Sundardhunga Khal – The Goddess Keeps her Secret
George
W Rodway and Anindya Mukherjee
 |
| The Sundardhunga Khal and our route of attempt in 2015 |
The
History
Locating a practicable route into the Nanda Devi
Sanctuary occupied a very respectable amount of exploration time and effort in
the latter half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth
century. By the time W.W. Graham made spring and autumn journeys to Sikkim and
spent the summer in the Kumaun region around Nanda Devi in 1883, a shift had
just started towards looking to the Himalaya as a venue for sporting adventure.
Graham and the Swiss guides that accompanied him this year planned an ambitious
itinerary for their time in Kumaun. They attempted to penetrate, for the first
time in recorded history, the Rishiganga gorge with an eye to ascending Nanda
Devi. Not surprisingly the difficulty of the gorge, not infiltrated to its
source (after many attempts) until 1934, forced them to reconsider the wisdom
of this project.
The English physician-explorer T.G. (Tom) Longstaff spent
nearly 40 years exploring and climbing in the European Alps, the Caucasus, the
Canadian Rockies, High Asia, and the Arctic, and was considered by many to be
the leading mountain explorer of his era. Parties that Longstaff led in 1905
and 1907 were the next sojourns that made serious attempts to explore
approaches to Nanda Devi. In 1905, Longstaff and company initially explored the
Pachhu glacier to its source under the northeast ridge of Nanda Devi East, then
crossed into the Lawan valley en route
to a camp in the Goriganga valley. In early June, Longstaff and his companions
reached a col (19,390 ft) on the Goriganga-Rishiganga watershed, one of the few
spots where the wall of high ridges and peaks (exceeding 100 km in
circumference) enclosing the Nanda Devi sanctuary dips below 20,000 ft. Here,
they were to glimpse Nanda Devi’s south face and the southern glaciers of the
Sanctuary while they took an opportunity to briefly reconnoiter the south ridge
of Nanda Devi East.
Longstaff returned to the Kumaun/Garhwal region
again in 1907 with CG Bruce and AL Mumm, as well as several alpine guides and
nine Gurkha soldiers from Bruce’s regiment. Mumm, incidentally, authored the now
classic Five months in the Himalaya. A
record of mountain travel in Garhwal and Kashmir after this expedition. They
choose to first explore the area around the Rishiganga gorge, and deep
lingering snow from winter, along with rivers swollen with snow melt,
complicated their endeavors. In late May, Longstaff and Bruce accompanied by
guides and Gurkhas, crossed the ridge between Dunagiri and Changabang to the
Ramani glacier, a feeder to the Rishiganga. Unfortunately for them, incorrect
maps failed to show the inner curtain ridge which cut them off from the base of
Nanda Devi.
After a hiatus of nearly two decades, attempts to
reach the Nanda Devi Sanctuary were once again resumed. In 1926 and 1927, a man
who would subsequently lead two large-scale British Everest expeditions in the following
decade made two journeys worthy of note into the Nanda Devi region. Hugh
Ruttledge, Deputy Commissioner at Almora, was intent on being intimately
familiar with every corner of his mountainous district. Howard Somervell (of
Everest fame in 1922 and 1924), along with Colonel RC Wilson, accompanied
Ruttledge in 1926 on a reconnoiter mission of Nanda Devi’s ring of peaks from
the northeast. Their aim was to find a route into the inner Sanctuary from the
Bhotia village of Milam. While this team did not have the resources for a
protracted struggle, they were able to determine that very close inspection
would be required of this geography in order to be able to force a pass over
the ring of mountains with laden porters. In 1927, Ruttledge and his wife, along
with TG Longstaff, paid another visit to Nanda Devi’s outer defenses. Longstaff
had, of course, searched for a weakness in the ramparts barring entry to the
inner Sanctuary of Nanda Devi 20 years prior to this venture. In a Geographical Journal article published the following year,1
Longstaff gave Nanda Devi’s formidable defenses full recognition:
The topography of Nanda
Devi presents difficulties of access which I believe are unique. The mountain
rises from the middle of an almost complete crater-like amphitheater of
mountains whose walls are 20,000 ft high, which has neither been crossed nor
entered by any human foot. On the east the highest peak rises abruptly from the
end of a buttress two miles long and about 23,000 ft in height, which connects
it with a separate mountain, Nanda Devi East, 24,379 ft. On all other sides it
rises a sheer 10,000 or 12,000 ft from the glaciers which encircle its base.
