Manaslu, Tuesday, April 14, 2009

NEW CAMPS AND NEW TEAMMATES

After the diverse scares because of the accumulated snow and the
avalanches, it looks like the weather is more stable.  We have let
some sunny days pass so that the mountain purges its unstable layer of snow and two days ago we took off upwards.  The objective, obviously, is to install camp 1 at an altitude of 5,750 m. and then go down.  All went perfect and since we had good conditions we could film and shoot pictures.  In some 4 hours and a half we arrived to that mound of snow, at the bottom of the most inclined part of the wall.  It looks like a very safe location, although from there to camp 2 it looks like things get complicated.  Going down was really fast and in a little time we were back at base camp, resting after the effort.  We met our newly arrived new teammates there: Radek, a Czech with whom we have met in some other mountain and 4 Iranians, really young and funny. Only one of them speaks a little English and it is going to be the first experience on a 8,000 meter mountain for all of them.  One of them is very religious and he prays in the direction of Mecca everyday with fervor, although the first day he had his direction a little askew (just to the other side) and after we told him, he was a little disconcerted at first for a long time, and after consulting with his partners he corrected the drift of his prayers and we all laughed a lot.  We had a good time.  From then Pérez has baptized me as “Mulah Pauner” because of my interest in the prayers.  Today the weather is still fine and we have not had any significant news.  We have been living at base camp of over a week at 5,000 meters and we could mount camp 1.  After these days of rest, we plan to climb again to camp 1
tomorrow, with the intention of sleeping there, to continue, if the weather permits, the day after up to the location of camp 2 at 6,500 m.  But well, plans are plans and we have to see how things are going. We will now prepare our things and we will concentrate on giving this important step in this expedition, in the days ahead.  We are very excited, because the weather has been good to us and we just want it that way for a couple of days more and advance in the proper way with the acclimatization.  We’ll tell you more after we come back down.  Carlos Pauner

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Manaslu, Sunday, April 12, 2009

CAMP I: Today, Sunday, at 6 in the morning, Carlos, Pérez and Alberto have left to camp I.  They made it to the camp.  After climbing for four hours and a half, they reaced camp I, at 5,800 meters of altitude. They installed it, rested and turned around to base camp.

There were several groups climbing to camp I today, which has been
convenient while opening the trail, because there was a lot of snow
after the great snowfalls of the recent days.

Now the rest at base camp.  If the weather is good, their plan is to
rest for two days at base, and then leave to camp I, sleep there, and on the next day climb to install camp II, and descend to rest at base.

Today, the Iranians who are part of the expedition commanded by Carlos have come to base.  Other expeditions have come during these last days, so practically all the groups attempting Manaslu are already at base camp.

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Manaslu, Friday, April 3, 2009

CLOSE TO MANASLU

Today we arrived to Samagon.  At last we will be able to see Manaslu and watch our objective face to face.  We have been wandering these valleys of Nepal for a week, with no other objective than to get closer to our mountain.  Town after town, stage after stage we have been advancing through this valley of no human dimensions.  We have passed the barrier of 3,000 meters and little by little we are leaving behind towns and some mountains.  These days have been surprising, because of the infinity of different and beautiful locations we have crossed. The road is wisely built, it goes though walls of rock, labor camps, pine woods, wild brooks and along the way we have met people walking who are the life of these places.  As time goes by, human presence decreases and little by little we have gone into the inner Manaslu.  We have also left behind Hinduism and all the towns we pass in this last stage have distinctions of Tibetan culture, with beautiful flags and chortens that show their Buddhist religion in these high valleys of Nepal.

In Samagon we are going to rest for one day and to organize ourselves a little.  We will change porters, because it is mandatory to hire those who live in this town, so that they take advantage of our last stage to base camp.  Those who have come with us until here will turn around, not without getting paid and with some extra tip and we will go back to the ritual of dividing loads among the new ones.  In one or two days we will reach base camp, but before we will also rest a little of this activity of the last days and we will visit the zone to contemplate the magnificent Buddhist monuments of this town.  The truth is that we are willing to stop a little, to stop being trekkers of the valley, to see our mountain and to be closer to our definitive camp.

We have a good impression of this approach, long, beautiful and
surprising.  We still have much left, but with no doubt, we are
already submerged into the domains of Manaslu, a little visited region
with a lot to show.

Carlos Pauner

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Manaslu, Wednesday, April 1, 2009

HALFWAY

We are in the middle of the trekking which will take us to base camp
in Manaslu.  We have walked for four days, always following the same
valley to the north, going by extraordinary places.  Despite the
numerous trekkings I have made on the Himalayas, this can be qualified
as one of the best because of its beauty, spectacular views and
loneliness.  Everything goes well so far, we walk around six or seven
hours a day.  In a couple of days we will arrive to the closest city
to base camp, Samagon, located at 3,300 meters of altitude.  Once
there, we will rest for one day and in other two more days of trekking
we will reach base camp.  The weather has improved a little.  The
storms of the first days have given way to very clear skies.  During
the morning we walked pretty good, and by the afternoon we had a lot
of heat, because the altitude we are at is still low, some 2,000
meters.  Our life has become a routine.  We get up at six in the
morning, take breakfast and prepare the loads for the porters, who are
going faster.  We are going slower, filming, shooting pictures, and
enjoying these spectacular landscapes of Nepal.  From time to time we
stop in a little town to take a soda and at noon we stop for a couple
of hours for lunch.  During the afternoon we walk some three hours
more, until we get to our destiny.  We place the tents and after
dinner we go to bed early with the last lights of the day.  The last
to stages that are left before Samagon are harder than the precedent,
longer and with more difference in altitude.  The valley narrows a
lot, and in occasions the road goes through parts that have been
excavated in the rock.  There is less life in the valley as we
advance, less towns and little by little we enter the environment of
high mountain.

