Angela and i got an e-mail from Phil Kirchilsky, a West Point buddy of Greg Crouch, proposing a trip to the beautiful peaks above Chengdu in the Sichuan Province of China. I had been there in 1981 but Angela had never been to China and Phil was running a business out of Beijing/Shanghai and would be the perfect host.The first two days were sight seeing in Beijing.
And then on to Chengdu which has perpetual overcast.
And up into the mountains just west of the city.
Rilong is a Tibetan majority town at 10,500 feet a couple of miles from the trailhead
Ten miles to basecamp at 12,300ft. but horses did the work.
First four miles is on a two meter wide boardwalk, wasn't there in 81.
Too jetlagged for organization what follows are some pics in no special order
We had some bad weather and Phil's short window had passed. We had put in a tent at 14,500 below an unclimbed 17,000 ft. peak that I hoped wouldn't go unused. Fortunately I was able to recruit Cameron Kern from the newly arrived Becky Expedition and off we went in perfect weather.
The face above looked like too much with the time we had, so we headed up and left on snow.
Some route finding and a little spicy hard snow (in approach shoes) led us to the final four pitch headwall. At this point my camera ceased to function and Cameron is still in China. I'll post his pictures of the last section when he returns. It wasn't hard except for an in you face ten feet of gently overhanging rock on the penultimate pitch.
Ciao!