Amin Brakk Big Wall BASE Jumping Images
Jul 5, 2004 15: 04 EST
It's 1,200 meters of sheer vertical, the weather sucks and these adrenaline junkies are sending a new route - but that's the Russian Way. If they make it to the top, the team plans to BASE jump from the summit. Below is their latest report - straight and to the point - but if a picture is worth a thousand words then check out the four-thousand word feature to the left.
On July 4 the team reported; “The weather is depressing and the weather forecast for the following 2-3 days is unfavorable.
The route is getting not only more difficult but more dangerous. Just after the sun appears - the ice and stones start falling.
It feel like being under bombardment. The problem is that it's impossible to get another (safer) direction - there is a "naked" wall on the right and on the left.
We set our hopes that farther up the natural features will be more abundant. For the moment we have done 9 and half pitches.”
The acronym B.A.S.E. stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans and Earth; the four types of platforms used in this kind of sport.
Along with the four-member climbing team (Valery Rozov, Arcadi Seregin, Alexander Lastochkin and Sergey Kovalev) will be a cameraman from NTV (Lev Dorfman) and a photographer (Dmitry Lifanov), so we can expect some great pictures and live videos.
The Mountain, as the Russian site Mountain.ru describes it, “is situated in inaccessible Pakistan Mountains that present a real climbing Mecca. It is one of the most complex and extended walls on our planet; It is harder then Trango Towers.
Amin Brakk was first attempted in May 1996 by Basque climbers and got the attention of rock climbers back in 1997. The very experienced Spanish big wall climber, Jon Lazkano, together with Adolfo Madinabeitia and Jose Carlos Tamayo made a capsule style attempt on the 1,200m granite face of unclimbed Amin Brakk. After 15 days on the wall the trio were forced to give up around 300m below the top, worn down by bad weather, cold temperatures that caused minor frost nip, and lack of food. They estimated another three to four days of good climbable weather would be needed in order to reach the summit.
The Spanish made several attempts until 1999 when Pep Masip, Miguel Puigdomenech and Silvia Vidal climbed this virgin tower and named their route ‘Sol Solet’ (VII 6C+, A5). The ascent took 34 days. The route has a technically complex part of 1650m in length and 22 pitches of A5 and 6C+ (vertical!). It is considered the most technically complex wall in the world at the present moment. Extent of sites А5-graded (the greatest possible category of complexity) makes 150 meters (!) at the altitude about 6000 m. Lack of snow on this very abrupt wall causes additional complexities, and the climbers have to haul up water.”
Images of Amin Brak climbers courtesy of Mountain.ru and the 'Extreme Project' team.
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