Introduction

It remains an enigma that there is range of mountains in Tibet, comparable in length to the entire Swiss Alps, which remains almost unknown. The Eastern Section of the Nyangla-Qen-Tangla Shan lies barely three hundred kilometres north of the Himalayan frontier crest, stretching across a remote area of central Tibet. This land is sparsely populated yet fertile, a tract of forested valleys coursing through the Tibetan plateau. Its peaks range from gentle hills of around 5000 to 5500 metres in the north to a range of dramatic, steep, and difficult ice peaks in the central and southern sectors. There is a pattern of inhospitable weather throughout most of the warmer, summer months, with much fresh snowfall. Sepu Kangri, 6690m, at 30.9¡N 93.8¡E is the highest summit.

This mountain region north-east of Lhasa, loosely called the Sino-Himalayan axis by explorers earlier this century or sometimes referred to simply as the Tang-La, is the source of three great rivers of Asia, the Yangtse, the Mekong and the Salween1. Of these, Kingdon Ward wrote: "The Salween remains the least known. It rises in about 32¡N, 92¡E and flows east for over 300 miles, before bending south to roll through the great gap (the Salween/Mekong divide, the rivers running into Burma (Myanama) and Vietnam)....but all this part of its course, besides its source remains unexplored". Despite being written over eighty years ago, and with little respect to the inhabitants of the region, who provided a centuries old major trade route from Lhasa to eastern Tibet, there remains an air of mystery, and poverty of information about the Salween, or the Naq Chu, the Black River of Tibet, and the range that lies to its south.

The glaciers from the northern slopes of Sepu Kangri, and it satellites, drain into this river, but, like the summits themselves, remain hidden from the river gorges. The only European explorers to penetrate the area, John Hanbury Tracy and Ronald Kaulback in 1934, approached from the Burmese border, followed the course of the Salween, crossing high passes to avoid the more difficult section of the gorge, until Diru, at 31.5¡N,93.7¡E, the last town before our own roadhead. Here they were stopped both by political difficulties, and the danger of robber bands in the area towards Naqchu, (31.5¡N, 92.1¡E), the caravanserai town some 10 days march north of Lhasa, a reminder of how hostile this area used to be. There is no mention in their writings2,3 of this major mountain range, though they passed within fifty kilometres of its highest summit. It was with this intriguing background that we reconnoitred the northern side of Sepu Kangri in the summer of 1996, finding a route south from Diru into the valleys leading to the glaciers of its north face. In a separate journey we also visited the southern side of the range.

For the Tibetan nomads of the region, Sepu Kangri remains to this day, an unknown name. From the shore of Sam-Tso-Taring, the frozen lake at 4700m, the north face of Sepu-Kung-Lha-Karpo, The Mountain of The White Sky God rises to a complex series of summits. In this land of oral history, legend, we had learnt on our journey that there were "nine snow capped peaks, from which snowclouds stream in the wind like galloping white horses' manes, and from which waterfalls cascade like kartas, the Tibetan ritual silk scarves, into nine lakes.......and beyond them, over the Sa La, a 5600m pass, there was the hidden kingdom of Nagru, once independent, isolated from the main valleys by other high passes, a land of snow leopards, wolves, pheasants, and dense forests......". Legend soon became reality.

Here, a cirque of nine ice peaks did surround the frozen lake, rising over 2000 metres from glaciers which descend tocenturies old itscenturies oldcenturies old shores. Rarely were all nine summits free of a cloud cap; icefalls, seracs, and steep ice faces rose in tiers to their crests. In the three valleys which make up northern side of the massif, there were nine lakes and several frozen waterfalls which reach the glaciers. And, as if to complete the allegory, a pure white horse with a flowing mane was a frequent visitor to our Base Camp....

For the local people, the principal summits are The White Sky God, Sepu-Kung-Lha-Karpo, the highest, and its immediate neighbour to the east, Sepu's Son, Bon-Che-Dadhul. TheTurquoise Flower, or Sepu's Daughter, Yu-Yi-Metok, is a stark 6800m pyramid to the west of the main peak. There are six other summits with Tibetan names. These peaks are sacred; the Samda monastery, an 800 year old Bonpo fortress shrine, presently housing 40 monks is a day's journey below them. Thus, our view from base camp was hard to reconcile with a comment from one of our own elders at the Alpine Club before we left....'Really, there are no mountains of any interest in that area of Tibet......'

For our hosts on this expedition, the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, whose cooperation could not have been better, this area also remains a relative blank on the map. Like much of the Himalayan crest, good maps doubtless exist, but are still restricted, for military use only. The whole region remains firmly closed to foreigners. Our own journeys were the product of lengthy negotiation. The file of correspondence, commencing with a photo taken from a Chengdu-Lhasa flight one early morning in March 1982 (The British Everest Expedition to Tibet), tells a story of despair, hope, disappointment, giving way to encouragement, commitment and, finally, travel, to this remarkable area.