We want to get there, to be able to settle definitively in a place and
stop being nomads over these valleys of the Himalayas.  However, we
know that we still have to wait.  Manaslu is waiting for us, lonely,
isolated, and we still have not seen it face to face.  So, be calm, we
will enjoy this trip knowing that each day we have a little less
distance to reach our destiny.  We will surely miss these green and
idyllic landscapes and nice temperatures later.  We will get into a
very different world, surrounded by ice, cold and immerse in our
peculiar adventure.  So until then, we will continue step by step.

Carlos Pauner

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera
 

Manaslu, Saturday, April 4, 2009

AT THE BOTTOM OF MANASLU

We have finally arrived to the bottom of Manaslu.  We are in Samagon, a large stage away from base camp still, but we can see the mountain in all its glory.  From this beautiful Tibetan town we can see almost all the 5,000 vertical meters of snow and ice, until that tip hanging from the sky at 8,163 m. of altitude.  It looks impossible to be up there.  Let's not rush.  For the moment, we still have to climb to
base camp at 4,900 m. of altitude and do a lot of things.  Here in
Samagon, we had to fire all our porters because it is mandatory to
hire the locals, all of them Tibetans.  That forced us to organize the
loads, because the new ones are a little fussier and they don't
tolerate one more kilo.  Once this was done, we went to visit an old
Buddhist monastery nearby and we had the luck to be there for the
morning ceremony, full of taste and color.  We drank Tibetan tea,
threw rice as an offer and we managed to get the assistance of the
lama at our camp in a few days to make the ceremony of the Puja.  It has been a sunny morning, with a little wind, covered by the mantras and sounds of the monastery and always under the look of the mountain of the spirit, Manaslu.  It was also a different day, from the point of view that we didn't have to walk as all these previous days.  On the contrary, tomorrow we will have the hardest stage of this approach.  We have to climb the 1,500 m that separate us from the current 3,400 m. to the 4,900 m. of the definitive base camp.  It is going to be hard, not just because of the difference of altitude, which is indeed important, but because we will move all the time around 4,000 m and because we don't have the proper acclimatization yet, we will have to suffer a lot over these steep slopes.  Probably the first night at base camp will also be hard, because such a drastic climb will cost us on that first night.  However, there is not much to think.  There is not a good intermediate place for our porters'
caravan and it is wiser to get there with all the loads in perfect
conditions up to the definitive location, instead of leaving part on
the way, because they only want to do it in one stage.   So, we will
try to rest the most we can in the few hours we have left, because we will have fun tomorrow.

Despite this spiritual inconvenience, everything else is going
perfectly.  We have our loads in perfect shape, we could film very
nice scenes and we have enjoyed a beautiful trekking that is about to end.  In a few hours we will be crossing that threshold that divides the life of the valley from the life on the high mountain.  We will become inhabitants of the moraine again and although suffering because of the altitude, we will soon get used to our new situation.  I will tell you more later. Carlos Pauner

 

Manaslu, Tuesday, March 24, 2009

FINALLY… MANASLU

Finally… Manaslu, with its 8,163 meters, that is Carlos’ objective for this spring. Yesterday at 16:30 Carlos, with his climbing friend Javier Pérez, left to Katmandu in an Aeronia airplane, the airline where Carlos is a partner. With Carlos as a pilot, the flew to Madrid where they took a flight to Qatar, where they would connect to Katmandu.

They arrived at 5 in the afternoon, Nepal time. Now they have two days of paperwork ahead and it is expected that on Friday the 27th they will start trekking for 8 days to get to base camp in Manaslu. It is planned that they will install three high altitude camps, the last one at 7,400 meters. The forecasts say that there could be a possible summit between April 27 and May 5.

This year there are a lot of expeditions that will join base camp at Manaslu. On their arrival to Katmandu, they were confirmed that their expedition has twelve climbers. Among them French, German, Iranian climbers and Carlos and Javier. Carlos will be the chief of the expedition group.

We will tell about their progress here, wishing them luck, success and sending them a lot of support.

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Manaslu, Friday, March 27, 2009

TOWARDS MANASLU

Katmandu receives us again with its mixed life. Noise, smells and colors bring us beautiful memories, although we don’t forget that our stay here is brief and that we have a lot of things to do. We picked up our cargo from customs, which we sent several days ago. We have checked the things, the tents, the food and equipment. We have also made the last shopping around the city and everything is going fine so far. Or course, we went to the Ministry of Tourism for the signature and the permit to climb Manaslu. We are going to be a big group, two French, two German, four Iranians, one Czech and three Spanish. Yes, that’s right, three. Alberto Sanmartín, from Zaragoza who planned to go this spring to Cho Oyu, has changed plans because bureaucratic matters with the Chinese and decided to join our team. He is a good friend, who has already been with me at Broad Peak in 2007 and wants to try his luck on this mountain of spirits.

After all this messy paperwork, which as chief of the expedition I had to do it, we are ready to go. We will take a vehicle to Arugat and from there we will start our journey to base camp. It will take us 9 days of march along the valleys of this beautiful region. We will change our chip these days and we will be able to relax a little, with no paperwork to do and with no rush. We will enjoy this trip and little by little we will get into the landscape of the high mountain. We can’t complain. Everything is going as planned and we are fine, knowing that everything has been taken care of. We plan to arrive to base camp around April 7 and from there we will install our little home which will shelter us during almost a month. I am excited, wishing to climb up to the summit of Manaslu and take one more step on this fascinating project of the Himalayas. So long Katmandu. We will be back, tired, darker, skinnier and I hope happier with the success of our summit. Our peculiar adventure begins.

Carlos Pauner

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera