine had been overused and destroyed by other climbers, so I filled it in and spent three hours constructing a new, even more magnificent one. I made a big privacy wall around it, with the entrance a narrow corridor going through our kitchen. I hoped this would prevent other random climbers from wandering in and destroying it. I intended it just to be for our team for one night, not a public toilet.

Still, other climbers kept wandering over trying to use it. I politely told them I had built it for our team, and they were free to go use the regular camp 2 latrine. Most were polite, but some were very rude. “But we were able to use the old toilet here!” one told me. “Yes, I made that one too,” I replied “and everyone used it until it got destroyed. I just spent three hours making this one and it’s just for my team. I’m sure you can dig a hole on your own for your own latrine or use the main camp 2 latrine.”

I was amazed how so many climbers thought there would just automatically be free services for them at these camps. It seems very few climbers are prepared to take care of themselves on Lenin. On Denali every team was completely independent, including being able to dig their own holes to poop in. I’m not sure why it is so different on Lenin.

July 16

That night was extremely windy and stormy. Every hour or so a huge gust threatened to flatten the tent again. I ended up getting hardly any sleep, since I kept holding the tent wall up against the wind all night. It seems the velcro holding the poles in place inside my nemo tenshi is not quite strong enough to withstand 60mph wind gusts. The newer tenshi models have the poles outside held by clips instead of velcro, and I think that is a stronger solution.

By morning it was still extremely windy, and I reluctantly crawled out to survey the situation. A few groups were heading up, but every few minutes a mega gust of wind would blast through and hammer all the tents with snow. We ate breakfast and waited an hour, but the weather didn’t seem to change. Interestingly, we saw Sasha and his team heading back down. He had earlier told us they would summit Lenin “no matter the weather”, but they had decided this weather was too bad. They would head out to catch a scheduled helicopter flight to south Inylchek to get a head start on Khan Tengri and Pobeda. They reasoned they were sufficiently acclimated, having spent a few nights at 6000m already.

We were already reluctant to head up, and this sealed the deal when experienced Russian mountaineering guides were retreating. We decided to descend to camp 1, ride out the bad weather, then make a quick summit bid whenever the next weather window came. We would leave our food and gear stashed at camp 2 so we could return with light loads. Matt decided he didn’t want to make extra trips back and forth to camp 1, so he would just hang out at camp 2 and wait for us. He had enough extra food to hang out a few days, and could make sure our tents didn’t get flattened again.

I spent the next few hours fortifying my snow wall with Andreas’s help. One climber, who I had specifically told to stay away before, had the audacity to walk right by me through our kitchen as I was shoveling snow, then poop in our latrine. I yelled at him, then he just ignored me and broke through the snow wall on the other side to exit. I am continually amazed how lazy and rude some climbers can be on that mountain. How hard can it be to dig your own hole to poop in? I was very happy Matt would be staying there to keep watch over our stuff. I wouldn’t put it past the climbers up there to break into my tent and steal things.

We soon headed down and made good time on the now-familiar route to camp 1.

July 17-18

We spent the next few days hanging out at camp 1, playing lots of cards and chess in the dinner yurt. Our meteorologist friend Chris Tomer was sending us daily weather forecasts and there looked to be a window in the middle of the day July 20. So we made plans to move up.

July 19

We had breakfast at 4am at Fortune Tours and were soon heading up the familiar route to camp 2. We arrived around 9am and Matt had done an excellent job guarding our gear and making sure the tents didn’t blow away. We quickly packed up, roped up in two teams, and made our way up to camp 3.

Unfortunately we got stuck behind an enormous line of several dozen guided climbers moving excruciatingly slowly. Some let us pass, but other were rude and wouldn’t let us, even though we were clearly faster. It’s tough because it’s a lot of work to go to the side of the trail and break trail through fresh snow while still going fast enough to pass them. The polite thing to do, which any

experienced climber would do, is step aside briefly to let a team that is clearly faster pass. Obviously the climbers ahead of us were not very experienced mountaineers.

Eventually we made it to camp 3 and stopped for a brief break. There were no glaciers above us, so we cached our glacier gear with one of the porters from Fortune Tours. After a bit of persuasion we managed to convince our whole team to push on to camp 4 at 6400m for the night. A night or two sleeping at 6400m would help with long term acclimation and put us within better striking distance of the summit the next morning.

We descended 100m to a col, then hiked up a snowy and rocky ridge, eventually cresting the plateau at 6400m. I led the way and found a semi-sheltered spot where we pitched our tents for the night.

July 20

We got up at 3am, 4am, and 5am but each time the weather was still windy and whiteout outside. I was beginning to get nervous the weather window wouldn’t materialize. But Chris was right – by 6am everything cleared out. I think we were the only ones aware of this weather window, since there had been hardly anyone at camp 3 the earlier night, and we were the only ones at camp 4. We quickly

packed up. It was nice that the summit ridge was non-glaciated and non-technical so we could go up with very light packs.

It was still very cold, though, and I would end up hiking in my down jacket all day. Unfortunately Matt wasn’t feeling well so he stayed in camp while Andrew, Andreas and I hiked up. The ridge started out flat and snowy but it eventually turned to rock and we could intermittently follow a trail in the dirt. As we got higher we eventually reached the knife, a short and steep snow section with a fixed rope. I kicked steps up to the rope, then held on with one hand while plunging my whippet dagger head into the snow with the other. It would have been kind of nice to bring my harness and a prussik or micro traxion, but Andreas and Andrew hadn’t remembered this section being so steep.

