#4- Winter Expedition to Golep Kangri (5950m) and Stok Kangri (6153m) - A Himalayan expedition.

I woke up in the middle of the night out because of the extreme snoring of my tent mate. I had slept for quite long though and I felt fresh. I searched for my phone in my sleeping bag and glanced at the time. It was just 11pm! What? Just 11pm? I had to get through the entire night now with this snoring, cold and restlessness. I played some music with the hope that it will help me sleep, but all in vein. It was like time was refusing to pass. Kam’s cough had gotten worse and I could hear her cough continuously in the other tent. I covered my head with the sleeping bag, calmed my mind and started counting backwards from 100. It helped. Within no time, I was asleep.

I got out of my tent at 7am and checked the thermometer. It showed negative 30. I took a good look at the sky and the nimbus clouds from the previous day hadn’t moved. It was a very gloomy and a cold morning. I woke Arjun and Kam up. They had a pretty sleepless night too because of the cough. I went to the kitchen tent and started helping the cook in making breakfast. From the kitchen tent I saw two men walking up the valley from a distance. I wondered who were trekking up the valley so early in this cold winter morning. They approached our camp and greeted us. They were local people who trekked up the valley because they were too bored of sitting in the city. I instantly connected with them when I heard this.

We left our camp at 9am. Our destination for today was the Base Camp situated at 16,200 feet AMSL. We put on our crampons and started trekking on the frozen Stok River higher up into the valley. We could see the impressive eastern face of Stok Kangri peak towards our right. The sky was so unusually white due to the clouds that there seemed no difference between the snow covered earth and cloud ridden sky! It was all in unison.

The trail winds up away from the river now into a valley. We had our first glimpse of Golep Kangri peak from here. It had a lot more ice on its upper slope than we expected. But the view of Golep Kangri pumped us all with excitement. With each step, we were only getting closer!

The trail now was covered with thin layer of snow over loose rocks which made it very difficult to walk on. There was no way of knowing what is under the snow until you step on it and most of the times, the loose rock below our feet would give away making us trip on almost every step. It was a frustrating trail. The skies above our heads were clearing up! All the clouds had suddenly vanished. It was bright and sunny now. So sunny, that it was draining us out. The weather in the mountains can change in seconds, literally. The trail climbs up on the mountain towards the ride side of the valley. The base camp was very close now. The view of the valley down below was spectacular! I took down my bag and sat there admiring the view.

I could see porters setting up the kitchen tent in a distance. We had almost reached the base camp. The final walk towards the base camp was in knee deep loose snow.

Once we reached the base camp, we were greeted by our cook with some warm tea and raw Maggie. The entire base camp was covered in snow and we had to level some ground up to pitch our tents. The bright sun was burning our skins. Our tents were too hot to be in so we rested in the kitchen tents for a while.

In the evening we decided to go on an acclimatization hike on the ridge next to our camp. It was almost 1000 feet higher. .We started hiking up the steep slopes.We got clear views of the entire route of Golep Kangri, the peak we were summiting.

We reached the top within 45 minutes. From the top of the ridge, we could see the eastern face of Stok Kangri staring at us. We were getting full network coverage here so I attempted a video call from here with my mom.

It connected but suddenly winds picked up and it brought immense amount of wind chill factor and it drained the phone battery to 0% from 40% in 20 seconds. The winds were getting stronger by the second so we headed down quickly to our camp. I was very drained from today’s ordeal, especially due to the sudden harsh sun.

I had a quick dinner and retired for the night. Everyone had a mild dry cough but Kam’s cough was getting very bad minute after minute and it concerned all of us. The summit day was now closer than ever. Follow on for the summit push blog. Cheers!

Read the first part here- https://steemit.com/travel/@its.parth.hey/1-winter-expedition-to-golep-kangri-5950m-and-stok-kangri-6153m-a-himalayan-expedition

Read the second part here- https://steemit.com/travel/@its.parth.hey/2-winter-expedition-to-golep-kangri-5950m-and-stok-kangri-6153m-a-himalayan-expedition

Read the third part here- https://steemit.com/travel/@its.parth.hey/3-winter-expedition-to-golep-kangri-5950m-and-stok-kangri-6153m-a-himalayan-expedition