Mera Peak, October 2009 continued

After a night at Thangnak, we continued on our way to Khare Camp at 4900M. This was the highest inhabited camp that we would stay at before heading on to the Mera Glacier and on to the high camp bivouac site at 5800M.

By the time we reached Khare we had trekked past the western spur of Mera and climbed beyond it to the north. This view is looking from Khare at the western spur on the right. On the left - the small rounded bump in the sunlight is the central summit of Mera Peak and the north (highest) summit is immediately right of that.







This view is slightly left of the previous picture. Our route to the summit would be behind the rock pinnacles to the left on the easy north slope of the Mera Glacier flowing gently down from the summit peaks.


Slightly left again showing the northern end of the Mera Glacier where it sweeps down west into the valley.

The lower slopes of Mera Peak are on the right and the Mera La (where there is also a camp) is to the right of the peak in the middle of the picture.

Khare camp is in the foreground and our tents are the yellow ones on the left. We spent two nights here having a training day on the glacier inbetween before departing for High Camp the next day.

This picture shows Iain, Binod and "Doc" (left to right) on the Mera Glacier during the glacier training day. This picture also shows the upper half of the route travelled on the glacier to the summit.

High Camp(5800M) is at the big rock just below the left skyline and the route goes from there left of the obvious snow ridge and up to the central summit. In terms of distance this is no more than 3 kilometres and from High Camp the hieght gain is only 676M (2250 feet). However, due to the altitude it still took us 6 hours to reach the summit!