Cover: Ranjit on the Shiva South face

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary

“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.” – Anatoli Boukreev

“The mountains are calling, and I must go” – John Muir

​“It’s always further than it looks. It’s always taller than it looks. And it’s always harder than it looks.”

About Ranjit Jakkli

​Ranjit Jakkli has been a climber and alpinist for over 35 years. He tries to spend about 40 days in the Himalayas every year. His objectives are Alpine style climbs of technically challenging mountains of heights up to 6500 meters (21,500 ft), in the Himalayas. These objectives, when performed in a small group of 2 – 4 persons, deliver a unique experience which cannot be felt in the organized climbs of big mountains which are typical of today. This kind of climbing also brings unique risks and Ranjit was involved recently in a serious accident in the Kashmir Himalayas, where he managed to survive by descending for over 8 hours solo after a fall which dislocated his right hand at the elbow. Climbing is a combination of failures and successes but over the years, the journey has always been a winner!

What is Alpine Style Climbing?

“Alpine style is mountaineering in a self-sufficient manner, thereby carrying all of one’s food, shelter and equipment as one climbs, as opposed to expedition style (or siege style) mountaineering which involves setting up a fixed line of stocked camps on the mountain which can be accessed at one’s leisure. Additionally, alpine style climbing means the refusal of fixed ropes, mountain guides, high-altitude porters, supplemental oxygen and doping agents, portable hyperbaric bag”.
(Source: Wikipedia)”For Alpine Style in the Himalaya imagine two people crossing a bergschrund together and climbing unsupported to a summit over a period of say 6 or 7 days and then finding their own way down the mountain. During that time they would rely on no-one else but themselves. That is what I mean when I say Himalayan Alpine Style.”

(Source: WHAT IS ALPINE STYLE CLIMBING (AND WHY I LOVE IT by Mike Fowler in https://community.berghaus.com/athletes/athlete-blogs2/mick-fowler-blog/alpine-style-climbing-love/)

From Killar, we drove another 3 hours the same evening to set up Camp in a potato field outside the village of Parmar, the roadhead for Shiva. Parmar is a quaint hamlet of about a hundred families, predominantly Buddhist, and noticeably matriarchal in governance. The next morning, we were summoned to a meeting of the Women’s council, and politely but firmly informed that we would not be permitted to proceed up the valley, as they ran the risk of being accused of preferential treatment to us –  they had stopped a group of labourers from a village lower down in the valley to go through a few weeks ago, on grounds of infection risk. We displayed our Covid-negative Test reports with pride and tried to invite their sympathy to that we had been preparing for this for months, but they waved us away with laughs and smiles. In desperation, and without knowing what we were getting into, we proposed an alternative where we would go up the neighboring valley to the West and climb up a pass to access the Parmar valley higher up, as long as they accepted to let us through the village when we were going down. A deal was made, and thus was averted a crisis that could have plunged the Pangi valley into chaos for generations.

Presentation to the Women’s council in Parmar

So what should have been a 4 hour walk from Parmar to BC turned out to be a 4 day affair – a drive across up the Killar valley, a scramble over a 4850 meter pass, and back down again into the original valley, to set up Base Camp at 4000 meters at the base of the South West ridge of Shiva. The clear air offered fantastic all round views from the pass, and while the cities were boasting of being able to see snow capped mountains from Jalandhar for the first time in decades due to the lockdowns. I believe we can claim that we could spot the high 8000 meter giants in the Karakoram to the West, over a 100 kms away.

Base Camp (BC)

Base Camp was made comfortable for our planned stay of a few weeks – our first choice of location had to be abandoned due to the presence of a half eaten carcass of a yak who had recently died – the smell was terrible and as we found out later, it was visited by bears and snow fox almost every night. We were befriended by a dog – christened ´Guapo´ (Spanish for handsome), who had followed us from the roadhead, and made himself at home in Base Camp. At night, he would perform his duty of warding off bears and fox from Camp.

Ramesh left for Pune a couple of days later, and Arya stayed on with me, entertaining himself with the bouldering opportunities in the valley. After a few acclimatization sorties, Nim Dorje, Mig Temba and I set up Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at 5000 meters at the end of the glacier at the foot of the South Face. The route from BC to ABC is initially an easy walk over the moraine, ending in an icefall, and then a gradual climb over wind-chiseled ice waves to the foot of the mountain. The icefall crossing offered some challenges, due to exceptionally dry conditions, with no fresh snow for weeks before we arrived.

Icefall between BC (Base Camp) and ABC (Advanced Base Camp)

Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at the foot of the South Face of Shiva

After stocking ABC with climbing gear and a few days worth of food, we moved up to ABC on the 8th of October to make an alpine style attempt of the South Face. The night of the 8th was very cold, with temperatures down to -15 C or lower. We had a sleepless night due to the cold, inspite of the several layers between us and the ice. In the morning of the 9th, we delayed our start to 6 am, then gained the foot of the mountain in an hour and then followed a line directly up the South face, thru a series of steep pitches on hard ice, targeting a notch in the South East ridge above us. The clear cold weather had made the ice super hard, the crampons and axes needing strong blows to stay rooted, and making some of the older ice screws ineffective.  After an exhausting day, we reached the notch in the ridge at 5800 meters at 4 PM. It was late and we had another 400 meters to go for the summit, and concluded that it was not worth it to risk a descent in the dark. We made the heartbreaking decision of turning back at this point and made a series of rappels to descend back to ABC at 10 pm. The lower part of the face carries some rockfall risk, especially in the late evening, as it is West facing. We had a coffee table sized rock come hurtling at us at one point, and Nim Dorjee and I had to leap across to avoid it.

Midway up the South Face

​After rest and recuperating at Base Camp, and allowing for a couple of days which were forecasted with high winds, we climbed up to ABC again on October 13th. However, after another very cold and sleepless night at ABC, we judged the conditions to be too cold, and the ice to be too hard to be able to make a fast enough ascent directly from ABC and decided to abandon the attempt and come back to BC on October 14th. By the time we got back down to Parmar village, we got news that the ´Atal Tunnel´ had opened, so we travelled back via the Tunnel to Manali and Delhi. Throughout the weeks we were in the mountains, we had excellent weather conditions – clear skies, warm days (even too warm sometimes), very cold nights and windy afternoons. The White Magic Team, as usual, did a fabulous job of planning and execution at short notice.

Conference at the high point – decision to go down