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Khan Tengri and At-Bashy unclimbed Expedition- July 2012

2012-07-13T21:43:00.002+01:00

In just over a weeks time I am off on an expedition to the Tien Shan region of Eastern Kyrgyzstan. I was in the same area climbing in 2010 attempting Peak Chapayev (6300m). The expedition although unsuccessful has been one of the highlight expeditions I have been involved in up to now. I am more than looking forward to going back there and getting stuck in.

The 2012 expedition will involve a number of attempts on unclimbed peaks in the At-Bashy region up to altitudes of around 5000m. The level of technical and physical difficulty will to a certain extent be unknown and that’s why it not only has potential to be the most challenging climbing I have done so far but also some of the most rewarding. Mountaineering in the area is unaided, without ‘ Sherpas’ or ‘porters’ to carry equipment. Attempts are made alpine style, travelling fast and light with little protection and a high element of risk.

Following the time spent in At-Bashy I will then be travelling across Kyrgyzstan and heading up towards the Chinese border to Khan Tengri, a 7000m mountain critically described as one of the most beautiful peaks in the world and roughly comparable to Ama Dablam (Nepal) in terms of height and technicality but more remote. The mountain is steeped in history being one of the mountains to tick off in pursuit of the Snow Leopard Award, a medal given to mountaineers who summit the 5 mountains in the 'USSR' over 7000m. Khan Tengri is a tough mountain, the route is very susceptible to avalanches, weather is very changeable and it is technically difficult by big mountain standards and especially considering the altitude!

I have climbed in some of the most popular high altitude regions in the world including South America and the Himalayas but what I really enjoy about the Tien Shan is the level of remoteness. This is what drives me. Simply to get to Khan Tengri base camp requires a half hour helicopter journey. The fact most have never heard of Khan Tengri excites me and without passion for what you’re attempting you’re bound to fail. Last year on my final training mountain, Aconcagua, before heading off for Everest I was involved in a fatal accident, which left one dead and three including myself in hospital with frostbite. My hopes of climbing Everest were dashed but more importantly a family man, Bob Huggins had paid the ultimate price. I came away from the experience with a different goal. Everest is a massive challenge don't get me wrong but I don't want to pay thousands to be led to the top in a line of hundreds of other 'clients'. Mountains and routes a little more off the tourist trail and remote are where I am heading!

I would just like to say a massive thank you to my sponsors Rab, Bollé Performance Eyewear, Edelrid Ropes, Wetink Ltd and Zaini Hats for supporting me with this vision.

Bollé sponsorship- Summer 2012

2012-07-12T15:03:00.001+01:00

I have been using Cébé products for nearly two years now and on almost all of my major expeditions. Even when I had the accident on Aconcagua and was forced to give up on mountaineering plans in 2011 they still supported myself and a teammate on the Mongol Rally, a car race and not exactly what was in the brief when they began helping me out.

So it is with great regret but also a certain amount of excitement that I can announce the end of my relationship with Cébé and the beginning of a new one with Bollé.

Bollé have been around for years and are a well established brand in the UK. They know how to make good products and I intend to make the most of this fact over the coming years!

see: www.bolle-europe.co.uk

Edelrid Sponsorship- June 2012

2012-07-11T18:15:00.001+01:00

Ed has begun working as part of the product testing team for German brand Edelrid, famous for inventing the modern dynamic rope and always looking to push mountaineering boundaries through innovation

see: www.edelrid.de

Rab Sponsorship- June 2012

2012-07-11T18:12:00.003+01:00

Ed has begun working with the UK manufacturer of high quality outdoor clothing Rab

see: www.rab.uk.com

Zaini Hats Sponsorship- May 2012

2012-05-25T16:10:00.001+01:00

Ed joins the Zaini Team alongside others such as Squash Falconer, Everest summiteer and holder of the World record for the highest recorded bum board

Zaini Team Athlete: View Profile

Men's Fitness Magazine- June 2012

2012-05-19T21:19:00.003+01:00

Men's Fitness Magazine ask '20 of the worlds seasoned travellers to select their favourite destinations'.

Ed's 2010 expedition to climb Peak Chapayev in Kyrgyzstan makes no.6 on the list of undiscovered destinations.

