72 pitch First Ascent in the Changping Valley, China

Throughout day 6 the weather worsened to sleet with near zero visibility as we ascended through the notch and up a 500’ verglassed rock step. The notch itself proved to be the crux of "The Rake" with several outrageously slender gendarmes and much snow covered rock. We chopped camp 6 into the hanging glacier at 17,400’ above the rock step. The evening cleared for a half an hour and provided stunning views of "The Rake" and the lower walls to the north and south. The upper mountain however remained socked in.

Day 7 included the mixed climbing crux of the route; two pitches of snowy rock (M5) were climbed to gain the crest again above the seracs on the north side of the ridge. The weather continued with snow flurries and zero visibility. We enjoyed absolutely classic alpine ridge climbing for the second half of the day. Hundreds of meters of happy cowboys (riding the crest like a bull) on both snow and rock, hooking tools on the crest, and navigating rocks and cornices. Camp seven, on a glacial shelf at 18,300’ offered the first flat ground we’d set foot on since base camp.

On the morning of day 8 (despite being three days behind schedule) we cached our camp and set off for the summit amid yet another whiteout. We were quite thankful the ridge was so well defined, as we could climb in poor weather and stay on route. Snow and ice runnels bisecting the upper rock steps led to a happy cowboy finale followed by a mixed traverse on the south face. By mid-afternoon we reached the summit seracs. A short vertical ice pitch provided access to the upper snow slopes. We traversed north under the false summit, reaching the rimed summit at 4:35pm. We began our descent promptly encouraged by the darkening wall of hate boiling and flashing to the west. Just before dark we reached the happy cowboy as the lightning storm worsened and drew close, striking the ridge several times directly above our heads. We took refuge on the mixed traverse south of the crest and waited for the lightening to subside. One hour later we dashed across the happy cowboy and continued rappelling towards our high camp cache. At 11:00pm at 19,000’ in stormy weather, we could not find the gulley leading down to the high camp cache. We spend the night climbing and down climbing the 60 degree snow trying to stay warm. At dawn, both encrusted in rime ourselves, the clouds parted and we saw the route down to high camp.