Page 30 - 2011 AMA Summer

ASCENT OF ISLAND PEAK
(IMJA TSE) 6189m/20305ft
Major Kevin Edwards and Lt Col Cath Davies
28 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
As often quoted, from the great Bard, Robert Burns’ 1785 poem, ‘To a Mouse’, ‘the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley’. So it was with the planned ascent of Island Peak (Imja Tse) during Exercise DRAGON VENTURER EAGLE, the Derbyshire ACF expedition to Nepal 2010. The seventeen day itinerary for the Island Peak phase of the expedition had been conceived so that the pre-selected eight person team accompanied the main Cadets group on their Everest Base Camp (EBC)/Kala Pattar trek, thus acclimatising with them to 5500mts, and thereafter to trek up to Island Peak Base Camp (IBC) for the three day mountain ascent.
Every expedition leader appreciates that you need to improvise and adapt to overcome the inevitable curved balls that come your way. What could not have been foreseen on our arrival in Kathmandu is how much the bad weather, caused by the late monsoon, was going to impact on the expedition. The daily dis- appointment with the cancellation of flights to Lukla and the sub-