Svarog 2014:
Through the Centre
of the Great Roof

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Report on the First Ascent of the North Face of Svarog Peak (4,960 m) via the Center of the 15-Meter Roof.

Dedicated to all those who love risk in its mountain form, are drawn to walls and first ascents, and to everyone who appreciates the combination of the dangerous and the useless.

When you're finally sitting at home on the couch, some time has passed, the tension and first emotions have faded, and you have a chance to calmly look back at everything that happened over the previous weeks. That is why I never write anything right away, despite my friends constantly asking me to do so. But when you feel that you have accomplished something important in your life, you naturally want to share it with people who care.
Our small team, which had come together almost by chance in Ala-Archa and had tested itself on the winter wall of Free Korea, set its sights on a first ascent that summer. There were not many options. Naturally, we wanted to go to Asia. Thanks to the articles of Yuri Koshelenko, and also to his talent as a photographer, our choice fell on this particular wall and this particular route. As far as I understand, the name of the mountain also belongs to him, since in reports from the late 1980s the peak is referred to simply as "4900".
From the few comments and reports we were able to find, we learned that in 1986 an attempt on the route had been made by the legendary team of Vladimir Bashkirov. Looking ahead, I should mention that we found their rappel hooks and a line of expansion bolts on the route, which saved us half a day of work on blank granite. But the roof itself remained unclimbed. Considering the level of comfort in which they lived and worked, reaching that point was already an achievement.
Four years later the same team returned to Svarog, though with a different lineup. They completed the famous traverse of the Ashat Wall, which is described by the master himself, Vladimir Stetsenko. Beyond that, we were unable to find any additional information about climbs on the peak.

After preparing for a long big-wall climb, we packed our haul bags and flew to Osh. A day spent buying supplies passed in the blink of an eye, and the following morning we were already driving along the Isfana road toward our area. By evening we had reached Uzgarush.
As our tour operator had warned us, the bridge on the trail along Lyaily-Mazar had been washed away. Instead of the standard drop-off, we were offered a three-day trek over two passes — Uryam and Ashat — both close to 4,000 meters high.
In fact, it turned out to be a good option. We reached base camp already partially acclimatized and with very positive impressions of the approach — the scenery was truly spectacular. I highly recommend this route to anyone visiting Ashat for the first time.
There were, however, a few unpleasant circumstances along the way. We were plagued by almost continuous rain, and both Kostya and I suffered occasional flare-ups of gastrointestinal infections. But in the end everything worked out. Even the infections failed to take us out of action, though they certainly tried. We reached our base camp in the valley on schedule.
We first caught sight of the wall while descending from the second pass, only to see it disappear again into the fog that suddenly rolled in.

Over the next several days we carried loads to the base of the wall, studied it as carefully as visibility allowed, explored the surrounding area, and made an acclimatization climb of Sochi 2014 Peak — as the Krasnoyarsk climbers had named it. A terribly loose pile of rubble, by the way. They had climbed it in winter, however, and perhaps had missed the note left by tourists in 1994, which revealed the peak's original name.
Finally, after hanging over the valley for nearly a week, the bad-weather fog cleared, and in the shadow of the rising sun we saw the entire wall. Not especially long, but steep and dark because of its strict northern aspect, it looked truly imposing.

Only later would we realize that its profile resembled a lens. Standing below it, however, we tried to assess the dangers of the lower sections, the worst of which consisted of metamorphosed slabs.
The wall was both classical and unusual at the same time. More than eight pitches of ice led into a shattered band of flaky rock. After overcoming it along a distinctive buttress, we finally reached the smooth granite slabs. These marked the beginning of the wall's monolithic section. The higher one climbed through this mixture of rock and ice, the larger and more impressive became the highlight of the entire undertaking — a monolithic granite roof more than fifteen meters deep, forming the largest overhang we had ever seen above us. But our difficulties did not end there. Above the roof lay another six and a half pitches of granite, in places steeper than vertical, waiting for their first ascent. The upper slopes formed a characteristic snow-and-firn knife-edge leading to the summit bastion.
Trying to be cautious — and on this mountain we wanted to be doubly cautious — I suggested to Kostya that we wait one more day to see whether warming temperatures would increase the rockfall danger. But the guys unanimously voted to launch the climb the very next day.

What followed were ten days of constant tension, battling both ourselves and the mountain, "chewing through ice and rock" (greetings to Samara State Television), endless labor, and a half-conscious existence inside a hanging home that someone, for some reason, had decided to call a portaledge.
On August 6, before the first rays of sunlight, lit only by the southern August night and our LED headlamps with their meager lithium batteries, we enthusiastically charged toward what, in the surrounding darkness, looked like a snow slope. The angle of the firn ramp increased rapidly. Soon it became clear that neither carrying a haul bag on your back nor holding a portaledge like a rifle in your hands made upward progress bearable any longer. We had to fix ropes. Vlad grabbed his Nomic tools and headed for the yawning bergschrund with the speed of an international competitor. About twenty meters short of the gap, he happily informed us that he could not build an anchor because there was still no reliable ice. "Life really is an interesting thing, though a capricious one at times," we thought. So, with one person carrying the portaledge, another a haul bag, and some carrying both, we slowly but steadily made our way up the slope toward Vlad. By then he had crossed the bergschrund over a snow bridge and finally reached solid ice. The work had begun.

Ice is always the most enjoyable part of a wall — provided, of course, that nothing is falling. We practically ran up seven pitches at a good pace without experiencing any real difficulties. Then we reached a shattered rock band, where we had both reason to worry and reason to sweat.
The first fragments started whizzing past us while Vlad and I were still on the next-to-last pitch, adding a certain excitement with their buzzing sound. The so-called "big pigs" — or haul bags — which we hauled one at a time, constantly caught on the loose flakes and regularly became stuck.
After finishing these three nasty pitches, we reached a ledge at the top of the buttress, feeling thoroughly exhausted. On top of that, the sun had come around, the gullies had begun to thaw, and rockfall activity increased significantly. Fortunately, we were already out of the firing line.
Meanwhile, Kostya and Dima were climbing above us without loads. By evening they had completed one pitch up the slabs from the distinctive ice nose. Vlad and I, grunting and straining, spent several hauling sessions shuttling the bags on our flat backs up to the site of our first night on the wall.

A short series of gymnastic exercises before bedtime, in the form of assembling the standard construction from the "Metolius" and "Black Diamond" brands, finally immersed us in the reality of big-wall climbing. The second one, as they say nowadays, was particularly entertaining. Its flysheet was tough and durable, but a bit trickier to put on than the first one, and could cause some trouble for an unprepared person.
Still, we always slept soundly.

During the second day, the guys completed three more pitches. The rock was mostly solid, though in places it was clear they encountered sections of serious choss. It was not raining debris constantly — mostly small stuff. But once we took a memorable hit.
At about two in the afternoon, a piece of granite the size of a cooking pot came down the wall and stubbornly refused to fly around the left corner of our gray hanging home. From the inside, it sounded like a cannon shot. For a long time afterward, I wondered why the flysheet had been punctured while the floor itself had survived. Apparently, my beloved corrugated Therm-a-Rest pad absorbed the impact. Not for nothing had I been hauling it around for three years.
Patching that respectable hole in the fly occupied the entire evening — but at least it gave us something to do. The following day was declared moving day.

Overall, we were lucky with our bivouac sites. They were comfortable, with ice and water nearby, and about as safe as one can expect on a wall. The location for Camp Two had already been chosen by the evening of the second day, and by sunset we reached it without much trouble.
To avoid repeating the stunt known as the "double cliff cabana," we carried the cabana already assembled. As a result, we significantly reduced setup time and saved ourselves at least a few nerves for the evening.
After another hard day's work, we even allowed ourselves a little cognac in our tea and enjoyed a healthy, reasonably long sleep.