But this central “crater” is only part of another almost complete ring of
mountains measuring a full 70 miles in circumference, from the crest of which
spring a dozen measured peaks of over
20,000 ft., including Dunagiri on the north, Nanda Devi East, and on the south
Trisul and Nanda Ghungti. For 60 miles of this distance there is no known
depression below 17,000 ft.
After his retirement from government service in
1932, Hugh Ruttledge again sought to find a workable approach to the inner
Sanctuary of Nanda Devi. He returned to this problem with guide Emile Rey of
Courmayeur and six Sherpas from Darjeeling. Reaching the head of the Sundardhunga
valley near the end of May that year, they studied the southern section of the
massive ring-wall around Nanda Devi just east of Maiktoli (22,320 ft). The
section where the wall dropped to a saddle, the Sundardhunga Khal (18,100 ft),
was of special interest. However, the base of this saddle rose from a deep and
steep valley which required further investigation. Ruttledge and his party thus
went up the Maiktoli valley to get a closer look[1]:
We were brought up
all-standing by a sight which almost took our remaining breath away. Six
thousand feet of the steepest rock and ice. Near the top of the wall, for about
a mile and a half, runs a terrace of ice some 200 ft. thick. Under the pull of
gravity large masses constantly break off from this terrace and thunder down to
the valley below, polishing in their fall the successive bands of limestone of
which the face is composed. Even supposing the precipice to be climbable, an
intelligent mountaineer may be acquitted on a charge of lack of enterprise if
he declines to spend at least three days and two nights under fire from this
artillery.
And thus vanished the last hope for a
straightforward approach to Nanda Devi. As Ruttledge wrote shortly after
returning from the 1932 attempt, “the goddess keeps her secret.”
The next notable expedition into this area occurred
in 1934, and its accomplishments were extraordinary. A few months after
returning from the 1933 British Mt Everest expedition, Eric Shipton, with his
old African climbing partner, HW Tilman, took it upon themselves to come to
grips with the problem of approaching Nanda Devi’s inner Sanctuary. This was to
be a small, lightly party – Shipton, Tilman, and three Sherpa Porters. The main
objective of this venture was to be gaining entrance to and the mapping of the
Nanda Devi basin inside the Sanctuary, with the hope of also being able to
reconnoiter Nanda Devi itself from close quarters. On the advice of Tom
Longstaff, Shipton and Tilman directed their attention to the Rishi Gorge
approach. They frequently met precipices that looked impassable until a kindly
fault in the rock allowed them passage, only to come to yet another barrier.
In a magnificent display of route-finding, the team
passed the gorge in early June. Subsequently, nearly a month was spent
exploring and mapping the Basin. The magic of that moment is, for sure, hard to
appreciate in these days of satellite photos, global position mapping, and with
almost every corner of the earth explored. The elegant spire of Nanda Devi rose
13,000 ft above the amphitheater where the two main rivers draining the basin
joined. Herds of tame mountain sheep, bharal, grazed the moorland pasture where
alpine flowers, wild onions, and rhubarb abounded.