Find out more

'A race with no winner'- Mongol Rally 2011

2011-07-29T19:01:00.000+01:00

There are few things that excite me more than the prospect of spending over five weeks meeting great people and travelling through some of the wildest landscape along the way…And so it came to be that in July of this year, myself and fellow Old Epsomian Alex Brunton-Reed set off from Goodwood on the Mongol Rally; a ‘race’ of over 10,000 miles, across 3 deserts, over 5 mountain ranges, through 15 different countries and ending in Ulan Baatar, Mongolia.

Planning for this epic adventure began with getting out a world atlas, plotting the start and finish line and then drawing a fairly sensible line between the two. This may seem a tad reckless but it was the only way either of us could comprehend planning a route of such distance, over 1/3^rd of the world’s surface. Our route fitted neatly onto 6 foldable maps of scale 1:2,500,000 and we estimated that is would take a total of 5 weeks.

The real panic came three weeks prior to departure when as one person put it, we were ‘woefully unprepared’. However, by the time it came to pack the car, a 1.1 litre Citroen Saxo, we were well and truly ready although painfully aware that we probably should have bought a bigger car. Highlight of the planning process: Alex coming out with the line ‘I had no idea it was such a long way’.

Driving out of Goodwood

The rally started with a flourish as we took a wrong turn out of the Goodwood Circuit on the way to the Channel Tunnel. Start as you mean to go on. Needless to say we made the train and that first night saw us head to Frankfurt and a ‘relaxing’ camp site just off the Autobahn in a service station car parking space.

By day nine we had made it to Volgograd, previously known as Stalingrad, in Russia, having travelled through Prague, Vienna, Budapest, L’viv, Kiev and Kharkov. It was here that we checked out the WWII war memorial, an 85m tall statue of Mother Russia. Highlight of our European tour: eating hog roast in the grounds of Klenova castle, Czech Republic.

Being pulled out the sand, Uzbekistan

Leaving Russia behind we travelled east through Kazakhstan, north of the Caspian Sea, before heading south into Uzbekistan. It was here that we picked up the Silk Route, which is now used as a US Military supply route to troops in Afghanistan. The Silk route cities we were fortunate enough to travel through included Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent, which were all equally mind blowing and steeped in history. There was also an opportunity to drive up to Moynaq, which was at one stage the country’s only port town but has now been left to decay as the Aral Sea has dried up and left it stranded. Highlight of Uzbekistan: getting stuck in a sand dune whilst trying to undertake a truck.

From Tashkent the map took us north back into Kazakhstan and via Almaty up to Cemey, the country’s north-eastern most city. The city is most famous for the 453 nuclear bomb tests carried out in the surrounding area by the USSR during the Cold War, the consequences of which are still being felt today with serious environmental and health problems. Highlight of Kazakhstan: getting turned down because of ‘face control’ at the door of an 80s disco.

If there was one similarity between all the countries in Central Asia it was the high level of corruption within the Police. It’s an odd thing to know that if it all goes ‘sour’ the last people you want to call for help are the Police, you’re really alone and responsible for your actions. It was an irritant we lived with daily but it did also provide some funny moments, the best of which was bribing a policeman for speeding with a pack of Maryland Cookies rather than a $50 fine.

Dipping into Siberia briefly we were in no time at all at the Mongolian border. Crossing it however was not as easy as we had hoped. We spent three days in neutral territory waiting for paperwork during which time we sneaked up a sniper tower late at night and set up both an abseil and zip line and generally made preparations for the final push to the finish line.

Roof box came off more than once

The real driving challenge began as soon as we entered Mongolia; the ‘rally’ had taken shape. The hardest driving involved two 12 hour days in which we moved just 250km. Instead of roads, Mongolia has a collection of footpaths with rivers crossing them around every corner thus making driving a difficult and painfully slow process. By this point we had named our Citroen ‘Barbara’ and it was safe to say she was getting a good pounding. Our in-car fan coughed sand, our roof box made a habit of coming off and smashing into our windscreen and our engine had no bolts connecting it to the frame of the car. Over 50% of Mongol Rally cars, which enter Mongolia end up left for dead along the way.

Ulan Baatar, Mongolia

Barbara finally gave up on us just two days from the finish line when we were told that the ‘head gasket was going and coolant was leaking into the engine causing it to overheat in idle’, I’m no mechanic but it didn’t sound good. Barbara was towed for 700km into the finish line, during which time we crashed into our tow truck and smashed our head lights, snapped our tow rope so many times I lost count and ran our battery dead, which meant we couldn’t use our brakes properly and more importantly meant our mini-fridge stopped working. It was a horrendous way to finish the rally but neither of us cared, we were just happy to get there and stop driving.

