Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Tharpui Chulli Summits!

Field Touring Alpine guides Chris Szymiec, Sean James and Josh Kass summited Tharpui Chulli at 10am on September 26th.

Josh and I left high camp at 4am and were later met by Sean and Dorje Sherpa who were intending to fix the snow face for the rest of the FTA members. We soloed up the 50 degree snow face while Sean ran out 200 meters of rope right up behind us. Once on the ridge we managed to convince Sean to tag the top with us (and break trail). The three of us stood on top at 10 am and were back at high camp by 1 pm for a nice lunch.

The rest of the FTA team and Sean, were planning on heading up the following morning. They had great weather but i have no word on their summit push as of today. Josh and I went from the summit all the way to Annapurna Base Camp in a knee banging 16 hour push! This included breaking down high camp moving all of our gear back to Annapurna camp.

It was a tough climb for Josh and I. Despite the relatively low elevation of 5663 meters, we didn't have the luxury of a porters to carry our gear up the mountain for us. It was a great experience being totally self sufficient on the hill.

Chris from Pokarha.

2 comments:

Andy said...

Nice one Chris!

Cheers
Andy

(G-II 2008)

JohnLindgren said...

Well Done
Congrats to Chris,Josh,& Sean
on reaching the summit,sounds
like you did it tough.
Enjoy the hot soup & cold beers when you get down.
Good luck to the rest of the team.
Be safe
John Lindgren