After surveying the glaciers of the northern basin
with the plain-table they had arduously packed in, the explorers withdrew as
the monsoon advanced. However, they returned to the Sanctuary in the autumn of
1934 for six weeks in order to complete the surveying and reconnaissance work
in the southern half of the basin. Shipton and Tilman had decided to keep the
sense of adventure high on this second trip by not retracing their steps back
to civilization via the Rishi Gorge, but rather to find an alternate route out
of the Sanctuary:
When we had left
Joshimath it was with a mighty resolve not to return that way. We had so far
burnt our boats as to send our remaining kit back to Ranikhet. We hoped to find
a way out of the basin by the col at the foot of the south ridge of East Nanda
Devi, on which Dr. Longstaff had stood in 1905 [i.e., Longstaff’s Col]. If we
failed to do that we had a second string to our bow at the head of the southern
branch of the glacier. In 1932 Mr. Ruttledge had gone up the Maiktoli or
Sundardhungha valley with the intention of climbing the surrounding wall at
that point and so gaining an entrance to the basin. It had not proved possible
from that side, but he had told us to go and have a look at it, and it might
prove less formidable from the opposite direction…. We began by walking up
the left (true) side of the eastern branch. It was very misty, but we saw
enough of what we called 'Longstaff's Col' to decide us to leave it alone. It
looked over 19,000 feet, and near the top, where it was very steep, we
suspected ice. By now our boots were past their best, two of the Sherpas had no
ice-axes, and we should be heavily laden[2].
The team then moved up the southern glacier, soon
identifying the col they believed to be the one suggested by Ruttledge (i.e., Sundardhunga
Khal). It looked about 18,000 feet and the approach was by an easy snow slope.
Prior to exploring this option, Shipton and Tilman decided to reconnoiter the
south ridge of Nanda Devi, one of their main objectives of this autumn return
to the Sanctuary. After following the ridge to approximately 20,500 ft and
concluding “having seen all sides of the mountain we concluded that this offers
the only possible route” (later ascended to the summit by Tilman and Noel Odell
in 1936), they turned their attention to working out whether Ruttledge’s
suspicions about this side of Sundardhunga were correct. On the 17th September, they camped at the
foot of the snow slope leading to the col. The ascent the next day to the top
of the col was very straightforward, and only the heat of the day presented
difficulties. The descent to the Maiktoli valley, however, was a
different story:
After descending a few
hundred feet we were stopped by an ice- fall. Dumping our loads we went forward
to reconnoitre. On the left was a stone-swept gully, on the right some
ice-swept slabs, and in the centre a very difficult ice-fall.
The party decided to return to their loads, set up
camp for the night, and consider the route options the following morning. Upon
resuming their descent the next day,
In an hour we had
reached yesterday's farthest point and were safely past some very unstable
seracs. Below we twisted and dodged as before, encountering some steep pitches
down which we lowered the loads…. Ahead of us the glacier swept down with
a last ice-fall, the steepest of all. On the right were some easy rocks, though
separated from us by a 40-foot ice-wall and a gully, the target of debris from
the great ice terrace thousands of feet above.
Downward progress was not rapid, and they decided to
camp that afternoon some 3,000 feet above the Maiktoli glacier. From their camp
they could not see a way down, for the slopes they were on dropped
precipitously out of sight. Once they got underway the next morning, the way
became steeper and
We groped our way in a
thick mist expecting every moment to be stopped by a precipice. When it cleared
a little we sent Ang Tarke on to reconnoitre, and, by a brilliant piece of
route-finding, he spotted the only possible line down a place which appeared to
us quite hopeless. We reached the level glacier at 2 p.m., close to the foot of
an ice-fall, and found a stone shelter used by shepherds.
The wall Ruttledge had
declared unreasonably difficult and dangerous to ascend in 1932 had now been descended. Many years would pass until
another party attempted to traverse this ground, only this time the intent was
to actually ascend the wall to Sundardhunga
Khal.
The
Approach
It was end of May, 2015. An overnight train from
Howrah had brought Mrinal Ghosh, Dignata Roy Chowdhury, Lakpa Sherpa and
Anindya Mukherjee to the oldest train station of Delhi. Their friend George W
Rodway had flown into Delhi from the United Sates, the day before. The
rendezvous took place just outside the station building. George, Lakpa and
Anindya were meeting almost year to the day since their last reunion in Delhi.
