Mazeno ridge in photos – day 7-8

DAY 7 – 8 JULY

Rick climbing up the ridge just beyond the campsites for days 5 and 6. The tent platforms can been seen in the distance.

Working our way along the ridge, from right: Sandy, Cathy, Lhakpa Rangduk, Zarok, Nuru.

The endless work of trailbreaking, mostly done by Nuru and Zarok.

Cathy and the long drop down to the Diamir glacier. It may look nicely warm but I’m climbing in my summit down jacket with the hood up and closed.

A tricky diagonal abseil to descend a large rock wall (Cathy on the rope). This is the point where retreating back along the ridge finally was no longer an option. From here if anything went wrong, we were committed to going forwards.

Lhakpa Rangduk and the rock wall we had just abseiled down.

Campsite for the night of 8 July (click for bigger).

Cathy and that crucial hot cup of coffee at the end of a long day, the Chevron mugs provided by Rick and somehow they kind of became the mascots of the expedition.

DAY 8 – 9 JULY
This was the day when we first started to have clear views of the main massif of Nanga Parbat and we first started to think that we were actually going to succeed to crossing the ridge and possibly in reaching the summit too. However, we also knew from our meteo reports that we were climbing into days of high winds just when we hoped to go for the top.

Crossing the summit of Mazeno Peak, the highest peak on the ridge. On the maps it is called 7200m but it seemed a lot lower according to my watch. We had had a tendency for days to assume that the next peak we saw ‘had’ to be be Mazeno Peak, so it was a relief to finally find and cross it.

The ridge beyond Mazeno Peak. Nuru and Zarok are visible as small dots on the ridge. This area was crevassed. Rangduk put his foot through one and went in up to his crotch. And Rick did manage to partly fall in the bergschrund but none of it required more than a helping hand to pull them out again.

Sandy Allan.

Campsite 9 July with the pinnacles beyond. We knew from the report of the Americans who were the first to climb the Mazeno Ridge to the col, that they took 13 hours to get through the pinnacles. So we camped early so as to have a full day to cross the pinnacles and not risk getting stuck with nowhere to put in a bivi.