Entry 15 July 17^th

It is hot! It is hot, I'm alive and uninjured. Something we cant say of all of us. Unfortunately one of the Scottish pilots has had a difficult landing and has broken his ankle and pelvis. In his misfortune he was lucky enough to be spotted by some Sheppard’s and was evacuated to the nearest hospital before nightfall.

My latest Blog entry was on the 25^th of June from Skardu , the gateway to the big mountains of the Karakorum; K2, Masherbrum and other eight thousand meter peaks.

Sunset in a dust storm at skardu

Misunderstanding with the hairdresser. Leave 2 centemeter, dont leave 2 milimeter! Didnt need shampoo for the rest of the trip.

 We didn’t get to fly in the Skardu area, the weather being cloudy and windy. Grey and I had planned to link in with a Chinese expedition, lead by one of our Pakistani friends, to walk to the base camp of Spantec  Mountain  and fly back down. However, Grey got an allergic reaction to something he had eaten and felt very sorry for himself and I was getting fairly run down with my continuing irregular stools.

Indus valley near Skardu with sand dunes on the horizon

 Skardu lies on the south bank of the Indus River which flows there through a kilometers wide valley. The Indus transports tons and tons of sediment in its waters, part of which get deposited in some surreal looking dunes. The almost daily dust storms that get whipped up by the valley breeze traveling up the Indus gorge sculpt these dunes in beautiful shapes.

Alex in his natural environment

The wind blasting out of the Indus gorge at 50kph

   With the weather situation better further to the west we decided to try our luck in that direction. The seven hour ride through the Indus Gorge left me in awe of both Mother Nature and of the humans that inhabit these parts.  The gorge is part of the collision between the Indian continent and the Eurasian plate. For a hundred kilometers the valley bottom is not wider than the riverbed, with the walls often rising vertically. The road is carved in the walls or build on dry stacked rocks and often not wider than one car.

tricky traffic

The road carved into the valley walls

 All one sees is rock, river and sky with occasionally a green patch of irrigated valley wall. The side valleys all seem to be hidden from view as are the cedar forests and snowy peaks above. But there is thousands of people that live in this area, working the small irrigated fields in the main valley or the lush side valleys. Above the barren walls of the Indus are summer grazing grounds where thousands of goats and sheep get fattened on the sparse vegetation.

During the ride I must have eaten something unhealthy, as I got awfully sick the night we spent in Gilgit. Things came out of all orifices at once, which made for quiet a messy bathroom. Fainting and then waking up with my face on the concrete floor with creepy crawlies right up my nose is an experience I could have done without. I felt better next day and in the afternoon we completed our journey to Yasin Valley and our pre booked government guesthouse. It was a typical example of a beautiful surrounding being spoiled by an uninterested lot of employees. The place was run down and the food was less then basic, even the stern words of our driver couldn’t move them into gear.

Yasin valley

 Two years ago we spend some time in this valley and stayed with the local policeman who is a far relative of our friend Farhad from Chitral. It didn’t take long for the news about the farhangies  to reach our friend the policeman, who promptly came around to invite us to his place to stay.

The weather was indeed better this far to the west and the next day, the 29^th, we all three had a great flight to the head of the Yasin valley and landed next to the house of our host.

Darkot at the head of the valley with a beautifull glacier curving down

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/637185

 Manzoor, our driver, brought our luggage around from the guest house and with him as an interpreter we made clear that we had the intention to stay for at least eight days. That didn’t seem to be a problem and after that we dismissed our driver, friend and guide as he was going to be more useful to our friends in Karimabad.

Our new abode came with cherry trees and rose garden and Adil, our host, would bring us food and drinks and organize taxi and porters for us. Fantastic hospitality for which we were happy to put up with some awkward situations due to the language barrier.

After our flight we got invited to the finals of the valley soccer tournament. Grey got whisked away on the motorbike to be the guest of honor. After the game he got introduced as the famous soccer player from New Zealand and was forced to give a speech. Unfortunately I had left after the first half as a dust storm was sandblasting the whole crowd and specially the grand stand with dignitaries, which was facing into the wind. Our famous soccer player felt a bit used and embarrassed. 

June 30^th.

It looked like we were into a period of good weather as the day presented itself as another cracker one. We decided to take all our bivi gear and to try and fly to Karimabad,  120km to the east. The access to the launch site is an hour and half up a reasonable slope to gain 500 meters. The weather was definitely getting warmer and the walks more strenuous, even with the porters carrying most of our gear.  My bag with glider, harness, bivi bag, sleeping bag, food, stove and clothing must have been close to 25kg, for which I happily paid 6 NZ dollars to be carried up by one of the locals.

The porters relaxing after an hours work

As usual we flew miles apart but made it all three over the first dividing saddle between the Yasin valley and the Iskomen valley, at 4500 meters not a real obstacle but still tricky as the surrounding ground is fairly high too and the valleys on both sides a good 20km long. We all made the big crossing over the Iskomen valley and tried to find a way over the saddle that would lead us into the Hunza valley and Karimabad. Some serious over development made the terrain ahead invisible and when Grey came on the radio, singing and incoherent, we knew it was time to find a bivi spot for our hypoxic friend . I found a big, round, grassy spur with some patches of snow on the west side of the valley with great launch potential for the next day. Alex managed to convince Grey to follow him and after some confusion about which spur I was on we all landed in the same spot. 

The Pass to cross into the Hunza valley

It was the perfect camping spot with snow for water and Junipers for firewood, at 4000meters I was affright it would be a cold night but with the warmer weather it got hardly below freezing.

a perfect bivi spot

Grey contemplating life.

Dinner time

The catabatic flow got very strong and kept us from lighting a fire, so we cooked on our gas stoves. The night sky was full of stars and later a waxing moon lit up the mountains. At 4.30am the sun came over the horizon and lit up a partly cloudy sky that later turned a steal blue. We passed the morning watching the vultures glide by and enjoying the great vista from our vantage point. Cumulus development was slow and we didn’t launch till 11am by which time the sky developed very fast and we had to hurry to get in position to cross the second pass. Just after the crossing my Vario Batteries went flat so the last 30km were flown in silence with only my GPS to give me an idea about rising or sinking. It felt great to fly into Karimabad, what an awesome feeling it must have been for Brad Sanders to fly the whole 200plus kilometers in one go and then land back with his friends a few years back!
http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/637183
I didnt have my GPS trac on for the flight from Yasin to Iskomen.......