Coloradoan Winter - your source for winter fun, ski-reports

October 28, 2001
Unknown territory
Two climbers nearly end up paying the ultimate price
By Miles Blumhardt
MilesBlumhardt@coloradoan.com
The invitation came late, but Fort Collins climber Mark Wilford knows such offers are as rare as the unexplored mountains in which he'd be climbing.
This particular expedition not only would have him climbing with British legend Chris Bonington and Bonington's

Photo courtesy Mark Wilford

Summit: Fort Collins climber Mark Wilford peers at the 19,276-foot peak he and climbing partner Mark Richey climbed in northern India.

Indian counterpart, Harish Kapadia, but it would take place in one of the world's last unclimbed mountain ranges.
    So despite the tardiness of the call to join the four Indian, four Westerner climbing team, there was no hesitation when Wilford's climbing partner, Mark Richey of Boston, popped the question.
    "I was psyched," said Wilford, who on the surface shows he's psyched about as often as Prince Charles does. "You never know what's in it when you get to an unexplored area. But an opportunity to climb in an unexplored area with these two greats (Bonington and Kapadia) doesn't come around often. Besides, you say no and you don't get asked again."
    The mission was to explore the glacier-scoured Arganglas Mountains in the Ladakh district in extreme northern India. It's an area so forbidding that not even the locals have explored its mountains. The only guidance for the crew was a satellite-produced map and one distant picture of the range, which boasts peaks of more than 21,000 feet.
    From the tiny

Check it out
If you would like more information about the climbing trip Mark Wilford and Mark Richey took to northern India, go online to www.bonington.com and click on the Argangales trip.
This is British climber and trip leader Chris Bonington's Web site.

village of Arganglas, the crew, porters and ponies hiked three days up the Phunangma Glacier to base camps from which two-man teams would fan out and explore. From the moment the tents were set up, Wilford and Richey had their eyes riveted on the inviting technical 4,000-foot face of what they called Peak 6,218, named for its height in meters.
From Sept. 9 through Sept. 12, the two Marks labored up the ice- and snow-plastered face, weathering intermittent snows, more than 20 pitches of nearly 190 feet and nights spent on carved-out ice ledges. Worse yet, Richey was suffering from a horrible altitude sickness-induced cough.
The pair finally summitted on the fifth day of climbing, exhausted but exhilarated at the views into this unclimbed range. But the moment was fleeting. Heavy snow and whipping winds had formed a forbidding cornice above the initial descent, forcing the pair to choose an alternative descent. Tired, with no map and with little food to spare, the option of climbing over surrounding 20,000-foot peaks before descending was very unappealing. The remaining option was to choose a route

Photo courtesy Mark Wilford

High and tight: Mark Richey negotiates one of the many technical pitches he and Mark Wilford were confronted with while climbing the 4,000-foot face of an unnamed peak in northern India.

down what appeared to be a benign valley. They thought the route would lead them back to base camp in a day or two and ready to tackle another peak.
    The mountain had other ideas.
    Into the great unknown
    The gentle glacier valley coaxed the climbers deeper into its lair before striking up with a vengeance. Hopscotching waterfall pools at the beginning of the valley turned into rappelling through treacherous waterfalls as the valley narrowed into a steep gorge.
    "We didn't know how deep the pools were, so at the worst pool Mark dropped his pack into the pool then disappeared," Richey said. "I couldn't see him for a moment and I was thinking that if he's dead, do I do the same thing? Then he popped around the corner and I was really relieved."
    After 10 hours of descending and rappelling through waterfalls, the pair realized they were in over their head but were too exhausted to turn back. Finally, when their 200-foot climbing rope wasn't long enough to rappel down a waterfall, the pair found themselves in a life-or-death situation. They were without food, without most of their equipment, which they ditched while rappelling on the descent, and without energy.
    "We came to that waterfall and I said that was it because if we rappelled down and couldn't continue, we'd be stranded and we faced starving to death." Wilford said. "We were weak, soaked, down to six pieces of equipment and we still had to climb up out of the gorge."
    The pair noticed one slight weakness in the vertical gorge walls and decided it offered their lone escape route. But the route out was not without danger. The pair would have to climb over or around boulders held in place only by hardened mud, whose adhesive quality was unknown. Wilford admitted one of the pitches over the boulders was the most frightening pitch he'd ever done in a career noted for daring climbs. Richey, who had his arm broken when a similar sized boulder crushed it on a previous climb, was none too sure the two would escape.
    "You never know

Photo courtesy Mark Wilford

High stakes: A porter loads ponies for climbers who were venturing into a mountain range in norther India.

when rock will let loose; it either sticks or it doesn't," Richey rationalized. "I lost a partner while climbing in Yosemite when the whole ledge he was on broke loose. It's impossible to gauge what forces hold rock together."
    What made the climb even riskier was the pair's lack of safety equipment such as pitons and rock anchors. The pair was forced to strip straps off their crampons and ice axes and at times was anchored in only by wrapping their rope around large rocks.
    Through remarkable resourcefulness and the grace of the mountain, the pair escaped.
    "It was real nerve racking but when we got to the top we were enormously relieved,'' Richey said.
    Not so quickly
    As was the case since the ascent, one solution presented yet another problem. It would be another day before they could hike out to Arganglas, meaning it would be two days since their companions had seen them and that a rescue mission might already be under way.
    In fact, the situation was dire enough that the Indian climbers had built a small temple of stones and offered Hall's cough drops and food items to the gods for a safe return of their climbing companions.
    "The last thing you want in these situations is to risk the lives of rescuers," Wilford said. "You want to be self-sufficient, and though we were, they had reason for concern. We wanted to get back

Photo courtesy Mark Wilford

Meal time: Mark Richey prepares a meal on a ledge. Fellow climber Mark Wilford chiseled the ledge so they would have a place to sleep.

to the main valley as fast as we could."
    Once back along the main road, they spotted a porter who had helped transport their gear to base camp. The relieved porter was beginning to round up a military rescue mission when the two flagged him down.
    The pair hiked back to base camp but both had had enough of climbing. They celebrated by drinking Kingfisher beers while recovering at a guesthouse in Arganglas and reflected on one of their most daring escapes.
    "In 1989 on Nameless Face, I was in a more dire situation because an ice storm came in quickly, my partner was hypothermic and I thought we might freeze to death," Wilford said. "This time it wasn't like we were going to die right away, but it was going to be a slow death. We joked about starving to death at one point. But when we were climbing out of the gorge, it was quite serious and there was no joking."
    Strangely enough, Richey confessed it's those life-threatening situations that lure him back to the mountains.
    "As scary as the situation was, not for a second did I look back and feel like I was never going to climb again," he said. "Those situations suck me back in to the mountains. You try to avoid them at all cost, but they are exciting and you never forget them. I've been there before and I'll probably be there again. You just hope you come out unscathed."
    Thank you, mountain.

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