Brilliant Blue
Friendship and Success on White Sapphire peak (6,040 meters), an American expedition to India's Kishtwar Valley
Drafted from the entry in the 2024 American Alpine Journal
Written by Christian Black, edited with help of Matt Samet. Photos by Vitaliy Musiyenko.
Team: Christian Black, Hayden Wyatt, Vitaliy Musiyenko
October 2023
In early September of 2023, myself, Hayden Wyatt, and Vitaliy Musiyenko set off from the Salt Lake City airport with 400 pounds of gear and a crippling curiosity. I had forfeited my season of field-biology work for another international trip, a now-common trend that continued to sabotage my personal finances. Hayden, having never even met Vitaliy, took a semester off law school in Portland to join. Vitaliy, too, shortly after his honeymoon, packed his bags and took time off from his job as an ER nurse to commence his second long expedition in one calendar year. These were all significant sacrifices considering our inspiration had been sparked solely by two blurry photos of an unclimbed line on a Himalayan peak in India’s Kishtwar Valley. The grand range was a place Vitaliy had dabbled in, but that Hayden and I had only dreamt of. As the plane took off from our home base in SLC, I contemplated the absurdity of events that had brought us here.
A climbing trip to Mexico years ago had led to a fruitful connection with new mutual friends, through whom I’d met the infamous seasoned-alpinist-turned-sport-climber, Pete Takeda. Pete and I linked up for another sport-climbing trip to Spain the following year, during which he offhandedly probed my interest in a potential new route on a 6,040-meter Himalayan mountain called the White Sapphire, a gem he’d been keeping in his back pocket for years. When prodded further, Pete produced a few blurry photos of a diamond-shaped peak hosting a stunning, 2,700-foot unclimbed northwest face. Pete, happy to pass the torch on this climb, offered to mentor on logistics, and he helped with the ins and outs of submitting for the Cutting Edge Grant. Months later, I received notice that we’d been awarded $8,000, and I phoned Hayden to tell him to change his summer plans. Now we were buckling our seatbelts to fly to India. Thanks, Hinge.
Our Liaison Officer from the Indian Mountaineering Federation, Anant Singh
After a twenty-eight-hour blur of travel, we were at the Indian Mountaineering Federation in chaotic Delhi, receiving our peak permit and meeting Anant, our liaison officer. Only twenty-one, he was bright-eyed and energetic, and exuded an excitement for the mountains that quickly resonated with us. Within five minutes of meeting him, he was showing us photos of beautiful peaks from previous expeditions, his aspirations for the high alpine impossible to miss.
Road weary from another eighteen hours of trains and taxis, we began our three-day trek to basecamp from the town of Gulabgarh in the foothills the following day. As the valleys deepened and we distanced ourselves from the roadhead, so finally did our minds begin to settle. The roar of the river accompanied the soundscape of pack-mules slowly ascending through the Kishtwar Valley. Halfway through our day, the deep greens, blues, and grays of the valley were suddenly replaced by vibrant pinks, oranges, and yellows. We were at the famously colorful Chandi Mata Temple in the village of Machail, where, each August, thousands of Hindus come during the Machail Yatra holy pilgrimage. Following the lead of our logistics organizer, we, too, bowed in front of the temple to ask for blessings and safe passage.
The next morning, we reached a prominent split in the valley, demarcated by the towering peak of Kishtwar Shivling in the middle, so named for the three rock spires on its shoulder resembling Lord Shiva’s trident. The valley south of Shivling hosted the home village of one of our basecamp cooks, Stenzing. The valley just north was our route to Hapital Glacier and our basecamp below White Sapphire Peak. Farther north yet was the valley where the famously blue Kashmiri sapphires the region is known for are mined.
We rounded a bend and came upon a skyline familiar to us from Pete’s two blurry photos. The centerpiece, Cerro Kishtwar, looked like a dorsal fin penetrating the sky as if it were the surface of the water. Just to the south, at the farthest end of the valley, was White Sapphire, an aptly named peak with a gemlike shape and angular features. The peak had only had two ascents to date. The first was La Virée des Contemporains (850m, WI5 with two crux pitches of WI6, M6, and A2), via Stefan Siegrest and Denis Burdet on the west face in 2011. The second, in 2015, also by a Swiss team, accessed the White Sapphire via the southeastern aspect, climbing mostly moderate ice and mixed terrain along the south ridge to the summit. Our aspirations lay in the 2,500-foot unclimbed big wall on the northwest face, but we knew we would have to be flexible considering our late-season start.
