The Horrors & Hilarities of Climbing Chandrabhaga 13

The night was dark and dry, there were literal cracks in the sky like parched land but only upside down. Two massive rock pinnacles stood opposite each other like they were having a conversation. Mighty tall and pointy towards their apex, but not too pointy – much like a blunt pencil. There was a super moon stationed in the sky – a bit more yellow than white but huge and close like you could touch it if you tried just a little bit harder and jumped just a little bit higher. An acquaintance, an ex-colleague to be precise hung like tight rope between the two pinnacles, so stretched you could walk over her to get to the other side – no problem! Holding one rock with her hands like they were stuck with some serious glue and the other with the instep of her feet, also stuck so she couldn’t fall down but also couldn’t get herself out of that position – quite a sticky stance to be stuck in. She was bellowing into the skies louder than the loudest thunder I ever heard.

Her body looked thirsty too, all dried-up. I could see that she was starting to tear from the middle from the strain, little by little like someone was ripping a piece of paper real slow. And before I knew it, she slit from the middle and the two halves thrashed into the rock faces with loud thuds but didn’t fall off because her limbs were stuck to the rocks. I stood at the foot of the pinnacles right in the middle and looked up at her hundreds of meters above me. She looked down at her half hanging torso, her blood raining down into the valley where I stood, like a million soft clouds, but only red instead of white, parachuting down one after the other but also together – it was strangely very calming. Very soon the air was filled with red. She said matter-of-factly, “Oh shucks! What a mess!”

I shrugged my shoulders, turned around and left; waded into the thick slush of red which was now up to my knees to get back to I don’t know where!

I am slightly peeved with people who believe mountain summits are made of dreams – my summit nights are usually such groan-inducing nightmares pluck straight out of (painter) Odd Nedrum’s kitschy (with a pinch of surrealistic ghastliness) art. The 4-5 hours of measly sleep, which you can barely call sleep by the by, that you are allowed in between reaching the summit camp and leaving for the summit push for me are made of such horrific visuals – and this is not just this mountain – it is any mountain of any height at any time in any land. I wonder if I am in the wrong line of business and my body and mind are subtly getting back at me for putting them through shit.

Anyhow, after this vivid and hellish but also slightly comical nightmare I woke up in a sweat at summit camp but without any actual sweat because there was barely any fluid left in my body, I guess. The thing about Lahaul, the region in which this 6,264 M mountain stands, is that it is dry as peanut shells and the sun there harsher than truth.

It was Day 10 of our expedition which means 10 days in this intense sun and dry air which could bake you to the bone and we had already seen some horrors along the way – real ones.

I lay awake on my back, wide-eyed, feet all wet from the wet shoes I had on, still trying to process the imagery my brain so creatively presented to me to jolt me to the reality of this crammed tent which was 4 people too full for me to even move a muscle. Oh! Maybe this is the right time to tell you why my shoes were wet and if they were, why were they on my feet in -15 degree temperature. But maybe not yet, I will get to it chronologically and then the dream above will start to make sense even to you - maybe.

Dreams on my dream mountain

This wasn’t exactly my dream mountain, but pretty close I think. I have always liked things which are away from the eyes of many. CB13 and CB14 loosely fall into that category with not too many mainstream expeditions in this entire region - most expeditions being defense expeditions. Additionally, I was excited to climb these peaks because it would be my first dual climb and also because I have a special connection with Lahaul and Spiti, but more on that some other time.

Getting back to the actual dream. Now, if we think about it and look at it real careful (with what words did Freud usually start his analyses in his head, I wonder), I think we can break down the nightmare into four very distinct themes that make the plot. Let’s try to decode them one by one as I also tell you the rest of the story on the side.

Theme 1: The Parched Night

“We could work our grills in this sun”.

Can you believe one of the translations for Lahaul is ‘country of the gods’? For its gorgeous landscape, I totally get it but for these crazy temperatures, I wonder why the gods didn’t pick a more convenient place to call it ‘their’ land!

I am overly excited on the first day of any expedition. This is the day we meet all the people who we would be climbing with. I’ve never said this out loud, but I am always hoping on that ride between the ‘Store’ (a place where I and my colleagues bunk in between treks – our mid-way home) and the hotel where we are to meet everyone, that there is someone from my gender on this expedition. Not that I have anything against men – guys are great and everything – but sometimes I crave female energy for the male energy gets too overbearing and exhausting to handle after a while. A little too boisterous, a little too loud and a tad bit too proud, you can’t blame me if I find myself wanting some gentler, less heavier air once in a while. When we got to the hotel, well there wasn’t anyone with my demographic profile, except me of course. That’s fine though, this was my 12th trip to the mountains in the last one year and I was getting pretty used to this being the norm. I’m totally fine. (Just screaming a little – very little - inside).

