The little red house is the base camp for the north side

Walking on a glacier is always a new experience. A glacier is something alive. The ice is melting is melting, little torrents flow everywhere and disappear in blue crevaces, a river flows below, there are little sounds all the time and stones that fall when the ice below them vanishes. And the whole thing is moving down the valley everyday little by little, carrying down stones and whatever it contains. Just we weeks ago, the Italian climber Reinhold Messner found parts of the body of his brother that died during their successful attempt 30 years ago. The brother died because an avalanche and he disappeared inside the glacier. In 30 years the glacier has been changing its shape and now it decided to give back what it contains. The Nanga Parbat is not a technically difficult mountain but it’s the most dangerous 8000 peak because of its avalanches. Some 50 people died while attempting the north side that we are watching now and only very few climbers dared and succeeded in climbing it. Not a surprise that its alias is “The killer mountain”. While we were walking to the base camp, a couple of huge avalanches fell down creating big clouds of snow.

Just amazing!!!

The trail to go up to the base camp was very steep. We couldn’t figure out how the porters can carry 50kg on their shoulders up to this way. Someone said that it’s their job, they grow up by doing that. We are engineers and they are porters. Yet it’s hard to believe how they can manage. It took about 3 hours to reach the part of glacier that we need to cross. The view was terrific, fantastic, breathtaking and whatever else. It was like being on a mountain magazine or in one photo of my old school book of geography .