DRAOICHT PARVAT

Pk 6175 Expedition to Central Garhwal

ROGER MCMORROW AND SARA SPENCER

Martin Luther once said that flight has made the world a neighbourhood... it is our challenge to make that neighbourhood a sisterhood and a brotherhood. This concept began to make sense to me when we arrived in Delhi. It is a short five-hour hop from Dublin, but culturally Delhi is a different world entirely.

Delhi is loud, very loud, actually it's decidedly noisy and chaos is the norm. There are people everywhere shouting and gesticulating, selling, advising, guiding or haggling. The traffic works on the basis of prolific horn tooting and that's about it for discernable road systems. During our time in Delhi we chose to stay at the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), it afforded us a quiet oasis of calm and had the added benefit of a well stocked library and climbing wall, lest we wanted to get in any last minute practice. The people there took very good care of us.

While only a short hop from our capital, the journey really began one year earlier as an idea among four friends from Queens University of Belfast, in Ireland's second city. The idea was to climb an unclimbed peak in the Himalaya. After some advice from Ireland's first Everest summiteer, Dawson Stelfox, and a seasoned Irish mountaineer, Joss Lynam, we chose the Garhwal region. The IMF website listed some unclimbed mountains in the area, and we opted for the unclimbed Pk 6044. Harish Kapadia's books and articles were an invaluable and precious resource during our distant planning and elusive search for a picture of our peak.

It did not take long to acclimatise to India, as, behind the noise and the chaos, behind the poverty and dirt, lay the heart of the people. Without exception we found all Indians, warm hearted and good-natured. The concoction of bronze dusty roads, ambers at dusk, pungent spices cooking, exotic perfumes, and most of all, the industrious people who were always ready to share a joke or smile for the camera, were all strangely seductive.

Photos 31 to 34

We thoroughly enjoyed our three-day journey through the towns of Rishikesh, Josimath and Badrinath.

On the outskirts of Mana we said goodbye to our bus and from there we went on foot. Mana is the last village between India and Tibet and appeared to us exactly as Eric Shipton described seventy years earlier.

...picturesque, overlooking the mouth of a terrific gorge and backed by a bleak hillside studded with prodigious boulders, some of which had rolled down, thus completely spanning the ravine. Here, low huts, roofed with rough flat stones, appeared to grow like some fungus out of the landscape.

The snows were late in receding that year so Mana had not yet been reclaimed by its seasonal inhabitants. It took three days to walk up to our base camp on the Bhagirath Kharak glacier with our forty-two porters. The porters choose the position of our base camp on a massive moraine bank at the side of the glacier, no amount of coercion would persuade them to push on. In our weeks on the glacier we came to understand why they were so adamant, the glacier is dynamic. Lakes appeared overnight and completely drained away the following day. The glacier creaked, cracked and groaned all the time and was particularly obvious when we lay down to sleep at night. Avalanches boomed regularly down the slopes of the valley, an impressive awe-inspiring sight.

We established two further camps to bring us to the base of our mountain where we began to consider our route. We had some difficulty identifying our mountain and realised there were some discrepancies between the maps and published descriptions of the area. It became clear that there was an error in one of the accounts, in particular the published location of the Shrak la (pass).

Harish Kapadia identifies the Shrak la as lying between Pk 6044 and Pk 6175. His published photograph of this (Himalayan Journal Vol. 54) does not match this pass in any way. High vertical cliffs and a hanging glacier in fact defend the col. It would be extremely difficult and foolish to cross here, especially as a much easier pass lies a short distance to the east, between Pk 6038 and Pk 6075.1

In 1934 Shipton used the Shrak la to cross into the Arwa valley. From the pass he ascended a peak from the pass describing it as an 'interesting ridge climb'. This allowed him to get a 'hang of the geography of the Arwa glaciers on to which we where about to descend'. It is not possible to definitively identify this peak, as his altimeter was not working correctly,although it is likely he climbed either Pk 6075 or Pk 6038, which border the col. Suffice to say that Pk 6038 has what looks like an interesting ridge and would provide excellent views of the Arwa glaciers.

Footnote

  1. See note at end of this article. — Ed.

 

Shrak la and surrounding area.

Article 10 (Roger McMorow)
31. Shrak la and surrounding area.

Deo Dekhni plateau above Bhagirath Kharak glacier.

Article 10 (Roger McMorow)
32. Deo Dekhni plateau above Bhagirath Kharak glacier.