Reaching the roof was a revelation. One pitch up a slimy corner led onto relatively low-angle terrain, which then rather abruptly steepened to vertical and eventually ran into "the roof." While the corner at least offered some features, the lower-angle section already became difficult even with micro-features, and from the vertical section upward everything was completely featureless.
And in our case, the "roof" was not the roof of the mountain itself. It was an enormous rock roof — the very highlight of the route, destined to attract fast and ambitious climbers. Greetings to Yuri Koshelenko.

I remember Dima saying something along the lines of: "Maybe we should just go back to Archa and climb something for fun?"
Looking at the roof through a telephoto lens from below, we thought we could see a crack running across it. Surely, we kept telling ourselves, fifteen meters of completely blank granite could not exist. From a distance we even tried to guess what size cam would be needed to protect it.
Later we discovered that what had looked like a crack was merely a band of rock with a different color.
At that point, we came to the conclusion that the ideal tool for the job would be the pneumatic bolt gun from the Sylvester Stallone movie. Unfortunately, after checking our gear, we discovered that we had somehow forgotten to bring one.
In short, we had some serious thinking to do. After thinking it over, we decided that we simply had to keep pushing. We had enough rock gear and enough supplies, and we could see no reason to retreat.

Each subsequent day on and above the roof looked much like the previous one. One rope team would head out in the morning carrying plenty of hardware and motivation, while the second team stayed in the portaledges. Later, if necessary, we switched places.
On that horizontal granite ceiling, the only protection one could truly trust was an expansion bolt or a rivet. The leader hung there like a chandelier, suspended from essentially a single point, and carried on with his monotonous work. Down below, in the tent, the steady tapping of the hammer would lull us to sleep. Meanwhile, the leader, with numb arms, would finish placing another bolt, allowing himself to move horizontally by half a meter—or sometimes even less. Then the whole process began again. Naturally, after two or three sessions, he needed a break.

Finally, toward the end of the second working day on the roof, the first bolt above the roof itself was placed. We felt some relief. It seemed that the key section of the wall had finally been overcome.

But once again, the nature of the terrain turned out to be somewhat different from what we had expected. Instead of a straight vertical wall, we found another series of overhangs — small ones, and downright miniature compared to the roof, but overhangs nonetheless. And most importantly, the featureless granite had not ended.
Naturally, all of us kept asking the same question: when would we finally reach something that would allow us to speed up? Every day we went to sleep convinced that the next day would surely be summit day. But although the wall had eased back to vertical, it did nothing to increase our pace.
Tiny cracks suitable for birdies and fifi hooks would suddenly appear, only to disappear again just as quickly. The leader would once more have to alternate between skyhooks and bolts, placing several bolts on every pitch.
There was one exception — a beautiful crack about seven meters long, wide enough to take a number two cam. But, just as expected, it eventually ended in another section devoid of even the slightest features. In total, the four pitches above the roof required two full days of work. And finally, everything was ready for Day X.

Two in the morning. We felt surprisingly fresh and well rested, almost rejuvenated and full of energy. Ready for the summit push.
We started climbing.
Particularly amusing was ascending the fixed rope we had nicknamed "Air." It ran entirely through that magnificent roof. We had climbed it many times already, but by then it had become almost routine. However, starting in near-total darkness and finishing the jugging at sunrise was something altogether different. Moments like that stay with you for a long time.
Even getting onto that fixed line was enough for lovers of strong emotions. After clipping in, you had to launch yourself about five meters out into space and hang over the abyss. Only then could you begin inching upward like a worm on ascenders. Personally, that rope always woke me up.

When we reached the upper end of the fixed lines, it became clear that the featureless terrain still continued above, but the upper ridge had to be close — very close. Deciding not to continue fighting the blank granite, we traversed almost horizontally left for one pitch along more obvious terrain and entered an easily climbed upper ice couloir.
How happy we were to see that beautiful, hard, bottle-green ice! At last, this was no longer aid climbing but real climbing — the kind we had been waiting for all this time.
The pendulums across the wall certainly added some excitement, but by midday we reached a ridge where we could finally stand rather than hang, and where we could actually walk instead of jugging.
Loose rock ledges on the south side led us to yet another bastion, though there were no serious difficulties there. The summit ridge itself formed a narrow knife-edge of ice and firn and had to be negotiated with great care.
And finally, there it was — the summit of Svarog Peak.