It was an awesome experience and one which we will never forgot. Arriving just one day after our original estimate we were the 224^th car to finish, not that it mattered. The rally is less about how quickly you drive and more about the stories you collect along the way and it’s fair to say we have a fair few of them.

Alex holding an Eagle

Adventure Travel Magazine- June 2011

2011-06-09T22:34:00.000+01:00

Athlete profile: Ed Farrelly
Q&A Feature on the Adventure Travel website

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Cébé- May 2011

2011-05-26T16:00:00.000+01:00

Ed joins the Cébé Team alongside athletes such as Edurne Pasaban who famously entered into an unintended race to become the first women ever to summit all 14 eight thousanders

Cébé Team Athlete: View Profile

Aconcagua- Final Report

2011-04-26T16:22:00.000+01:00

Here finally is the report from my last expedition to Argentina, which as many of you will know ended in tragedy. I hope you will understand why it took me so long to finish:

The Trek in was great, there was good company, great weather and epic barbeques every evening offering as much steak as you could eat. It was blissful.

Our acclimatisation schedule remained on track and we were able to make a load carry up to camp 1 before coming back down for a rest day to recoup before leaving for the last time and heading off to try and summit.

When we reached Camp 3 the weather was deteriorating and our summit bid was put back a day as a result of poor weather on the mountain. We were still well ahead of schedule and so taking an extra day to wait for the weather to settle was not too much of a problem.

The summit push began at 7am the next morning and although the weather was far better we still found ourselves suffering the consequences of the previous day’s weather. There was a huge dump of snow, which we had to break trail through. This slowed our progress although for the most part we were still moving well and spirits were high.

About 45 minutes from the summit Bob Huggins collapsed without any previous warning. We made the summit and then began a hellish descent back down the mountain. It quickly became what can only be described as a rescue attempt as Bob’s condition deteriorated. Our pace slowed dramatically and darkness fell. Many of the group lost crampons, others fell (one cracked a rib) and one was left blinded by the icy blizzard, which froze his eyelids. It truly was horrific. It became clear that many of the group would not be able to make it back to the tents at camp 3 and so we set up a bivi at advanced high camp (Camp Independencia) at around 6500m. The temperature plummeted to minus 40 (not including the windchill factor) and we huddled together to keep warm and tried to manage Bob as best as possible.

At around 11pm 3 of us who still had energy headed back down from Independencia to Camp 3 to try and get help. It was pitch black and the snow was very deep. At one point I walked blindly off a rock step and ended up face planting into the fresh snow below. I made it back to the tent full of mixed emotions; I was happy to be back at safety but was also aware that there were a few still facing an ordeal higher up the mountain. I put on my stove, drank some hot tang and then drifted off to sleep at about 1am.

The next morning was a very difficult one, all I wanted to know was what had happened to the rest of the team at Independencia, it was a long wait. At around 5pm the zip opened on my tent and in stepped my tent mate Tommy. He told me the tragic news of Bob’s death, although when I had left him I knew he was in a very bad way I never thought it would actually happen. We defrosted his boot over the stove so that he could remove his socks, I made us both a hot water bottle (of tang) and then we went to bed.

Another separate team who had been with us on the summit day were also having to come to terms with a loss. A team member had wandered off into the darkness suffering from cerebral oedema, the altitude was making him go mad, and the team had to call off a search because of continued bad weather.

The next day we woke up, continued the defrosting boot process and then headed back down the mountain to base camp. As a group we were moving slowly and many of us were suffering from frostbite, were without crampons or had little or no energy left so it took a fair amount of time. On arrival at Base Camp four of us were airlifted off with probable frostbite. I then spent the next 8 days in hospital in Argentina (Mendoza) with the others before being flown back with a medical escort.

I have since met Professor Chris Imray, the UK leading specialist on frostbite injuries who stated that although my frostbite/frostnip is not that bad and I will not lose any fingers or need amputations having only a month to recover before heading off to Everest would not be adequate enough. I most definitely don’t want to jeopardise my future climbing career by going against his expert opinion and so have put Everest back a year, which in the grand scheme of things is not that bigger deal.

