Mt Kenya - Day 4 - Woohoo Nelion, boohoo weather and zain!

Hello,

Last night, I met with Ken, my technical guide for climbing Nelion and Batian. First thing he wanted to make clear was that we'd obviously hit the start of the monsoons. We could expect afternoon storms. Given that, plus, last week he'd been up and the Gates of Mist had been impassable (a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick ice covering the rocks, which is enough to be dangerously slick, but not enough for crampons or ice axes to safely dig in), I should keep my hopes for Batian in check. True we could sleep in the coffin up top, but that would mean hanging out in a metal box that isn't tall enough to sit up in, from about 2-3 p.m. until about 7-8 am. With the temps hovering around -20 C / -4 F. And if it snowed significantly during the storm, we would only have the option of descending anyway. Hmm... Of course, if the storms rolled in late.. We'd make the Batian traverse and then only sleep at he hut before rapping down, or better yet, we might make a late evening rap down...

We talked about turn-arounds and we both agreed that rappelling could be done in the rain, though there were some extremely exposed traverses to do, so we needed to get started down as soon as stuff started falling from the sky. To maximize our success, we decided on a 5:30 am start (sunrise is about 7). This meant crossing the glacier in the moon light (a note about that - from Austrian hut, there is no way to access Nelion without crossing a very steep (i dunno, 45 degrees) rapidly shrinking glacier (10 years ago, it went from the hut to the base of the climb, now there is a good 20-30 mins of scree to deal with on each side of the glacier)), so if you/e wondering whether crampons and ice axe are necessary, YES, if you're starting from Austrian Hut (I think you can start from further down on the Nelion side of the glacier).

In the AM, we got started and hit the glacier. My first clue about things to come should have been the fact that my technical guide (a park ranger, not the normal S&R guide this company uses - Simon was injured in a car accident and his doc said no guiding for 3 months), Ken, didn't have ice axes when we got to the glacier ("don't bring any technical gear, our guy will provide all of it"). My ankle was not wrapped (wrap was completely soaked from yesterday), for the first time in days, and the sideways angle of the foot/crampons to stick to the glacier made me very nervous, esp. with no way to self-arrest if things went wrong. I was completely warm and sweating by the time we got to the scree on the other side, even though air temps were around -5 C / 23 F. We headed up the scree and by the time we hit the base of the climb, around 7:15, the sun was up and I stripped out of my down and eVent layers. Just wool (all of my wool, though). We prepped for climbing and started up. I took photos on all the pitches, so I'll save the details for when I can discuss each pitch, etc, not in blog format. It hadn't yet dawned on me that he was not at all following our 'let's see' plan for Batian since we had no ice axes...

Suffice it to say, though, that I was not exactly pleased with my guide. Certainly he showed me the anchor spots... But he tended to not use pro for most pitches, and I wondered why I was belaying. Catching a 50 meter fall would have ripped my harness through my body and probably would have destroyed my anchor. Basically, I was tied to him so that if he died, I died with him (and it gave him a way to belay me). He didn't like to give me instructions, so, for example, I climbed a 5.7ish crack with brutally cold hand jams, and later found out that I needed to go around an obscuring corner to find a 5.1 face climb instead (he was grumbling because of how long that pitch took me). Heh, that wasn't soo bad, though, because I really enjoyed that crack climb - 16k ft up and hand jams and twisting my leather boot to wedge into the crack, woohoo!

Speaking of which, in the sun, the rocks warmed to a good 5 C / 41 F. Effort made for warm hands! I know, I'm kvetching, but I really need to see the route description again. After McKinders Chimney (which we skipped and took the Rabbits Hole instead - crux was probably a 2-move series at 5.7), we pseudo simul-climbed. Since he didn't believe in pro for anything under 5.6, we just climbed roped together for about 2 pitches, and only went trad when I complained that I was uncomfortable with the vertical thousand foot exposure while we free-soloed 5.1. I've got balls, but I guess they're not made of brass...