The Climb

When we reached our base camp on 30 April, it was a bright sunny day and the Sam-Tso-Taring , was a gleaming field of snow covered ice. It gave us little warning of the weather we could expect in the coming weeks. Our base was an idyllic site on the shores of the lake just below the homes of our neighbours who live in this remote place throughout the year. We were to come to know them well in the coming weeks.

The following day dawned bright and clear. We unfurled the colourful prayer flags that our Sherpas had brought from Kathmandu and held a pujah or blessing conducted by one of our neighbours who read and chanted from a traditional text. The climb could now start.

On our recce in August, I had identified the North-East ridge of Seamo Uylmitok as the most feasible route up the mountain, but we wanted to have another look before committing ourselves. That afternoon, John Porter Charlie Clarke and Jim Lowther climbed a 5600 metre hill to the north of base camp, while Jim Fotheringham and myself visited the hermit, who had lived for four years at the foot of the valley leading up to the north-western end of the main peak of Sepu Kangri. After talking with him and receiving a blessing, we walked on over a frozen lake and up a snow covered moraine to catch a glimpse of a possible route up to a col to the immediate north of Seamo Uylmitok. Jim thought there might be a route from this col onto the much easier angled west face of the mountain.

A couple of days later we made a recce in force, camping on the glacier on the night of 4 May and the following morning carrying heavy sacks with camping equipment and a couple of days food. Even in the cold of the early morning, we were breaking through the crust covering deep soft snow. It was an exhausting process, with Jim Fotheringham trail breaking all the way up to the col seven hundred metres above. The weather was windy with flurries of snow, a pattern we were to become all too familiar with in the coming weeks.

Early that afternoon we reached the col, to find it was a knife edged, gendarmed ridge with a startling drop on the south side to a glacier far below. The view along the ridge wasn't encouraging for it seemed to run into the North-West ridge of Seamo Uylmitok, with a steep drop onto the glacier to the south and then a ferocious ice fall to climb behind the peak.

The following day we returned to base and decided to focus on what we named the Frendo Spur - the ridge leading to the summit of Seamo Uylmitok, but with the prospect of taking the easier ground on the face itself, which was glaciated.

We established Camp 1 on some rocks on the glacier below a large snow bowl leading up to a diagonal gully cum gangway that seemed to give a safe route up to the foot of the 'Frendo Spur'. We made our first foray on 10 May, when Jim Fotheringham led a desperate pitch on steep mixed ground in a bottleneck that barred the way at the bottom of the gully . Beyond this the angle dropped off, but the following morning we very nearly turned back when John Porter was engulfed in a spin drift avalanche generated by high winds and flurried of snow on the face higher up.

This was to be a pattern of weather in the days to come. It was usually cloudy and windy first thing in the morning, clear for a short time in the middle of the day and then deteriorating into cloud and snow in the afternoon. It didn't give much time for climbing.

It took us two days to push the route up to the crest and this provided a perfect site for camp 2 with a snow hole and room for a tent. Jim Fotheringham and John Porter moved up on 14 May and started pushing the route out, initially on the crest of the spur, but as it steepened they cut out through a corridor between serac walls to get onto the main face reaching a height of 5850 metres. Jim Lowther and I moved up to the camp on the 15th and continued working on the route on the 16th. There was undoubtedly an element of danger in going up the face, since there was a huge quantity of snow and the ever present risk of avalanche. We felt that the unsettled weather combined with this threat, justified the use of fixed rope. The weather was still far from perfect, starting the day with snow squalls but clearing up around midday. It took us about three hours to reach the high point, and we then shared the lead up a series of snow fields, pulling over bergschrunds and only occasionally getting ice screw belays.

As we gained height we could see there was a ramp leading out to the left end of the col, but I, leading the final pitch that day, cut back to the right to get an anchor in what seemed a stable serac wall immediately beneath the Frendo Spur, thus making it relatively free of avalanche danger. We decided this would make a good site for a third camp and at 6050 metres a jumping off point for an alpine style push for the summit .

It was a glorious afternoon with exciting views to the north and east of distant snow peaks. We reckoned we could see Amne Machin in the far distance, and closer to hand, to the east, some fascinating rock peaks that reminded us of Fitzroy and Cerro Torre.

That night we were full of optimism, but the following day, the weather seemed unsettled once again. We decided to return to base camp for a couple of days rest while we waited for the weather to settle and then make our bid for the summit.

It wasn't to be. On the night of 19 May half a metre of snow fell at base camp. Much more must have fallen on the face. It snowed off and on for the next ten days with the mountain almost continually hidden in cloud. We were prepared to extend the expedition but there was no sign of an improvement in the weather and in the end we were very lucky to have a single clear day to rescue the equipment we had left at camp 2. We started our descent from base camp in a violent blizzard the following day.

Although the continuous bad weather had been frustrating, the area is so beautiful, our neighbours, whom we got to know well, so kind and the team itself, such a well balanced one, none of us felt depressed as we walked back down to the road head. We were already planning our return in 1998.