Unfortunately, we probably saw even less from the summit than from the fore-summit.
It was obvious that the weather was deteriorating rapidly. Sabah Peak was already one-quarter hidden by clouds. Soon a snowstorm swept over us as well.
For about forty minutes we searched for the note left by the 1990 traverse party. Touching history, after all, has its own appeal. But we found nothing, which was disappointing. Then again, perhaps the first ascent party had never left one.
As for our own note, we secured it inside a film canister with the help of a broken cam and attached it to the summit rocks in such a way that no one could possibly miss it.

Now we had to decide whether to descend immediately or stay put. Remembering our January climb on Free Korea, when we had reached the ridge carrying ropes but no tent, we decided this time not to repeat our own mistakes and had brought a tent and a couple of sleeping pads. We could easily have spent the night in relative comfort, even in somewhat cramped conditions.
But Kostya, our leader, longed so much for the portaledges that had become our beloved home over those many days that changing his mind was nearly impossible.
The sun even came out for a while. Encouraged, we began discussing how best to regain our previously placed bolts from the ridge — in other words, from which gap in the ridge we should jump. Then the snowstorm hit. By that time Kostya was already one pitch below, hammering in a bolt.
The descent would have been routine if not for one traversing pitch, which cost us a lost fifi hook, a somewhat battered Dima — his forty-five-degree pendulum falls after unclipping intermediate pieces looked straight out of a Hollywood movie — and an hour and a half of precious time. By then, even the fact that the hanger of one bolt was wobbling was met with ironic amusement.
We also had to donate another rope to the mountain during the second rappel. To this day we do not know exactly how it became stuck. As far as we know, we had done everything correctly.
Eventually, around one o'clock in the morning, exhausted but happy, we crawled back into our hanging homes.

Neither the mountain nor, especially, the weather seemed willing to let us go. Waking late in the morning — almost at lunchtime — and hastily eating the remnants of our former culinary abundance, we packed up camp and prepared for the descent.
Soon it became clear that yesterday's snowstorm would return with renewed force. Since we were descending onto lower-angle terrain, all the joys of bad weather would be flowing directly over us. There would be no time to relax.
We rappelled the steep section quickly enough. Down below, however, we had to struggle with the loose rock band and lower ice. Streams of snow at times made it impossible to do anything, while countless miniature avalanches pouring off the wall and converging directly onto us added a certain epic quality to the surroundings.
Overall, the descent was exhausting. I still remember the immense joy on the faces of the guys when we finally reached "the floor."
After that came a slippery path through wet snow and across moraines. In the gathering darkness we even managed to lose our way.
Eventually, around midnight, completely exhausted, soaked, tired, and happy, we staggered back into camp.
The climb was over.

Ahead of us lay two more days of truly miserable weather. Nearly a meter of snow fell in camp, only to melt away almost as quickly.
Honestly, we had not expected weather comparable to high-altitude conditions in this range.

The following day we discovered that some of our belongings were missing. It turned out that local shepherd boys had helped themselves to our food, our phones, and apparently the items they considered most essential: climbing shoes and a lead-acid battery.
Our thanks go to Asylbek, who arrived two days later and managed to solve a problem that would have been nearly impossible for us to resolve on our own. We would hardly have achieved anything dealing directly with the local shepherds.
Then came the hike out through Ashat Valley — the most beautiful valley I have ever seen. Eventually, its stunning scenery gave way to the exhausting, sun-baked trail leading to Uzgarush. Arriving there late at night, we continued on to Osh.

We are grateful to fate for bringing us to such remarkable places. To the mountain — for letting us in, and, most importantly, for letting us go, allowing us to establish the first complete line on its unusual north face. And to everyone who followed our climb.

The following winter, we returned to the Ashat Wall for a winter attempt on Sabakh Peak.