A crack team of Swiss climbers has made a free ascent of a major big wall route on one of the most famous granite faces in the former Soviet Union, the North West Face of Asan in the Karavshin. Their climb produced one of the hardest all free routes in the valley.
Nina Caprez, Giovanni Quirici and Stephan Siegrist, together with the Austrian David Lama, first endured the delights a four-day train journey from Moscow to Bishkek, before continuing to the internationally famous region of huge granite walls situated in the Pamir Alai of Kyrghyzstan.
The plan was to put up a new free route on the stupendous, c900m-high, North West Face of Asan (4,230m) in the Kara-su Valley. Of the eight or so independent routes on this sheer face, most require standard big wall tactics and use a fair amount of aid. However, the classic 1986 Alperien Route on the right hand pillar can be free climbed at around 6c+, while in 2006 Australians freed the 1986 Porgorelov Route with Moros Finish at 5.11d.
Caprez and Lama scoped a fine line on the wall but found that after two pitches they were unable to continue without aid. Disappointed, they returned to base camp, where a spokesman from a Russian team told them it would be more or less impossible to open a new line on the face, because apart from on the existing routes, the rock is rubbish.
Heeding his advice, they switched objectives to the Timofeev Route towards the right side of the face. N Timofeev and friends first climbed this during the 1988 Soviet Championships. It was primarily an aid climb and awarded the hardest Russian grade of 6B. It became quite popular, was later downgraded to 6A, and parties would eventually eliminate some of the aid. Quite recently a Polish pair climbed it at 7a and A3.
Fixing ropes, the Austrian-Swiss team worked on the 17-pitch route. The first four pitches gave hard slab climbing at 7b+. A section on large flakes followed, after which fantastic crack climbing at 7a and 7b led to the summit. The team took five days to make the redpoint, though unfortunately Lama had to leave before the job was completed, as he had a pressing engagement in the form of a World Cup competition.
The ascent was filmed, the team having travelled to the area with a film-maker and photographer, who were following in the footsteps of Lorenz Saladin, a legendary Swiss mountaineer. Saladin explored this area of Central Asia in the 1930s.
Work over, the remaining three climbers now switched valleys from the Kara-su to the Ak-su, where two friends from Geneva were also climbing. This is the valley where in 2000 four young American climbers were kidnapped and held hostage for almost a week by terrorist members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Siegrist joined with Sébastien Pochon to make one party, while Caprez and Quirici formed the other. All four made a rapid ascent of the brilliant Perestroika Crack on the 4,250m Russian Tower (aka Pik Slesov).
The single crack splitting the West Face of the Tower vies as one of the World's classic big wall free climbs. It can be climbed in anything from 18-24 pitches and was first put up in 1991 by four Frenchmen at 7a and A2 (much of the climbing is around 6c). Two years later it was climbed with only one pitch of aid at 7a/7b by Francois Pallandre. During the summer of 1995, in a single push of 28 hours, Greg Child and Lynn Hill freed it at 7b.
The Swiss teams reached the summit in around eight hours, with Siegrist leading the whole route on-sight, the fastest time that this has been achieved - the first on-sight was most likely made by Adam and Pawel Pustelnik with Slawek Syndecki in 2006.
The young female Caprez is becoming quite a force in climbing circles. This year she made the first female ascent of Ultime Démence in the Verdon, a 150m climb with pitch grades of 8a+, 8a, 8a+, 7c+ and 7c. She also redpointed Sunny Boys (8b+) in the Swiss Engelberg on only her fifth attempt.
« Back