Page 6 - 2002 AMA Winter

The group on Bag Chopok (2025m;
ExpeditionReport - ExerciseShrivenhamSlovak
By James Moore and Dave Luke
An expedition to Eastern Europe with only one member of our party with any experi­ ence in the area, caused a near intimidating mix of excitement and anticipation. On arrival at Prague airport the western atmos­ phere successfully lulled us into a false sense of security. This was soon dispelled several hours later standing on the platform of the train station in the early hours of the morning, awaiting our night train to Slovakia. The remnants of the old communist regime were evident even to our ignorant eyes.
It seemed a far cry from six months earlier when we were sitting in the mess toying with the idea of Exercise Shrivenham Slovak. Our team of 8 O cdt's from Shrivenham spent this time researching and planning the Army's first Slovakian expedition.
The first introduction to the Tatras Mountain range was a days sport climbing on Limestone crags, in Slovakia this is known as a Climbing Garden Our guide Jan Peto used this as the first part of his assessment of
our abilities. The following day’s planned endurance test turned out to be a long ridge walk introducing us to the in situ chains along the route. These chains are standard practice in Slovakia on hard sections of scramble routes. Based on our better than expected performance Jan introduced a more ambitious programme, which turned out to challenge the entire group.
The luxury of a 0600 reveille to a mountain day was a refreshing change to the standard alpine 0200. From the Sliezsky Dom mountain hut, we started our now routine, 'hare and hounds’ race with the guides to the bottom of the route. Group 1 was the first to encounter, Bomb Alley’ a gully containing scree and fridge sized boulders, careful foot placement was not enough to prevent heavy rock fall. On several occasions this came much to close for comfort and proved true adventure training with serious risk to life and limb! Once finally on top we scrambled along the ridge towards Bradavice, which was a grade ll-lll scramble. This allowed us to climb four smaller towers on the main summit, one of which was affectionately known as. the wart’.
The final part of stage one brought an entirely new aspect to the expedition. After some serious storms the water level in the canyons of Slovak Paradise had risen enough to ensure that we were all destined to get wet!
Andy Richardson, Jenny Lockett, Dave Stanley and our guide Jan Peto with Bradavice in the background.
ARMY MOUNTAINEER )