After that, though, we switched to the southwest face of Nelion. That side sees little sun (features of the mountain keep this area shaded 24/7). The rock temp dropped well below freezing (my typical experiment, I spit on the rock and watched the bubbles become solid craters) and every horizontal surface was covered in snow and/or ice. Holy cold! And that's where we found a full 5.7 pitch. Not a crux, but a sustained 5.5 ~ 5.7 vertical climb. With each handhold covered in ice and snow. Holy cold. I mean hell froze over and we were climbing it. Every foot step required kicks to break up and remove ice. Most handholds had to be vertical pieces, like squeezing the spine of a standing book - everything else was too cold to touch. And rest spots tended to be places were you traded frozen hands (breathing hot air on them) for frozen feet (not moving = cooling off quickly). Even Ken used every last piece of pro he brought. There were cams, nuts, slings, etc everywhere. I'm still amazed he led that - it was insane. Probably the equivalent of a 5.10c considering the snow and ice.

As we crested the last pitch (also a pseudo free-solo 5.1 with 5.3 cruxes because it was a 70 meter pitch and Ken only had a 50m rope, so he asked me to start climbing when the rope ran out... And again he placed no pro aside from his anchor around the time I was 30 meters into the climb (speaking of which, most of his shoddy anchors were a single sling over a rock and didn't consider the direction of pull in a fall, so I often created a second anchor / safety using my long safety leash and natural features (no technical gear on me aside from my harness, belay devices, safety tether, and some ascending gear and biners)), we were racing the clock. The last few pitches were under worse and worse conditions, with dark gray clouds rolling in and a thick fog obscuring the lower elevations. From the summit, I could see that we had very limited time before snow and hail started coming down. I did a quick victory dance, checked for cell phone signal to at least tell y'all I made it, and cursed Zain as my guide used his Orange and SafariCom phones to make calls.

We bailed from the mountain and rappelled, traversed, and free soloed downclimb pitches and got off the mountain in record time (an hour for a listed 2-3 hour descent). And we scrambled down the scree and jumped onto the glacier.

And my steam ran dry. I lost all energy. I was exhausted. My ankle was not feeling strong. And I tried the sideways walk and could not do it. I felt drained, mentally and physically. My guide, meanwhile, had taken off and was across the glacier. I couldn't handle the steepness so I went for second best - a risky proposition, but the idea of sliding down this steep a glacier several thousand feet into a large tarn (lake) that looked like it was frozen on top? No ice axe? Pure death, I tell you. So I faced down slope so my ankle wouldn't need to bend funny and walked side-steps, and to reduce steepness, I aimed for the crevasses.

See? Picking between the lesser evils. Since the sun had been shining all day until just recently, there was no snow on the glacier (aside from snow bridges over crevasses). This made navigation easy - I never stepped where I couldn't see into the ice below. The crevasse region was a maze of crevasses, but between cracks, the slope was more comfortable. I only picked routes that could keep me far from covered or open cracks, and I made my way across. I wish I had a helmet camera... Such beautiful ice. I was close enough to some open crevasses that I could see the beautiful blue color of that ancient ice. Amazing.

I made it back in record slow time, arriving much further below the hut than I intended, but I needed a place where I could see the edge of the glacier and the rocks. Last thing I wanted was to fall under the glacier after all that work! I hopped off, removed crampons, and class 4 scrambled back to my guide. We got back to the hut and I ate dinner and passed out. Writing this in the AM of Day 5.

Let me finish by saying my guide may have tainted the climb, but holy victorious! I made it! I summited a 20-pitch 5.7 rock climb at well over 5000 meters! And fear from poor leading aside, I had the time of my life. Each move was exhausting. Each pitch drained energy. It was tough. It was brutally cold, dropping to -10 C / 14 F, and never really getting warmer than 5 C / 41 F. The exposure was insane. The winds were terrifying. My hands and toes will never forgive me. And I made it :D

Ahem. Up the second highest peak. I need to improve me skills so that next time, I can come during the warm season, and attack Batian...

Joel