Duel on the heights

The Ukrainian team of 14 climbers has completed part of the scheduled hard climb. The purpose of the expedition is to scale two inaccessible Himalayan peaks: Himal Chuli (7,893 meters) along the eastern face, exiting onto a plateau from the Lilanda Glacier, and reaching the top of Simnang-Himal, or P3 (6,250 m), climbing along the central part of the southern face. According to the organizers, both trekking routes are rated as the most complicated, sixth, category, which lends special significance to this expedition, as it set off at Easter. In fact, it may mark a special event in world mountaineering history.

The national Himalayan expedition is headed by Valentyn Symonenko, the president of the Alpinism and Mountaineering Federation of Ukraine, Merited Coach of Ukraine, Master of Sports, and chairman of the Accounting Chamber of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. This year’s expedition to the Himalayans is not the first one headed by Symonenko. In 1996 he led a national expedition to Mt. Annapurna; in 1999, to Everest; and in 2001, to Manaslu.

He also led a Ukrainian climb to a summit that became known as Ukraine Peak. In 2003 he led an alpine team that reached Hidden Peak in Pakistan. To make the current expedition a reality, a team of experts led by Symonenko carefully studied the Himalayan trekking routes last year - the routes our team is using right now.

“We set ourselves a new task. We had to make a Ukrainian route leading to Himal Chuli, one of the inaccessible Himalayan peaks,” Symonenko said several hours before boarding the flight to Nepal. “Since the 1950s mountain climbers from various countries have made repeated attempts to ascend this peak. All have failed. Reaching this summit as well as Simnang-Himal, having to climb up a practically flat wall of rock will be the first mountaineering venture of its kind in the world. I am sure that these routes are worthy of developing alpinism in Ukraine. Our expedition is purely athletic, intended to demonstrate the finest athletic results. It is not meant to promote any self-advertising brands.”

Another unique aspect of this Ukrainian mountaineering project is that our alpinists will not be using oxygen tanks, except in emergencies. Symonenko believes that this decision is the result of the high level of every expedition member’s previous physical, technical, and psychological training. To reach this level, the team underwent a series of training sessions ending in the Crimean Mountains, where they had to endure the most trying tests, including climbing up a solid wall of rock without any foot- and hand-holds - as was the case with Mount Ai Petri, when our mountaineers reached the top in slightly more than an hour. They also spent many hours suspended at low temperatures. The team, made up of young mountaineers from Odesa, Luhansk, Donetsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Kyiv oblasts, was headed by Mstyslav Horbenko, Merited Master of Sports of Ukraine.

“Without specialized, long-term training a climber will die in the mountains,” says Heorhii Taran, the team’s physician, who has also undergone this kind of training. “Alpinism is not an extreme sport, nor is it to be tried by amateurs. Alpinism is a systemic sport if it is undertaken by people who have completed all training stages, because it involves knowledge of geology, medicine, and so on.”

According to the head of this year’s expedition, the whole project will cost 568,000 hryvnias, including 54,000 hryvnias provided by the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The rest was donated by sponsors. The expedition will last for 58 days. On May 28 the team expects to return to Kyiv — as victors. According to the organizers, the team selected an optimal schedule: there will be no monsoons in the Himalayas during their climb and the weather will help them on their way up. Symonenko said that all precautionary measures have been taken, so that in an emergency every mountaineer will be able to rely on the team’s support. Each team member has a satellite phone.

In the last few years teams of the Alpinism and Mountaineering Federation of Ukraine have been competing and winning CIS competitions, and are regarded as some of the world’s top alpinists and mountaineers. Symonenko often says: “Ukraine needs heroes. They are born in places where one needs a maximum concentration of physical, spiritual, and intellectual strength. There is no better method than the one aimed at producing real victors from among mountaineering teams challenging the world’s highest peaks.”

Let us hope that Ukraine will learn the names of its new heroes before the end of this spring.