Dzo Jongo West

The horses were unable to reach our high camp, so we had to load up our 35-litre packs with everything we could tie to the back and hike up. The route went on and on, up to a high rocky plateau and along a rib of moraine to the dizzy heights of 5,800m.

With only 500m to the summit and a cloudless start to the day, we set off from our high camp believing that it would be a mere formality for us to reach the top. However, as the terrain became steeper, the weather gradually worsened. The snow fell in giant flakes and we found ourselves in a total whiteout, unable to see a single feature of the terrain around us. Afraid of walking over an edge, we stopped several times to wait for a break in the mist.

We made the decision to turn back about 120m from the summit. Although there was only a short snow slope above us, it gradually steepened, and so much fresh snow had fallen that there was a high risk of triggering an avalanche.

Still, we had no regrets about our decision to climb the west peak separately. It had been an interesting and varied couple of days that we may have skipped had we bagged the summit from the other side.

For a trip report see: https://www.markhorrell.com/blog/2022...
For related photographs see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/markhor...
Music: Dance With Me by Sergey Cheremisinov is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Se...

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