Fast forward one week to mid-September. We were already conducting our first bit of alpinism—sitting stormbound in a bivy tent through forty-eight hours of rain at 14,500 feet on our way to establish an advanced basecamp (ABC). Our efforts of hiking loads had been put on pause, to be replaced by the softer skills of alpinism: reading, eating chocolate butter, and having horizontal dance parties to whatever music was downloaded on our phones. When we finally emerged from our nylon coffins, a quick look to the skyline jarred our vision. Winter had arrived, with it killing our dream of wearing rock shoes on a big-wall climb, a reality we accepted as we donned our ice boots and continued hiking loads up to ABC at 15,800 feet.
One of the few benefits of hiking heavy backpacks up large hills is the ample time for reflection. As we wobbled up loose talus and weaved through crevasse fields, we couldn’t help but feel the juxtaposition of our current environment against each of our pasts. The Himalaya was about as far as you could get from the flat ranchlands of my North Texas upbringing, or the University of Texas rock gym where I’d begun my journey as a climber a decade earlier. Vitaliy was a city-raised immigrant to the United States from the Ukraine, and a former 300-pound high-school linebacker and Domino’s pizza boy. He’d escaped the box of his childhood via a slow boil of increasingly epic feats in the mountains, including the solo first ascent of the 32-mile alpine-rock Goliath Traverse in the Sierra Nevada. Hayden, on the other hand, took joy in finally participating in the high-alpine lore of his own childhood. He grew up to heroic tales told by his legendary, Tetons-based mountain-guide parents, Evelyn Lees and Rick Wyatt, who had ventured on expeditions to Nanga Parbat and the north face of Everest, to name a few. We reminisced about the absurdity of it all as we distracted our heaving lungs and anxious minds from the task at hand. To be present in these mountains was a privilege not lost on us. With each memory we shared of our pasts and each concern we voiced about our near future, we cultivated the bond between members of a new team that we’d need to rely on, high on the wall.
“I’m 9/10 fucked right now. I can’t do it, Hayden. You gotta do it.”
I handed Hayden the rack as I turned on my headlamp at our hanging ice belay near 19,200 feet. We had left ABC early that morning on two hours of poor sleep, having ascended the glacier to the start of the climbing at 17,200 feet. Due to the winter conditions, we’d bailed on our original plan of climbing the big-wall of the northwest face. Instead, we’d picked a logical line that followed an ever-steepening snow and ice gully cutting left of the northwest face; 2,000 feet up the wall, the gully ended in a notch in a ridge, where the remaining 650 feet of climbing followed steep rock along the north face to the summit.
While only 50 feet of mixed climbing remained until our prospective bivy spot at the notch, the previous 15 hours of simul-climbing and the huge jump in elevation had left me fatigued on a whole, new level. Vitaliy, with his ultra-marathon-charged fitness, set the pace for the day as he and Hayden swung leads through the first 1,500 feet of steep snow and ice, all of us frequently pausing to sit out long spindrifts. After fighting through fatigue, I took over for two tricky mixed pitches nearing the notch, but as the sun disappeared below the horizon so did my remaining energy.
Ten-thirty p.m. rolled around and were finally sitting on a chopped-out snow bench after Hayden led that final pitch. Our prospective bivy site turned out to be much smaller than we’d hoped—it was a tiny, overhanging cornice just barely large enough to pitch our tent. With Vitaliy and I out of commission from frozen hands and exhaustion, Hayden stepped in to start organizing our gear and melting water. As I sat there, almost useless, I recognized that my entire life’s purpose had boiled down to a simple task: hold the stove upright, which I did for the next four hours as we sat there, eating and rehydrating. At 2:30 a.m. we settled into the tent, grateful to Hayden for keeping morale afloat through our evening.
Hayden leading the final pitch to the notch bivy around 10 p.m.
Sunrise woke us five hours later from our cramped slumber, our splitting headaches softened by our first eye-level view of the Himalaya. No longer were the surrounding peaks high giants—we had climbed up the beanstalk and were now among them. Cerro Kishtwar’s shark-fin of rock reared up to the north, now larger than ever. To the west lay Dandagoporum, an equally high peak with a razor-sharp ridge ascending over 5,000 feet to its summit. And to the northwest were the 3,000-foot big walls of the southeast face of Kishtwar Shivling.
From our position in the notch, the only possibility of continuing up our giant was via the steep headwall of the north face, which led 650 vertical feet to the summit. The rock was not granite, as we had previously thought, but instead very compact gneiss with few cracks. We looked up with uncertainty. A featureless slab blocked the cracks above, which, while steep and sustained looking, appeared to take good gear. This was more like a rock climb than we’d imagined— climbing in boots and crampons. After a slow morning of good coffee and a concoction of altitude meds, my curiosity finally overcame my doubt and I volunteered to take the first lead.