Memories of Nanda Devi East from 2014 were still fresh in their minds. But the
heat and dust of Delhi ensured that the rendezvous remain as unceremonious and
quick as possible. After a series of load carries over the flights of stairs of
the adjoining platforms and shoulders of countless fellow human beings, another
train was boarded. The train was
thankfully air-conditioned and after another 8 hours of shake, rattle and roll,
the team was in the relative quiet and cool of Kathgodam. The mosquitoes of the
Tourist Rest House however got busy and made sure that we stayed awake all
night. The next morning we started a 6 hour long drive to Bageswar.
The team stopped for a day in Bageswar to take care
of some last minute shopping, packing and re-packing. Next morning, the team drove
to the road head - lock stock and barrel. Ballu, our friend from Jatoli was
waiting there for our arrival and within half an hour all our duffels were
loaded atop mules and we were ready to hike the first few kilometers of the
trip to our shelter for the night. We stopped in a small guest house that overlooked
the picturesque village of Khati and decided to spend the night there. Later
that afternoon we went for a stroll through the terraced fields of Khati and
paid a visit to the nostalgic forest bungalow (built in 1890) there. The heat, the
noise, the filth, the stink and the dust of Delhi and Bageswar were suddenly behind
us and we felt happy to be back in the mountains. It felt almost unreal, but we
knew that such swift, almost magical transition is only possible in India. It
is such a land of contrast and contradictions!
Over the next two days, leaving the Pindar river
valley to our East, we proceeded northward, spending a night each in Jatoli
(2438m) and Kathaliya (3206m). Kathaliya is where Sukhram nala meets Maiktoli
nala and out of their confluence emerges the Sundardhunga gad (Garwali/Kumaoni
for ‘river’). All along the trail, right from the road head, we noticed scars
left on the mountains in form of massive landslides, the legacy of the 2013
Uttarakhand cloudburst. Beyond Kathaliya we followed the narrow Maiktoli river
gorge. The river itself was still frozen and offered a gentle, uphill approach
to the upper valley of the Burh glacier. As soon as the gradient of the frozen
yet cascading river flattened, near an old shepherd camp we settled down for
our Base Camp (3600m). The date was 6th June, 2015 and Maiktoli and
Panwali Dwar loomed over us like two giant sentinels of the Devi. Their
connecting ridge was standing in front of us like an ominous and formidable ‘no’,
stating, ‘thus far and no further’. Our eyes however, were all glued to the
central part of the ridge that connected those two peaks. We were trying to
locate the lowest point on the ridge, the Sundardhunga Khal. Rising almost 2000
m above us, Rutledge’s ‘unreasonably dangerous and difficult’ wall left us
awestruck. All we could see were hanging glaciers, icefalls, seracs, jutting
cliffs and avalanche chutes. Could we climb it? No one had yet succeeded in
doing so.
 |
| Base Camp |
The
Wall
As soon as the first couple of days of awe faded, we
busied ourselves by starting to reconnoiter for a feasible line up that wall and
acclimatize at the same time. In order to have a clear and direct view across
the valley of the ‘wall’ and to find a safe line up it, we set our eyes on the
Baljouri col first. We envisioned this ascent as an ideal vantage point for
detecting our route up the Sundardhunga Khal, and give us an opportunity to
acclimatize in the process.
Baljouri Col is located on a ridge extending north
to south between Panwali Dwar (6663m) and Baljouri Peak (5922m/19430ft). To its
East, is Buria glacier and to its west, the Burh glacier. On 8 June, 2015, we
followed the semi frozen glacial stream coming from the Burh glacier and soon
crossed it and continued up its true left. Soon we met the moraine ridge coming
from the direction of Baljouri Col and started going upslope and over old snow.
It was not great going on the soft snow. The reason probably was the low
altitude and high temperature.
