Travel diaries

My travel diaries

Snowshoes and Shipton

Snowshoes and Shipton

An ascent of Muztag Ata in the Chinese Pamirs. July/August 2007.

Friday 10 August, 2007 - Camp 1, Muztag Ata, Xinjiang, China

We walk up to Camp 1 for the third time today in the next stage of our acclimatisation programme. I set off at 8am, arrive at 11.20 and find it much easier this time without the snow.

Dave and Ela ascend to Camp 1After lunch of Smash potato and pepperami, I spend the afternoon lying in my tent reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion , and find it very entertaining. I've often considered myself an agnostic and am interested to read that by his definition I'm certainly an atheist, although his manner of writing sometimes leads me to sympathise with Christians and Muslims, who are roundly lambasted throughout the text. I particularly liked his description of a protest rally in Islamabad, where someone was allegedly carrying a placard bearing the slogan, "Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion"!

Jeff H, Dave, Toby, Lindsay, Jeff S and Juliet at Camp 1In the late afternoon a group of us sit outside the tents in a line looking down to the plains 1600m below us, and Tadjik hills beyond. Someone - Dave, probably - remarks that it would be great to paraglide off the side of Muztag Ata. Certainly to be a bird flying over the landscape before us would be a magical experience.

Geoff and I have our cooking routine well-honed by the evening. We have the camping equivalent of a luxury 4-course dinner that evening: cup-a-soup for starters, boil-in-the-bag expedition meal for the main course, and custard for dessert. Then we round it all off by boiling up plenty of water for tea, coffee and hot chocolate, and go to sleep feeling very comfortable and content.

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