Anyway, after a short briefing we came back to the store to fix everything for tomorrow when we were to leave for the trailhead of this expedition. This is usually my favourite part, to get to be the observing member of the team which is the pre-fix of any successful expedition. Making lists and lists of equipment, gathering the best gear, collecting all the ration that we shopped for a few days earlier, stuffing all the utensils needed for cooking, getting the ropes, rechecking the paperwork. Putting everything in boxes and loading the packed boxes into a tiny open camper holding each loose item in place by creating a wall with ropes. The energy and the frenzy during all of these processes is absolutely electric.

It is the end of June and the temperature in Manali where all this action is taking place, is bearable – almost pleasant in the vicinity of 20-25 degrees during the day. We head out and get to Batal the next day which is a small settlement in Lahaul (and is also the trailhead for our expedition) and suddenly the sun goes crazy on us. In the middle of this rocky terrain with no green whatsoever (no points for guessing why none of them survived) and no shade of any kind, there was absolutely no escape from the heat which, inside the tent could cook you to a burnt crisp. The air was cool but extremely dry - I could feel my insides losing all the moisture and it evaporating in the intense heat of the afternoon – even though it is hot and cold at the same time. The nights got cooler but the dryness stayed and it dawned on me that this drought-like atmosphere is going to be a constant on the expedition. And it was.

I thought I had made peace with the fact but theme 1 of my nightmare tells me maybe not.

Theme 2: The Rocky Pinnacles

“10 years ago, the mountain was dressed in snow all the way down to its foot (till the base camp). Now its white robe is pulled up to its waist with only some and unstable snow towards its head.”

We stayed at Batal for a day and a half to acclimatize after which we headed out for the basecamp which is a height gain of 400M. It is a 10km walk on mostly rocky and dusty terrain with tufts of the leftover greens jabbing out of the dry land. The entire trail is so secluded and empty of habitation that you are met only by the inquiring eyes of the most curious equines in the region.

Base camp was to be home for two days - one is when we reach and set up. The next when we pray, acclimatize, practice our techniques and distribute all the ration and equipment.

There’s much action at this campsite by the murky river. The camp site is mostly pleasant but only gets scary sometimes. It gets scary when, these mountains which resemble a badly arranged game of Jenga, rocks of random sizes laid on top of each other start to rumble and you can hear the loud sounds made by a streak of rocks falling off the mountain for long seconds. Only on these times is the base camp scary – it is just that this sound of hard things crashing into each other is a constant around here. But no worries – if you concentrate on the sound of the river, you might be able to forget that you can get bashed by a round thing coming your way at the speed of whatever it is that comes down a mountain the fastest.

Can you spot the people in this image?

If two days of only auditory stimulation wasn’t enough, to get to higher camps, we were to go straight into the heart of the rock fall region. After a five hour climb, over the loud and crashing veil of the river fall and on to its left is the magical land of Advanced Base Camp from where we get our first glimpse of CB13 and CB14 standing next to each other. They are both so full of rock. At first glance and at the second and the fifth glance all the way up to a dozen glances, the mountains seemed so vertical and so unwelcoming – almost unclimbable. The glacier apparently shifted base to a much higher altitude because global warming and all, and left the mountain naked of any costume – in its rawest element – would this be the mountain’s birthday suit, I wonder but I digress! The mountains stood tall and pointy but not too pointy, much like blunt pencils, their summits facing each other like they were having a conversation.

Our local guide told us how the mountain was full of snow when he was here 10 years ago.

Theme 3: The Broken Half

“We saw it. We saw the remains too. Among all the rubble.”

Next up was Camp 1, also lovingly called Summit Camp, for CB13. So the usual process involves the Sherpas going up the route to check it out, devise a safe climbing strategy and to fix ropes on sections where it is needed. This is exactly what happened. While we rested our weary and very awed selves at ABC, the Sherpas went to recce the route with a lump of ropes to fix on the steeper slopes higher up towards the head of the mountain. There were two sections where fixed ropes were required – a stretch to get to the summit camp and then from the summit camp all the way to the summit. The plan was to accomplish this daunting task in its entirety today and towards that end, Mingma Dai and Dawa Dai set off early in the morning.

They had been gone a long time and the sky was starting to pack up. From where we were stationed, the summit camp and the summit looked like they were a stone throw away and so we couldn’t figure out why they weren’t back yet. Around 1 in the afternoon it started to snow bulls and rhinos and there was a complete whiteout. We now couldn’t look at the route from where they were to come with an occasional, longing gaze like we had been doing since morning. Three hours of this and there was still no sign of them. Only snow would have been bearable, but the wind was on a bad trip of its own, so harsh it was knocking everything out of its way. Our tent was held down in this wind only by the water that was starting to fill it up even though it was a waterproof tent – a testament to the magnitude of bad weather that day.

