A man, wearing a leather jacket with a bloody knife in his hands is digging in the body of a slaughted yak on the roadside. By the view of this scene, all of us finally realized, that we were in China, a country full of contrasts.
We started out for the Qonglai mountains on September 25th. The Qonglai mountains are situated in Sichuan province, some 280 km east of its Capital Chengdu and the main peak, Mt. Siguniang is well known among alpinists throughout the whole world. Our goal was, to establish a new route onto one of the rock peaks north of Mt. Siguniang. There is not much information about the area and all we had was from Mr. Tamotsu Nakamura of JAC.
After some reconnaissance, we decided to set up BC in Double Bridge Valley (Shunqiao guo) at an altitude of ca. 3500 m above sea level. Recently a (honible) road has been built into this valley to bring hundreds of chinese tourists from one scenic spot to the next. So far, the tourists stick pretty much to the road, Ieaving the rest of the valley quiet. After a few days we had found the beautiful, interesting south face of Eagle Rock Peak (ca. 5300 m above sea level). The mountains summit looks like the beak of a Eagle and can be seen from the valley floor, but not its south face.
Sichuan does not seem to be a place for those who like stable weather, so we also had to deal with a mix of snow, rain, clouds and a few spells of sunshine. During that changing weather, we set up a high camp on 4500 meters and hauled up everything we needed. Due to the weather, we fixed the first pitches with the few ropes we had. Then we started for a big push. After 12 days of preparations, we jugged up our ropes and climbed to a place halfway up the wall, wehre luckily, we could set up a small tent. For the next four days, this was our home and from there, we started fixing the headwall. On October 14'h, we reached the summit in evening light, probably as the first persons ever. In total, we spent 7 days on the wall.
Eagle Rock South face is about 700m high (21 pitches) with difficulties up to 7a/A3. I think, everyone knows, why we named the route 'I hate camping'. All the rappel stations are equipped. Thirteen bolts have been placed.
The east side of Double Bridge Valley sports many rocky mountains with big granite walls. Of course, there is potential for future climbs, but many faces are very slabby and have not a lot of features.
Team members: Christof Looser, Martin Ruggli, Lukas Durr.
