Kangtega - The Snow Saddle - is
another beautiful mountain, which rises majestically
to a saddle shaped summit from the
Khumbu and Hinku Valley and sits next to another
prominent mountain Thamserku to the north.
Our approach to this mountain
is from the south side over the Tsetrawala pass
and then through the Hinku glacier. We take
about a week to reach the Kangtega base camp
situated at the bottom of the Kangtega Ice-Fall,
which resembles with the
infamous Khumbu Ice Fall of Mt. Everest. Setting
up our base camp at 5,182m/17,000ft. Though
an obvious route up the
mountain would be to follow the Ice Fall, we
have to go for the rock face leading to a ridge
around 6,070m/19,909ft and
rappel down for about 70 meters to reach at
the top of the icefall to avoid possible icefall
hazards.
Camp I is placed here at an altitude
of 6,000m/19,680ft. On ward we overcome some
narrow crevasses and climb some
interesting snow slope to reach camp two at
6,400m/20,992ft. on the south ridge of the mountain.
Before the sun totally
goes down, impressive mountain views can be
viewed with a blue sky turning to golden and
to crimson...
Next day, an early morning pushes
through 45 ~ 50-degree snow slopes soon leads
to knife edged short summit ridge. The
summit offers great mountain views and the valley
surrounding.
Our Sherpa support will
help carry food, fuel, equipment and fix the
rope.