While we tended to the flood situation in our tent and tried our best to keep all the ration and our belongings on a little island we created in the center of the tent using our bags on a small plastic bag, in walked the Sherpas. I am always quite baffled by how unfazed they look no matter what kind of crazy situation they come out from. They had been in this storm of snow for over 5 hours but they were still all smiles when they returned and immediately got to showing us pictures of the trail and telling us tales of all they saw as they began to dry themselves out (attempted to, at least).

First of the tales was that the summit camp is farther – much much farther – than it looks (which we had guessed already given the amount of time they took to come back). The other tale was about how hard the climb is because of the alternating rock and ice negotiations and the incline of the slope towards the end where ropes were fixed. Due to the tantrums of the weather they could only fix ropes up until the summit camp and not the summit as was originally planned.

The third tale was the most intriguing and a fair bit disturbing. The thing is CB13 is a mountain full of stories which holds the ghosts from its past in plain sight. I had read about it on the internet while researching about the peak before climbing it, but to hear a first-hand account of someone having witnessed it is quite not the same as reading about it.

On the stretch between the Advanced Base Camp to the Summit Camp, there lies a pile of airplane wreckage believed to be from the Army aircraft which went missing in 1968 while on its way to Leh. There have been multiple expeditions, the recent ones as recent as 2019, to retrieve parts of the aircraft and missing persons from the crash.

They showed pictures they took at the site and it was appalling to see. I knew there was airplane wreckage all along the trail of this mountain (we had even seen some smaller parts peppered on our trail until here) but the scale of it hadn’t hit me yet.

When we started, the next day, up towards the summit camp, the weather was in our favour for the first half of our climb. After a steep ascent on a rocky section, it was all flat till we got to the sight of horror. A mountain of metal from broken parts of the plane just lay there right in the middle of the massive snow field. Dawa Dai said to me,“Do you see it yet?” I had an inkling he was talking about the human remains he had alluded to the previous day in his many stories but just to confirm and also because I couldn’t see it in the rubble, I asked him, “See what?” “The body of the woman”, he said, “It’s right there”.

Still not able to locate it, he walked me a little further to a red down jacket still worn with long hair, completely intact like they hadn’t even lost their luster, resting on top of the jacket. They seemed to be continuing down from a solid structure (like a head) which lay above the head of the jacket. There was a skeletal arm jutting out from the side, still attached from under the jacket to the rest of the body, positioned like she was reaching out for something on the right side when she froze to death. Parts of the whole made the picture very clear and I could finally see what he was talking about. It is possible that all this which was buried before was only surfacing now due to the steadily melting glaciers over recent years.

It is quite unnerving to imagine the events from the time of the crash as all its remnants lie right in front of you as scattered pieces of a story in the most telling condition.

From here on, things were only going to get harder. We spend some time there examining the rubble and then got a move on. Once across this snow field, we roped up and put on our crampons as we started our ascent on the 60 degree slope. What makes this section really hard are the hidden crevasses scattered across the mountain’s face like landmines and the soft snow which does little to hold your weight.

On this slope is where there had been an accident just a few days before we got here, leading to the demise of a climber who fell and got lodged into a crevasse. He couldn’t be rescued in time.

We saw two gloves on the opposite mountain slope and wondered if there was someone under all the snow.

Theme 4: Rain of Blood

“You’re sure to get frostbite. You can forget about the summit”.

The slopes on the section we were roped up on broke out from under us quite a few times for it was loose snow. Even though it should have given us some indication of what lay ahead, we couldn’t be prepared for what the next slope would bring. This was a little more precarious and would require fixed ropes which had been put in place the previous day by the Sherpas. Its alternate rock and ice sections wouldn’t be so bad if the rock sections weren’t so loose and steep and didn’t try to throw us off the mountain and if the snow sections weren’t so soft and steep and didn’t try to sink us down into the mountain all the way to our thighs with each step forward. The trail was breaking more and more as each person advanced on it. The weather was starting to go south too. What was just a glitter of snow fall soon turned into a full blown snow storm. Very soon the air was filled with white.

Each step forward needed maneuvering the jumar with one hand and while half your body dangles inside a broken and seemingly endless crevasse under you, using the ice axe in the other hand to find a small patch of firm land which could hold your weight. This already tedious exercise, on an unbelievable gradient, was starting to get too much to handle along with the bad weather. Summit Camp lies at the end of the fixed rope section at the altitude of 5,650M.

