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When we returned to the wall 4 days after leaving much had changed. The Harmattan winds had arrived, and although it sounds like a mailian basketball team it isn’t. The winds come this time every year and blow in dust from the Sahara Desert. It’s a fine dust that permeates everything! It made the zippers on all of our brand new tents malfunction, and it would find it’s way under the rain fly through the mesh screens and cover everything inside. It was in my hair, my ears, my nose and I’m sure still in my lungs. It was in the food, and worst of all in the cameras! Some days the air was so thick with it that from up on the wall I couldn’t see camp. It made shooting video very interesting. “I know there’s a beautiful background in this shot, I just can’t see it!” I would say into the microphone of the camera to whomever would be listening back in the air conditioned and climate controlled editing suite in Aspen. Our friend Harmattan would accompany us, unrelenting, for the rest of the climb. The climb itself went flawless. Each climber got assigned his pitches and each pitch was redpointed. Because we were shooting a video they had to climb each pitch at least 2 times. Which was great for me because I’d get to tell them what to do. After Todd finally maneuvered through the crux of one of the hardest pitches, I would beckon over the walkie “ That was a great rehearsal Todd, now rap back down and we’ll shoot it for real this time”. Despite the grim conditions we all kept our sense of humor. The top ledges of Kaga Tondo provided an incredible view of the summit of Kaga Pamari, and ropes were fixed to get the photo team up there with our cameras. Todd was dead set on getting this shot of them summitting, because we needed it to close the video. I did agree, but was not overly excited to jug the free hanging line that hung under a huge roof near the top, dynamic none the less with a core shot half way up! Stepping off the ledge at the belay station and swinging into the void I began to ask myself "Is this shot really worth it?” The wind was whipping me like a tattered piece of webbing, and as I looked between my etriers’ at the ground about 1200 feet below I said to myself “I don’t think so!”. But when I arrived on top and set up my camera on a small ledge, I answered an unequivocal “Yes, it is”. Now it was time to strip the gear and head home. The climb was done, but not without some sacrifice. Edmund contracted malaria at the beginning, and if it weren’t for two peace corps workers could have been really sick, if not dead. Andrew punctured his leg on a small rock running after a sleeping pad escaping in the wind. The wound itself was nothing but he got a horrible infection that forced us to evacuate him to Bamako, but by then the climb was basically done. When it came time to name the route, the climbers remembered something Edmund had said after a sleepless, horrendously windy night in the portaledges. “That was like riding in a rodeo, a harmattan rodeo”. The name; Harmattan Rodeo Grade VI, 5.13a. |
to read more about this trip visit the links below
paulpiana.com toddskinner.com
to see this video on the Outdoor Life Network
check programming times at
Adventure Quest
to purchase a copy of this video go to
Adventure Video
