in September/October 2014 our team of 6 went to the Gangga range in NW Sichuan province of China to attempt an unnamed, unclimbed and barely recorded peak at 5420m. (note, this range is not to be confused with the well known Gonga or Konka peaks in central west Sichuan province).
we originally put together the idea after consulting with Tomatsu Nakamura the Japanese explorer, and the logistics, on-mountain leading and planning was provided by Iceclimbingjapan, a company in Japan that provides logistics for climbers going to Japan and China.
being such obscure peaks meant planning took a lot of educated guesswork and assumption based on scant information. previous visits to the region provided a general idea of the area, but even with the help of local logistics providers, between us there was still a lot of gaps needing to be filled. one thing we did know was that the area was sensitive in regards to unrest amongst the Tibetans, and that foreigners hanging about for a month wouldn’t go unnoticed. to smooth things with the authorities we had a translator and liaison officer from the China Mountaineering Association (CMA) with us, along with a stack of paperwork and permits.
from Chengdu we drove for 2 long days up onto the northern Tibet plateau, reaching the frontier town of Ganzi where we spent a few days stocking up and acclimatizing (Ganzi sits at about 3500m).
From Ganzi the central Gangga massif is only about 45mins away – incredible considering it was effectively unexplored – meaning we could recce for a BC site and return to town. asking about town revealed almost no local interest in the peaks, that tho despite being spectacular, weren’t viewed as somewhere anyone felt like going except the nomads who travelled down the valleys connecting the high plateau to the Yalong River valley.
after weighing up our options we settled on establishing BC in a meadow beside a small spring and at the base of the scree and rock that let us access the southern and south eastern sides of peak 5420m which we came to refer to as Gangga VII (being the 7th highest in the entire range of about 40 peaks over 5000m – no others attempted either).
being China, BC was comfortable and well supplied – plenty of pork, beer, coffee and vegetables which are often hard to find in other Asian climbing areas.
the final days of the Asian monsoon made the first week patchy, but allowed us enough time to put in a high camp at 4500m, about 500m from the base of the ‘real’ climbing. HC was in a large cwm ringed by +5200m peaks and walls, on a vast plain of scree. incredible views in every direction presented mountains perhaps unseen before us. if not for the strictness and cost of Chinese climbing permits we could have been on a new peak every day for a month.

something apparent from the moment we arrived was the complexity of the range’s geography. a bit similar to the Charakusa, the Gangga is composed of layers of spires and sharp ridges that create mazes that make any approach or route far from direct. instead of having distinct faces, peaks in the central Gangga massif have headwalls that sit behind complex chutes, with most routes twisting from one aspect of the peak around to another rather than forming a direct line. this became a striking element when weather came in as a couloir would collect snow from more than one side of the mountain and channel it downwards.

the route we first chose was a seemingly obvious gully of snow slopes connected by ice and rock steps that would from the SE round to the northern side of the mountain – that large chunks of it were unobservable was just accepted. a 500m approach on scree lead into the first pitches there were mostly rock, becoming more and more snow-filled and iced as it got higher, narrower and turned towards the northern aspect, and therefore colder.

each pitch was run to a full 60m rope length, with minimal gear and a few pitches were extended with a second rope (the lack of gear made this easy…). protection was mostly small stuff hammered into varying rock (mostly crap tho some good stuff too) and occasional decent cams (hooray for the yellow alien). the ice only took shorter screws and we used a lot of beaks (including a middle sized pecker that took a 6m fall) and spectres (sometimes hammered into frozen sand).
to save time with a large team we sometimes fast-fixed and the others jugged whilst the next pitch went up. this meant a lot of people on the anchors, so they had to be bombproof, which worked out well as we retreated on them and could rap two at a time off.