The summit of this mountain seemed to be a moving target which only got farther away with each step forward. Every step literally took minutes to complete successfully. Since I, and everyone else, had fallen waist deep into snow 3 dozen times on this slope, we were all wet. There were big chunks of ice in my snow boots making my foot numb because of which walking became even harder. Some of us somehow made it to summit camp by 3 in the afternoon, completely spent and utterly wet all over. The others kept pouring into camp bit by bit with the last two making it to the warmth of the tent at 6 PM. For them, the trail had been completely broken, with no inch of land left that could hold their weight. They had also spent a long time in the pouring snow and hence exposed themselves to the cold.

Snow boots are made of two layers. The inside layer is not waterproof and the cloth in the material gets dripping wet. And dripping wet my shoe was! I was welcomed into the tent to three people screaming at me for wetting my shoes so irresponsibly. “What have you done? Wear those wet shoes on the summit push today and you are sure to get frostbite in the chill of the night. You cannot go to the summit with these shoes. No, there is no way to dry them off with the fire we are using for cooking, the shoe will burn off! You can forget about the sun, I don’t think it’s coming out today”. Ummm, okay.

“There is one thing you can try though. I am not sure if it will fully work but it is worth a shot.” I felt a glimmer of hope in my severely shaking body (which was completely wet and very cold) on hearing this. I was waiting for the next words out of Dawa Dai’s mouth as eagerly as I was waiting for the sun to come out. “Body heat is the only shot you have. Sleep with these shoes on and hopefully the heat in your feet will dry these out before we leave for summit in the next 7 hours.” Sleep with wet shoes when I am already cold in minus something something temperature with the winds knocking our tents silly? If you can’t figure out why I wasn’t the most excited to try out this strategy, maybe you ought to try it for yourself to know - expect no grain of empathy from me on the other side of this experience.

In the absence of any more bright ideas, went to sleep I did, in my dripping wet shoes. We went to bed around 07:30-08:00 PM. We were to leave for our summit push at 12:00 AM. It was just 600M from here to the top and we figured it wouldn’t take us very long to cover.

Needless to say – it took us very long to cover!

As I awoke from the horror film my brain so graciously performed for me for my entertainment, I am sure, my legs felt tight with cramps from sleeping in the cold shoes.

I slid one hand inside my pants to check what seemed to make me feel wet and uncomfortable. When I pulled it out, it was a bit sticky and bore a strong smell of iron. Next words out of my mouth, “Oh shucks. What a mess!”

In other news, my shoes were nearly dry and the sky out was open. We were heading towards the summit!

Conclusion

“CB14 tomorrow?”

This part of the tale is rather technical and makes me weary just thinking about it so I am going to skim over this but I will tell you some of the important bits, of course. Seven of us left for the summit and six of us made it to the top. It was difficult – very difficult. With no fixed ropes, we had to stop after every 20 steps so the ropes to the next anchor could be fixed whilst we waited in the cold in the dead dark night. The last 200M to the summit was the hardest. It was vertical rock face with boulders so high, each step up required something of a gymnastic move with some serious flexibility. Coming down this section, I had half a mind to set up camp on the summit and never return.

We didn’t climb CB14 because the weather didn’t allow it and, to be honest, neither did our morale at this point!

We all walked into the base camp like a broken army - hard lessons and deep wounds, beat by a mighty warrior that was the mountain. Oh! On our return, where we had seen two gloves, we now saw one and wondered again if there was someone buried under there signaling for help.

Other Hilarious Mishappenings

I believe I had played the game of ‘dodge the rock’ fairly well up until now and survived without damage all the way to the top of the mountain. But the game wasn’t over yet! On our descent, during which I was drained of energy and already struggling, a rather happy rock came at great speed to greet my knee. I think I felt three tears roll down my right eye just at that moment.

On our return, as a last offering to the mountain, I took a dip into the cold freezing water. Not voluntarily, mind you. The thin sheet of ice that I was walking on cracked under my weight and I went feet first in the frozen water up to my waist. Hail the mountain!

The air crash story and its physical remains had quite an impact on everyone in the team. After we got back to the base camp, the kitchen tent was filled with stories of ghosts and supernatural beings that each person in that tent (kitchen staff + sherpas + local guide + expedition leader) had witnessed in many of their treks. If you, like me, have to spend a night alone in your tent, here’s a piece of advice – choose the movie you get as a companion on the trail after careful consideration. I watched Talaash that night and didn’t sleep a wink!

I had seen all the things I wanted and didn’t want to see on CB13 and now I was going home!

This mountain was one hell of an experience and I wouldn’t change a thing about it! (Not even the dream!) – for real!