Trip Stats
Trip Report
Having arrived in Solang from the McLeod Ganja the night before, we decided to have a late start so we could assemble our gear and hire two horses to carry it on the 7 kilometer hike in. Twenty minutes into the walk, Trevor realized he had forgotten his skins and ran back to the hotel to grab them - better late than never. Upon reaching Dundhe, we grabbed our gear from the horses and began a short walk to the snowline. It had started to drizzle, and once again the Himalayan weather did not look good. Skins on, we headed up towards Friendship Peak and to our disappointment discovered that much of the lower half had melted out. After a quick discussion underneath an increasing amount of rainfall, we decided to abandon Friendship Peak and head towards Beas Kund. A steady skin ensued with me in the lead and after an unknown time, Trevor signaled for me to stop. We were wet and needed to setup camp. Pepe, who was returning to Argentina in two days, decided to call it quits. He had to get off the mountain the next day and knew he wouldn’t get anymore skiing in on this trip. I wasn’t optimistic about the weather for the next couple of days, but I knew setting up the Megamid was far easier than the 10 kilometers back out.
Trevor and I quickly got into our sleeping bags after setting up the Megamid and we could feel the moisture in the tent from all our wet gear. Even in the sleeping bag, I could feel the dampness in my long underwear. The next morning I peaked out of the tent and to my delight there was not a cloud in the sky. We ate breakfast and then plastered our gear all over the mountainside, letting the powerful Himalayan sun do its work. Once our gear was dry, we packed up and began the skin up to Beas Kund. We poked around Beas Kund, which sits underneath Hanuman Tibba a massive 19,500 peak that rises directly up from the Beas Kund (13,000ft). We dropped down from Beas Kund and set up camp in the flats below Shitidhar. That afternoon, Frank rolled in to camp. His ski buddy Dave had been intermittently sick during their trip and Trevor had told Frank where he could expect to find us.
From our camp, we had three days of amazing skiing with perfect weather. I have posted separate trip reports for each day:
On our sixth day in the mountains, we packed up and began the journey out. It was amazing how much snow had melted. Even where we were camped at 11,500ft, snow was giving way to streams. The ski down was good but uneventful, requiring some route finding to navigate our way around the river and ski as much as possible. Once at Dundhi, it was a 7 kilometer hike back to Solang, this time without any horses. But I was in decent shape by this time, so it wasn’t so bad…