View from Deo Dekhni plateau.

Article 10 (Roger McMorow)
33. View from Deo Dekhni plateau.

View from Deo Dekhni plateau.

Article 10 (Roger McMorow)
34. View from Deo Dekhni plateau.

The cols location is important as the mountain to the right of it is called Shri Parvat. This means Pk 6075 is Shri Parvat and not Pk 6175 as labelled in Kapadia's texts.

While gaining an understanding of the geography, we established a camp at 5200 m on the foot of Pk 6175. Pk 6175 is a tabletop mountain that stands above a basin near the Deo Dekhni plateau, on the left is a two-peaked ridge which we named the 'Devil Horns' (Pk 5596). The front face of Pk 6175 was steep and heavily seraced. A southeast ridge led to a hanging glacier that looked somewhat like a dragon. The snout would afford us an interesting route to the summit.

Eric Shipton and Frank Smythe had warned not to underestimate the Himalaya, there were many times on the expedition when we realised the wisdom in their counsel.

We rose at 3 a.m. on summit day. We operated as two independent ropes but climbed together. We covered some easy mixed ground in a few hours. As the sun warmed the slopes they began to avalanche spontaneously. We made our way to small double-corniced col, proud of the dragon's snout.

A short rock step led up to the icy sloped beneath the summit. The weather, which had been calm and clear for the entire trip, chose this day to misbehave. Thick blue and deep brown clouds gravid with snow gestated menacingly throughout the day. We could ascend no quicker than our lungs would allow. As thunder rolled to the south we gained the summit ridge our thoughts turned increasingly to retreat and survival. A storm had now broken in the neighbouring valley. A feeling of foreboding overwhelmed us all. We made the decision to continue as the east ridge which was only accessible via the summit looked like an easier prospect for descent.

We made the summit at 15:30 hrs and took the obligatory summit shots, with gentle clouds and snow dancing around us encouraging us to move on. We hurriedly placed a snow stake and commenced our descent. The easy east ridge looked very different from what we had expected, and so, with Shipton's and Smythe's words ringing in our ears, we revised our plans. While the east ridge was not impassable it would have been a considerable undertaking at that time of day and had a large difficult gendarme halfway along its length. We needed to get down and fast. After a heated discussion we elected to descend by abseiling down the steep south 800 m face of the east ridge. Our retreat was marred by the loss of two of our four ropes on the first abseil. Five of us continued on the remaining two ropes thought the night. It was a long and cold descent, but thankfully as the sun set, the power of the storm abated. The clouds disappeared and we had a moonless, very dark night. After some tricky down climbing and a total of nine abseils, some fourteen after leaving the summit, we made it to the glacier floor. A new day dawned as we headed back to our camp, the watery sun warmed our bones. We had realised our dream of climbing an unclimbed peak and felt proud to be an Irish team in this historic part of the Himalaya, walking among the legends.

We named the mountain 'Draoicht Parvat'. Draoicht is an Irish word for 'enchanted or spellbound'. We liked the link and hope it might encourage other Irish teams to explore the region. Like the rest of India, it has a wealth of experiences waiting. We long to return.

SUMMARY

The first ascent of Pk. 6175 m on Deo Dekhni plateau, Bhagat Kharak glacier, central Garhwal, by an Irish team. They have named the peak as ‘Draoicht Parvat’.

Note

I confirm the observations of the author, as regards to location of the pass Shrak la and the Shri Parvat (6075 m). In 1997 our expedition indeedcrossed the correct pass Shrak la, (as it is impossible to cross any pass near peak 6175 m) but on the accompanying sketch map published in the Himalayan Journal, Vol 54, opp. p 74 the route was wrongly marked.See article ‘Lost in the Legends’, H.J. Vol. 54, p. 73 for full description.

After the details sent by Roger McMorrow, I could obtain latest detailed maps (with difficulties) and rechecked facts and confirm his observations. The confusion in drawing our sketch map arose due to lack of accurate maps and almost similar heights of peaks near the pass (6075 and 6175m). The sketch map that was published should have been checked morethoroughly.

The sketch map published herewith (from the American Alpine Journal, with permission of its editor) shows the correct location of Shrak la andthe peak Shri Parvat (6075 m). Thanks to Roger McMorrow and his team,the topography of this area now stands accurately stated.

Harish Kapadia
(leader of The Garhwal Traverse Expedition, 1997 team
and Hon. Editor, H. J.)

 

⇑ Top