a big issue when in the couloir was it was impossible to see out and determine which of the maze of possibilities to take. due to the big blindspots when viewed from afar we had no indicators to go by for the middle of the route, so were aiming for a series of exposed snow fields where we transitioned round to the northern side (and where we also had a blindspot to the summit). occasional glimpses out between spires showed us we were indeed making the turn round the peaks eastern side, but after 15hrs and ascending 1250m from BC, including 8 big pitches we were stuck in a narrow gully under a series of overhanging mixed steps. group moral had ebbed as things were much harder than expected and with nowhere to shelter from the ice the leader knocked down the risks of injury were getting everyone stressed.
we called it there as the snow started and 9 rappels and stumbling down 500m of scree later arrived back at highcamp at midnight.

after a few days back in BC we decided to try a route that was spotted on the southern face, up the only non-spire-infested aspect we could get onto. from HC this was another hour or two up the scree and a 4am start got us there as daylight offered enough light to see what was ahead.
using the plan to fast-fix where necessary we wanted to get everyone up onto the face as fast as possible, but as sunlight hit the rock what started as a few random pings became a shooting gallery of head-sized rocks hurtling down. it wasn’t long before we were back in HC and then BC, juggling ideas that we seemed to be running out of.　this was made no better after recceing the peaks northern side to find it was not only even more complex with deeper couloirs, but off limits due to a construction project and a gold mine.

with time ticking we decided to return to the first route we tried, choosing this on the back of a weather change that had turned much colder and clearer. this time we left from HC and had a lot of the anchors in place, tho we had to dig for them after a week of intermittent snowfall.
the approach was much faster as were the initial pitches, as now hard snow covered what was before exposed and sometimes loose rock. this meant we could simu-climb what previously needed jugging and some mixed sections were now entirely ice and neve. of course wed had a week more at altitude so were better acclimated.

we reached out earlier high point at about midday to find things were still very steep but were better formed. 2 full pitches of impressive mixed climbing bought us into ever more vertical terrain that was becoming more ice than snow, and our elusive stack of snow fields seemed to never arrive. time was going with more and more technical climbing and at the top of pitch 10 wed ground to a halt. above was a long overhanging chimney of thin ice that looked hard for 2000m, never mind 5300m. compounded by being a large group we called it a second time, with maybe only 4 pitches above us. that said, 2 of those pitches were into totally unseen territory of who knows what.
with the gear we had left we made our anchor using multiple v-threads into thin ice, tied off ice columns and micro wires into frozen rock. everyone agreed that the gradual decline in anchor quality made the pain of retreat a degree less.

by the second rap an unforeseen storm front hit that made the choice to retreat easily the better one. insane amounts of spindrift were being channeled into the couloir from several sides of the peak and a trickle of cascading snow became thigh deep faster than expected, made worse as the narrow gully we were descending went thru a series of bottlenecks that meant plunging thru the stream. as we descended the collected snow became deeper, and after several freaky moments where it looked like we may have to wait things out on ledges we managed to get below the cloud base where at least we could see each other. from here we traversed out of the flow and down several rock steps then the long stumble back down the scree to HC. burned out and frazzled we dropped into our tents to eat and sleep.

after the days snow any further attempts on the peak were over. there wasn’t the time to recoup, and a second dump the following afternoon sealed the decision. the last days were spent deconstructing BC and a recce trip further down the valley where we checked out some awesome possibilities for next years trip that included huge ice falls and +1000m walls.

returning to Ganzi we showered, ate, hung out at the monastery and repacked everything for the trip home. after a densely scheduled couple of weeks 2 days watching the Tibetan plateau go by the car window was welcome, and the urban delights of Chengdu entertaining to return to.

so we returned to Chengdu without a summit, but with all our fingers and toes. no one was too upset as elusive as a summit may be, going somewhere truly unexplored in this day and age is perhaps even rarer. wed been the first in an entire range to attempt anything and wed come away with data that added a small piece to knowledge of the planet. we also checked out dozens of other excellent routes that await.

wed like to thank Polartec, Teton Bros, Dynafit, Cassin and Zen Nutrition for providing elements of our equipment. trip concept, consultancy and planning was by iceclimbingjapan (see iceclimbingjapan.com for more details of this trip)