I soon crested the lip and let the other guys come up. Somehow Andreas lost a crampon on the way up but Andrew found it and brought it up with him. I was the only one who brought an ice ax so I think the ascent was a bit sketchier for the other guys. We eventually all made it up, but I was concerned our pace would be too slow to get to the summit within the weather window. Given the route was straightforward (just follow a ridge) and unglaciated, we thought it would be ok to split up.

I took the lead with Andreas while Andrew came in the rear. I followed intermittent flags but generally stayed close to the ridge. I eventually reached a very wide snowfield and broke trail across through deep and challenging snow. On the other side I hiked up a gradual rock ridge and by 12pm found myself at the Lenin head. I had done my homework though and suspected this was not actually the true summit of Lenin Peak. Markus Gschwendt wrote a report that the true summit is in fact a rock outcrop 300m south along the ridge. This is supported by SRTM data, Open Topo Maps, and Gaia topo maps.

To be certain, though, I brought a surveyor’s sight level up to the Lenin head and measured then angular difference to the rock outcrop to the south. I measured an angular inclination of 1.2 degrees up to the rock outcrop. Using a bit of trigonometry this means the rock outcrop is 6.3m *higher* than the point where the Lenin head is placed. This means essentially all climbers at Lenin peak in fact turn around at a false summit and never actually reach the true summit! My measurement is consistent with the other map sources I cited.

I waited for Andreas to catch up, then I broke trail about 20 minutes over to the true summit. We scrambled up the rock outcrop and took our summit pictures there. By the time we made it back to the false summit Andrew had caught up, so we were all at the false summit together.

It was -7F on top but felt surprisingly pleasant with almost zero wind and sunny skies. Chris had nailed the forecast and we were the only climbers to take advantage of it. I think we were only the third team of the season to summit. It was around 2:30pm by then and we started making our way back down. Andrew wanted to hang out a bit longer and said he would catch up. The descent was still surprisingly difficult. My broken trail had blown over and filled back in so I had to break trail again across the snowfields. That was tough work above 7000m.

As we crossed the snowfields the clouds rolled in and visibility dropped. But Andrew had our fresh tracks to follow so it didn’t seem like an issue. We followed our same route back, moving quickly and reaching camp by 5pm. Matt was hanging out outside. He said he’d tried to start up but was still feeling bad and was eager to descend. I volunteered to wait for Andrew while Matt and Andreas would move down and try to reach camp 1.

I ended up waiting til 8pm, and was on the verge of going back up to look for him, but luckily Andrew eventually arrived. It was too late to make sense going down so we just camped at 6400m again that night.

July 21

It snowed pretty hard all night and my tent was thoroughly covered. We managed to dig everything out and start heading back down. But halfway down the slope Andrew realized he’d lost a crampon! (Losing crampons would unfortunately be a common occurrence this summer). He spent an hour looking but couldn’t find it and we soon just went down. The snow was deep, and by the time we reached the col below camp 3 the trailbreaking was tough. I led the way plowing through, and luckily we met a russian couple descending to the col from camp 3. I told them we camped at camp 4 at

6400m, but the man insisted there did not exist a camp 4. Maybe he didn’t understand english very well, or he thought the only way a camp can exist is if porters bring tents up for you.

Their tracks helped some, but it was still tough work for me to break trail. Near camp 3 two porters actually came down carrying tents to place at camp 4. Maybe it was for the russian couple. I eventually made it to camp 3, which was deserted except for two porters. I texted with Matt and Andreas on my inreach and it turned out they had stopped at camp 3 the previous night and were on their way down now heading to basecamp.

I got our cached gear, then when Andrew caught up we rested a bit and headed down. Since there was no more trail breaking we switched leads and Andrew led us down. Progress was cautious with Andrew missing a crampon but luckily the snow wasn’t too icy. We eventually made it to camp 2, took a long food break, then continued down to camp 1.

Just before camp 1 Andrew was really tired and had a small slip into the edge of a shallow crevasse. I held him on the rope while other climbers rushed over to help him out. We both eventually made it to the dinner yurt. Unfortunately the horse packers had already left a few hours earlier, along with Matt and Andreas. With Andrew worn out it made most sense for us to spend the night at C1.

We had a nice dinner that night and the cooks and base camp manager brought out a big cake for Andrew and had a ceremony for Andrew for summitting. For some reason they completely ignored the fact that I also summitted, which was surprising and kind of insulting. They clearly saw me coming down on the rope with Andrew and holding him from falling in the crevasse. Maybe they thought I was his guide.

July 22

In the morning we packed up gear for the horses and said goodbye to our friends in camp. It was an easy hike down with light packs, and we met up with Matt and Andreas at Fortune Tours yurts. The horses came soon after with our gear, and by 5pm we were loaded up in a minibus headed to Osh.

We made it to the TES hotel that night after a long 6 hour ride. It felt great to be resting at low elevation. The next plan was to fly to Bishkek, take a few rest days at low elevation, then start traveling to our next peaks – Khan Tengri and Pobeda.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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