North Face of Peak Lenin - Telemark Descent

by Peter Kollar, reprinted from Couloir Online, September 2001

In 2000 I was a member of a small team that wanted to climb Peak Lenin. We had to stop at 6,700 meters, and in my mind I still saw the beautiful north face of this peak. Dream? Maybe, but on the 27 of July 2001, my dream came true. I and my five friends boarded a plane and started one big adventure. Kyrgyzstan, a country from the former Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan, a country where poor people give you what they can. Kyrgyzstan, a country of beautiful mountains.

Our Slovak expedition started from Lukovaya Polana at base camp. Between the small hills are wonderful small blue lakes. There are sheep and goats on the steep slopes. There we hired horses to carry our equipment to camp one. They said one kilogram = one dollar. We didn't accept and after few minutes we agrees on 0.7 dollar per kilo. Nice people, these natives.

For five hours we built tents right next to our Czech friends, who cooperated with us on this expedition. Over the next few days we worked on the high camps. Very soon we split into two groups. Six people wanted to ascend using the normal route through Peak Razdelnaya and the rest of us chose the north face route.

After a few days camp two and camp three were built and we were preparing to try to reach the top. On August 9, 2001 eight people moved to camp 2, and the next day to camp 3. Evening came quickly, the shadows were longer and the air was colder. There was silence, only noise of stove. Everybody was waiting for tomorrow. These evenings are the reason why I love mountains and always come back.

August 11: morning, the weather is excellent. I drank a lot of tea and got started. Into my backpack I put gloves, glasses, hot tea, two power bars, skis, an ice ax and a small Slovak flag. My toes were frozen, but the weather was working for us and the rising sun helped me. A thousand steps, a thousand intakes, a thousand times I must convince myself to continue. Again and again I stop and continue. After long nine hours five of us were on the top. GPS shows 7,134 m, it is 5 p.m. We were very happy, took the pictures and started to slowly ski down.

The upper part is steep (approx. 45 degrees), the snow is hard. It was very difficult to ski, in this altitude with less oxygen. My lungs were empty and thighs ached very much. At 6,900 m, conditions changed. The snow became very difficult. Hard in some places, deep in others. Ice fields appeared, and if you didn't concentrate, you could fall down very quickly. We didn't always ski with style, sometimes we looked funny fighting with slope, snow and skis.

After two hours we stayed in camp 3. Everybody was tired. Some cooked, some just lied in a tent. Lying in sleeping bag, I'm thinking about summit. The next day we were moving to camp 1 and finishing the descent. That magical dream called The North face of Peak Lenin is done. On telemark. I was happy that it was over. Shaking hands with friends, eating and drinking a lot. In base camp we celebrated our success. Three of my friends from our group, using the normal route through Peak Razdelnaya reached the top too. I hope it wasn’t the last seven thousand summit that I will ski down. A lot of summits are waiting for telemark.

1 snowboarder, 3 telemarkers, and 10 alpiners participated in this descent. Among the group was Alice Korbova, the first woman in the world to do this route.