Today's guest Blogger is Ken Wanderer, who led our Gasherbrum Expedition Fund-Raising Trek (you were introduced to him on the Circle South Sister Backpack). Ken describes the trek as follows:
In the fall of 1984, I was offered the chance to co-lead the joint Folkways-Mazama Gasherbrum Expedition Trek in the Karakoram sub-range of the Himalayas. I jumped at the opportunity. The trek, planned for June and July of 1985, would accompany the Mazama climbing team to the base camp of Gasherbrum I.
Nine trekkers flew into Islamabad, Pakistan, traveled overland north by bus to the Braldu River and spent the next thirty days following the river to the Baltoro Glacier, then along the huge glacier up to Concordia and on to the Gasherbrum base camp. We returned via the same route.
We began the walk by crossing the enraged and milky Braldu River on a flying fox, a low-sided simple box suspended from a cable. Two trekkers per load were pulled 150 yards across the water, praying they wouldn't fall out of the flimsy box 50 feet down into the torrent.
For several days we walked along the river through villages, past barley fields and apricot orchards, meeting farmers and kids along the way. Then onto the Baltoro Glacier, the third longest sub-arctic glacier in the world, where we went to sleep at night listening to the groaning and creaking of the ice. We were in sight of the vertical and massive Trango and Muztagh Towers. In another five days we were at Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro and the Godwin-Austen Glaciers, deep in the monochromatic heart of the Karakoram. We were surrounded by Mitre, Broad, Marble and several of the Gasherbrum peaks with K2 majestically framed several miles away.
In another day and half, we found ourselves at the Gasherbrum base camp at 17,500 feet elevation. While there, we volunteered to carry supplies through the Gasherbrum Glacier ice-fall to Camp I, a rare opportunity for trekkers. After celebrating July Fourth in that rarefied atmosphere, we retraced our route back to color and civilization from the most awe-inspiring living museum of rock and ice.
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| View to Concordia (1985) |
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| Looking Around Concordia (1985) |
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| Children at Askole (1985) |
