Myanmar climbers eye peak that was conquered only once
HPA-AN: A two-week jungle trek followed by a sheer climb up avalanche-prone slopes to a jagged ridge of icy pinnacles awaits three Myanmar mountaineers planning to take on Hkakabo Razi, a peak so treacherous it has been conquered only once.
Believed to be the highest in Southeast Asia, the mountain stands at an estimated 5,881m in the northern tip of Myanmar near the border with China and India, a Himalayan cap of the largely tropical nation.
The formidable route to the top starts with a gruelling 240km slog by foot through Kachin state’s dense jungle, filled with venomous snakes and bloodsucking leeches.
But it is the challenging climb itself that has thwarted nearly all of the handful of attempts to reach the summit, one of which resulted in a deadly rescue attempt.
“The difficulty level of the mountain is extreme,” Zaw Zin Khine, 32, said during a training session on a limestone karst cliff in eastern Karen state recently.
The team will have to negotiate precipitous faces of loose scree, frequent avalanches and a choice between ridges spiked with towers of rock and shrouded in snow and ice.
“There is a risk we won’t come back alive,” the climber added.
He and his two partners, Pyae Phyo Aung, 36, and Aung Khaing Myint, 32, aspire to make history as the first all-Myanmar team to summit the mountain.
The three climbers, now waiting for the right window in the weather to start their expedition, have been in intensive training for months, including a trip to Nepal and sessions in a Yangon gym, wearing masks to simulate low-oxygen levels at altitude.
Team member Pyae Phyo Aung is one of only two people from Myanmar to have summited Mount Everest but he said Hkakabo Razi’s isolation and lack of infrastructure made it far more perilous.
The first known attempt to scale the mountain was by British explorer and botanist Frank Kingdon-Ward in 1936.
In his book Burma’s Icy Mountains, he describes how the peak “utterly defeated” him, forcing him to turn back a vertical kilometre below the top.
It took another 60 years before Japanese mountaineer Takashi Ozaki and his Myanmar climbing partner Nyima Gyaltsen prevailed on their third attempt.