Peak Communism 7,495m (2016 Expedition - Not to Summit)

TLDR Version:
Will Kernick (22, UK) and Cameron Holloway (21, UK) attempt on Peak Communism (Ismoil Somoni Peak) (7,495m) via the Borodkin Spur. Peak Communism is the tallest mountain in the former Soviet Union, the 50th tallest mountain in the world, and the tallest of the Snow Leopard Peaks. Sadly we were not successful in our ascent, having expended much of our energy reserves rescuing a stricken climber high on the mountain. He took us for a bit of a ride - read below for a more detailed account. The ascent took 11 days return from Base Camp - much of which was spent sitting out spells of bad weather.

Long Version:
We ended up rescuing an Iranian climber in the middle of the night at c.6,800m on Peak Communism - the night before our planned summit push. The man was hypothermic, confused, fatigued, severely dehydrated and in such a state that had he been allowed to continue in his condition he would have either tumbled off the mountain or succumbed to the cold most likely within an hour or two. We took him into our tiny bivy tent (scarcely big enough for 2 people) and stabilised him - feeding, watering and warming him. He kept saying over and over "I no die now" in between bouts of coughing and even went as far as to give me an (unrequested) kiss on the side of the mouth as a way of saying thank you.

He finally fell asleep in between the two of us us benefitting from our warmth. We were both wedged against the ice on the outside of the tent and were freezing all night. In particular my toes were still frozen from heading out to bring him and didn't get a chance to unfreeze. In any case we decided to stay up the whole night keeping an eye on him.

Early in the morning he woke and announced, having slept well (unlike us), made the most of our hospitality (and narrowly avoided death a few hours earlier), that he would be going to the summit. We were convinced that he was still very confused and possibly even had cerebral oedema and there followed a stand off of no less than three hours in which we argued - us saying we were going to take him down to Base Camp and him demanding to go to the summit (despite having neither food nor water). After a few hours it became apparent that he didn't have oedema and that he was even fairly lucid. In the end we couldn't hold him in our tent so let him head out to the summit in perfect weather on our planned day, but not wanting a repeat of the day before armed him with one of our two water bottles and most of the remainder of our precious bars. In fact he even rudely dumped the rest of his gear with us while he headed up. We spent the day trying to catch up on sleep and recover but to little avail as recovery is almost impossible at nearly 23,000ft.

At 5pm he returned having failed to reach the summit (although he told everyone in Base Camp that he had indeed reached the summit). He demanded to have another night in our tent despite it still being light and relatively warm. We promptly told him to put his own tent up and kept an eye out as he did. Finally we settled down into a disturbed sleep.

We left for the summit in the morning. However, the weather was certainly less benign than the day before and following a windy, snowy night trail breaking was made even harder. Further, it quickly became apparent that I now had the shits - mostly likely acquired from a combination of our guest's coughing and kissing. Feeling weak from my newly acquired stomach bug I turned around not much above 7,000m, just beyond the subsidiary peak - peak Dushanbe (c.7,000m). Cameron, feeling less infected continued alone on the upper part of the mountain. However with deep snow and no help to break the trail he was forced to turn around having edged his way up to 7,250m over several hours.

It later transpired that the climber we had rescued had previously been climbing been climbing on the mountain with a less experienced woman. As the apparently more experienced of the two he completely failed to look after her and she ended up developing snow blindness and became severely dehydrated. Another group of 6 climbers was forced to intervene and take her down the mountain back to base camp. This climber however deemed it not his responsibility and decided to continue up towards the summit...

Видео Peak Communism 7,495m (2016 Expedition - Not to Summit) канала Will Kernick