I’m obviously coming to terms with what happened but I have absolutely no doubt it is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. For sure it was the most difficult mountaineering experience I have faced up to this point but it’s also something from which I have learnt the most. Every one of the team made sacrifices for others and understood that what was going on was bigger than them. It would have been easy to clam up and become selfish but no one did.

My deepest sympathies go to Bob's family and friends, he was a thoroughly nice guy and spending time with him in Argentina will always be something I remember with fond memories.

Summit Success! on 11th February 2011

2011-03-06T16:04:00.000Z

Edward Farrelly summits Aconcagua (6,962m), South America's highest peak and one of the 7 summits

Adventure52- February 2011

2011-03-06T16:02:00.000Z

18 years old and he's off to climb the South East ridge of Everest

Feature on the attempt in February week 7 edition of Adventure52 magazine

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Alzheimer Society- 19th January 2011

2011-03-06T15:59:00.000Z

Record breaking teenage climber aims to to summit Mt Everest via South Col

read article

OutdoorsShow- 15th January 2011

2011-03-06T15:57:00.000Z

I spoke on the Windhoek Adventure stage at the 2010 show held in the London Excel arena. The title of my talk was 'the summit of Mt. Everest, a gap year adventure'.

Cebe.com- 26th November 2010

2011-03-06T15:50:00.002Z

Cébé sponsored mountaineer Ed Farrelly become the youngest person to climb Baruntse, aged 18!

read article

Summit success! on 4th November 2010

2011-03-06T15:50:00.000Z

Edward Farrelly became the youngest person to have ever reached the summit of the Himalayan classic Baruntse (7129m), aged 18

read blog

Surrey Life September Issue- August 2010

2011-03-06T15:47:00.000Z

Regional magazine Surrey Life published a Q&A article, which delves into the facts and feelings behind my upcoming Everest attempt.

Read Article

Cébé- 1st June 2010

2011-03-06T15:45:00.000Z

In line with their philosophy of promoting and supporting athletes in adrenaline fuelled outdoor sports which require the very best glasses and goggles

Lowe Alpine- 18th February 2010

2011-03-06T15:42:00.000Z

Clothing and equipment support has been secured from Lowe Alpine and partners Asolo (outdoor boots and trainers) and Thorlo (socks).

Peak Chapayev, Kyrgyzstan- July 2010

2010-07-30T19:03:00.000+01:00

Heliport to Base Camp:

we flew In a Kyrgyz army helicopter up the Inylchek Glacier, which was such a fun experience not to mention a slighly scary one. The helicopter was a vital part of the expedition constantly transporting supplies up to BC

Base Camp

Situated on the opposite side of Inylchek glacier from Chapayev the site gave us a perfect view of the route up the mountain. We spent most of our time here acclimatising (resting/eating/washing) and sorting out equipment for the summit bid

yoga at BC (Chapayev in background)

BC toilet

Base Camp acclimatisation climb

As a group we decided to go up the Inylchek glacier to around 4400m, which was the equivalent height of camp 1 on Chapayev. The weather turned pretty nasty, which meant being forced to head back down to BC after just one night

Camp 1

It took about 3 1/2 hours to get from base camp across the Inylchek glacier and up to camp 1. There were a number of crevasses to negotiate as well as the presence of fixed lines at the top end of the route. We used camp 1 as a site to stop and acclimatise as well as a storage base from which we could take equipment up to camp 2

Camp 2

we originally planned to make the trip up the lines from camp 1 to camp 2 twice (once to carry and once to move) however due to the presence of oncoming bad weather we made the trip once, which meant unusually heavy loads and an underacclimatised body. I made the journey in 5 1/2 hours, which is well under the average time of around 8 hours. At 5,500m, camp 2 gave us stunning views of the Tien Shan range and the Inlychek Glacier

Summit bid

camp 2 is roughly 3 1/2 hours from the summit at a good pace, unfortunately we could not make the dash up the lines to the summit as a result of a storm, which cut the expedition short and forced us back to BC

Peak Chapayev summit (6,200m)

Overview

what an amazing expedition in an extremely interesting part of the world. It is a shame I couldn't put the cherry on the icing by summiting but I came as close as possible and was on track to, if not for the weather. I'm sure at some point I will be back to finish what I started and summit Chapayev (and I'll probably do some unclimbed peaks and Khan Tengri as well)

Issyk Kul lake, Kyrgyzstan

Back in England at Heathrow airport