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| Brothers Willie and Damien Benegas. The lay of the land. Journal entries by Damien, courtesy of The North Face. We were figuring out how to climb the Indian arête. The only information we had was from Sandy Allan and Doug Scott, who had a mini-epic on their almost-complete ascent. Then the American Alpine Journal, where they show that the Italians did a route. At first we decided we will take two days, so we plan to take a sleeping bag for three, a stove and some food. The good weather has moved away and the bad weather is sitting right on top of us. Today is the fourth straight day we are sitting in our tent playing cards. It has not stopped snowing for more than an hour in the last ninety-six hours. Everything now is looking like winter. The glacier is completely white, without sign of a single bare rock or anything that will stop us from sliding. And everything is wet from our near encounter with the Indian arête. The boots still have water, and our long underwear and everything else is on the rocks waiting for some sunny day.
After the Super Couloir of the Karakoram, which we did during a break in the weather, we were supposed to have a rest day. But early the next morning we woke up with the climbing feeling in our bodies. Keep climbing! We didn’t have the complete gear for some of the routes, but we still managed to climb a lot. We looked for first ascents almost every day. Willie and Matoco went to a tower just behind our base camp and did a first ascent of what is now the Tony Tower. We named it after the late Tony who used to eat grass at the base. The route has ten pitches 5.10a or 6b+. We decide to go to the north ridge of Latok and fix a rope up the Begshrumg. With the heat of the past ten days, everything has been melting. Once the gap in the Begshrumg melts, it becomes way too difficult to climb to the proper face. Every day the face and ridge of Latok gets less white, but still the ridge has huge snow mushrooms that deny every option or passage up the mountain. We woke up at 4:00 AM. The snow was almost gone for the first mile or so and now we had bare ice, so we moved fast across the glacier. As we were sliding we talked on how long it took us last year to do same distance on foot. The base of the route is about seven miles from the camp and with the skis it took us one hour. As we where getting near the face we could see all the snow and avalanche activity from the past ten days. At every snow chute coming from the face was a huge pile of avalanche debris with huge snow blocks from what once was a proud snow mushroom protecting the ridge. We located a perfect spot to the right of the main chute, just at the base of the ridge. It was flat and clear of debris. Willie kept going up the snow ramp with the skis, but he was sliding down more than going up. Matias and I were working on getting things ready so we could start climbing. Then Willie started screaming at us. Avalanche! I looked up and out of the corner of my eye I could see this huge white cloud with TV-size blocks of ice coming down straight to us. Matias and I looked at each other and started running like maniacs downhill. We turned around to see the avalanche hit about twenty feet from where we were, just few feet from our gear. After that we decided to climb one pitch and then go back to camp. More journals: The final push >>> .
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Our lost gear is now officially lost. Joe FedExed a box and we will have it here by the tenth. But for now it’s the weather. On top of the way too much snow already on Latok, we can add a few feet more. We will see what will happen. In the middle time we are playing cards. Willie is always winning by 500 points.
