Sorry, my access to the blog is not working at the moment, so I will have to send all this by email. The result will probably be a jumbled mess, but better than nothing!
We made our way to Shigar on the 15/7. It is about 1 hour’s ride away from Skardu. The place was a little 'odd': definitely a different a feel to that which we had become accustomed to in the northern areas!
The next day, we took-off at 2800m from a less than ideal spot. Romain had developed stomach problems, so he headed straight down to the hotel in order to plug himself into the porcelain adaptor. The day looked nice, so I opted to carry on by myself.
Askole (at the base of the Biafo and Baltoro glaciers) is a 6 hour ride by jeep. I think the clouds were around 5800m, and I soon realized that I might just be able to slip over a high col and into the Askole valley direct.
There was quite a strong wind when I arrived there, so I landed at 4200m in a pasture full of cows. I thought there might be some friendly shepherds, but unfortunately there were only some slightly irksome children. I think years of big expeditions to K2 and the like passing through their village had taught them how to deal with foreigners. This was something I had not experienced in my Pakistan travels so far, and I had to adopt the hedgehog technique and ignore them. Fortunately they had to leave after a couple of hours to get all the cattle back down to the village. I was now all alone.
I gathered water, and made my bivouac on top of a huge rock mainly, I hate to admit it, because the kids had made me paranoid about the presence of wolves!
Afterwards, I made a fire. There was no firewood, so I had to use dry cow poo to make myself a cup of tea. It was a first for me, and I can tell you that it works very well. No nasty smells, nothing!
The next day, I took of at about 11am and scraped around for a while, hoping not to land on the glacier below. Eventually I got a good climb up to nearly 6000m, and was rewarded with great views of the Biafo glacier, and over to the start of the Baltoro. I was in a bit of a dilemma; on one hand, I badly wanted to fly up the Baltoro glacier; on the other, the wind was pushing me that way and I doubted my ability to get back – which would have meant a very lengthy walk along the glacier. It’s something which is going to nag me for a long, long time indeed……….
Today, I’m having a rest. The weather doesn’t look very good anyway.
Chao.
Demian xx
Truly fantastic. Glad the Big Bad Wolf was not out to get you!
ReplyDeleteLook forward to next adventure