We learnt that it did had snowed quite heavily in
this region (30 deaths were reported in Bageswar due to heavy snow in December
2014). But in June 2015 and in this altitude range (3600-4500m) snow conditions
were very soft, even in very old snow, due to temperatures. A couple of hours
of struggle through the slushy snow and about a 500 m altitude gain brought us
to a suitable spot for a camp. We were now right the foot of Baljouri Col and a
close look at its approach did not seem encouraging at all. There was fresh
avalanche debris right on the obvious climbing line and the prevailing snow
conditions were indicating further slab dislocations could occur at any time.
So next morning we decided not to try and ascend Baljouri col and dedicated
ourselves to scrutinizing the Sundardhunga wall instead.
The wall however presented us with a few interesting
revelations. Due to the topography (and being a south face that tends to get
more sun in this part of the world) slushy soft snow was not an issue there.
What we saw instead was a wall ornamented with rock buttresses and additionally
containing series of hanging glaciers near its top. We realized that the wall
had much less snow than would have been ideal. Any solid rock looked about the
grade of E (and therefore beyond us to consider) and the gullies looked rather
thin and lean. We agreed that it would have been nicer to have a bit more snow
cover in the gullies linking the ice fields. We were able to identify the
possible line of descent of Shipton and Tilman in 1934. It did not take us long
to rule out using that line as our line of ascent. The glacier that the duo had
descended is now very deteriorated and broken, and any ascent of this line would have involved
tremendous good luck to avoid getting
swept down by a broken serac. So we had an additional task. We had to discover
a safe and original line, but we needed a new vantage point. So we retraced our steps down to base camp and
decided to climb the slope directly west of BC in hope that this angle might
reveal more of the terrain and give us renewed hope. We were not wrong this
time. After climbing a few hundred meters the whole of the Sundardhunga Khal
wall opened up before us like a wide canvas and a thin line of interlinked
gullies raised our hopes. We now spotted a possible line up the wall and
apparently it looked safe from avalanche danger.
 |
| ABC |
The Attempt
From 10 June to 12 June, 2015, we started working on
the wall. After a couple of days of
ferry and further reccee up the face we had an ABC (4100m) ready and occupied,
a few hundred meters up the wall itself. It was a safe enough camp overlooking
the bending spread of the Burh glacier below. In these 3 days, the mornings
were clear. Afternoons had drizzle or some snow. We used this to our advantage
and could progress up the gully system and even make a high camp on a ledge
after climbing about 500 m above the ABC.
From 13 June the weather changed. Thunderstorms came
and continued for the next couple of days, giving us a proper soaking and a
heavy coat of fresh unstable snow on the entire face. 16 June was a clear day
again, but by that time the snow on the gully system was completely
untrustworthy and we were aware of the heightened chance of slab avalanches
with these conditions. We decided to retreat. By 17 June, we were all safely
down in base camp.
 |
| George tackling vertical grass |
Observations
We learnt that seasonal temperatures dictate that anything
below 6000 m in the Uttarakhand Himalaya will be too warm for safe or
comfortable snow conditions. Our impression is a late autumn attempt
(October-November) will ensure firmer snow and more stable weather. We also learnt
that it is now unreasonable to ascend the descent line of 1934 due to hanging
seracs. We could however find out a possible alternative and safe line of
ascent and did actually climb up to 4600mts on the wall itself. We also learnt
that it was well within our abilities to climb the south face of the
Sundardunga Khal. Perhaps there will be a next time. Until then, the Goddess
gets to keep her secret.
Team
Climbing Team: George W Rodway, Lakpa Sherpa, Mingma
Sherpa, Anindya Mukherjee.
Base Camp Support: Balbir Singh, Mrinal Ghosh. Trekking
Member: Diganta Roy Chowdhury
Duration: May 30, 2015 to June 19, 2015
[1]
Nanda Devi, Hugh Ruttledge,
Himalayan Journal, Vol-05 1933
[2]
Nanda Devi and the Sources of
the Ganges. H.W.Tilman, Himalayan Journal, Vol-07, 1935