Page 13 - 2023 AMA Spring

The Nepal Gap Glacier, snow basin, and ridge above (right of Nepal Peak)
The cut down through the cornice
The ridge towards Kirat Chuli
View to the east from the ridge
Camp 1 after the storm
visibility was down to a few metres – a full blizzard. The final descent was through frightful weather and became a bit of a battle, but we made it back to camp one without mishap. Through the night, the wind climbed to 80mph and the heavy snowfall persisted.
All through the next day the storm raged on. The old fashioned Vango Ridge tents we had at camp one were completely inadequate for the conditions, and although we’d built dwarf snow walls as wind breaks around them, these now acted as a holding for drifting snow, which got under the fly sheets and built up against the tent walls. That night a new, one-metre-high snowdrift started to advance through the camp, burying the tents as it edged forward like a Sahara sand dune. I was sharing with John Allen, and our tent collapsed under the weight at two o’clock in the morning, with us half dressed in our sleeping bags, and now buried under a foot of snow. Taking turns to hold up the tent while the other
Top of the snow slope above Camp 1
Looking back to the ridge near Camp 2
struggled into his clothes, we crawled out into the shrieking darkness, and sought shelter in other tents. When dawn came it was evident that evacuation was the only option, but over the radio Mike requested that we leave a stay behind party of two in case his team needed help getting down.
Up on the ridge, in the full blast of the wind, conditions were appalling, even blowing out the cookers inside the tents,
Start of the traverse
so they had no food or water. At the first possible chance they would have to retreat. Down at camp one, in the now hurricane force wind, it took eight of us to re-pitch my tent on a small brow where the increased wind velocity prevented the snowdrift building up, and Hamish McKay and I stayed on, while Duncan Briggs led the remainder of our party down through the storm to advanced base camp, taking our one radio with them for security.
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 13