The first pitch out of the notch bivy, a delicate M7+
In an effort to block out the crippling exposure, I let my childlike mind take over and began to tinker with the pointy bits of alpinism on the puzzle of rock in front me. I eventually found upward progress through a creative blend of aid and free climbing, linking shallow pins and thin edges. In that vein we proceeded upward, never certain of progress but never failing to find it either. By the end of the day, only 300 or so feet of headwall remained. As we fixed our ropes to descend to our bivy, we felt the tantalizing possibility of success.
The next morning, we awoke eager to complete our climb. Our morning coffee routine, however, was interrupted. Chhhk, chhhk, chhhk—Vitaliy flicked the lighter against the stove, to no avail.
The stove had slowly weakened during the climb, but this time we could no longer hear gas coming out despite the full fuel canister. We suspected it was related to the different fuel mix of canisters in India, causing our stove to overheat and a safety mechanism to melt and block the fuel lines. All attempts at stove surgery were thwarted by not having the right tools, and inReach advice from the outside world proved fruitless as well. With less than one liter of melted water between us, we accepted the crushing conclusion that continuing would be irresponsible and unsafe. High on a technical face at 19,000 feet was not the place to gamble with dehydration; our teamwork could not overcome this obstacle. We retrieved our ropes and, frustrated, rappelled 2,000 feet back to the glacier.
****
After three days resting in basecamp, we hiked back up to ABC with more food—and a backup stove. One more week of waiting for a weather window and we were soon simul-climbing the steep snow and ice back to our cornice bivy at 19,200 feet. It was much colder this time, and, despite the constant movement of simul-climbing, my layering failed to keep me warm. Fatigue and dehydration manifested as light nausea and uncontrollable shivering, forcing a pause midway through our day for hot fluids and forced calories. We continued, and with good pace arrived at our notch bivy just before sunset.
We awoke to perfect weather, the cloudless skies blanketing the high peaks around us in rich blue. More acclimatized this time, we set off with the intent to free climb as a team and forgo any jumaring. We entered a high-alpine dance up the technical slabs and cracks above, free climbing through sections we’d aided on the previous attempt. I led the first pitch out of the notch, a delicate, 50-meter M7+ through a lower slab and thin cracks to a small roof traverse up high. Vitaliy took over for the second pitch, another 50-meter M7+ consisting of delicate laybacking on poor feet and an improbable traverse to gain a section of ice.
We were now back at our high point and began the final quest upward. From our perspective in the middle of the face, the summit continued to seem distant, like a carrot dangling on a stick. Pitch after pitch, the angle remained steep and the climbing proved harder than it looked. We wove our way through another five pitches of M4–M6, swapping out leaders naturally as our individual motivations waxed and waned. The hours were catching up to us, but still, there was no rush. The sky was clear, the air gentle, and our minds certain. We were going to the top.
As we neared the summit, the blanket of blue sky shifted to reveal a horizon of golden yellows and oranges, as if the setting sun itself were wishing us well. At 7:30 p.m., under the cover of night, I climbed a final five-inch crack to a starkly flat, 50-foot swath of horizontal ridge leading to the summit. There, on a perch the size of a compact car, Vitaliy, Hayden, and I smiled, embraced, and took a moment to reflect on our journey.
The southeast face of Kishtwar Shivling in the evening alpenglow
The previous three and a half weeks of labor had finally borne fruit. We had ferried three-hundred and fifty pounds of gear to ABC and climbed through the most fatigued moments of our lives only to retreat within 100 meters of the summit. Then we’d mustered up the energy to try again, and over two days had free-climbed over 2,700 feet of technical terrain up to M7+, the most difficult pitches of which were above 19,000 feet. Had you told us that this would be the story of our climb, we all would have thought it impossible to be central characters in the narrative. From the countryside of Texas, the inner-city of San Francisco, and an adventure-centered childhood, we’d each chosen to navigate our lives with synonymous purpose. What joined us together on the summit was more than the climbing; it was a culmination of becoming who we’d wanted to be.
We were certainly proud of our climb. Moreso, however, we were proud of each other. With each new difficulty, one of us stepped in to willingly carry the burden: leading a difficult pitch, volunteering for chores, or caring for a bonking teammate. It had been the seamless flow with which we made decisions and nurtured each other's needs that made our whole stronger than the constituent pieces. The environmental stresses were only the final forging of our bonds, bonds that were ultimately strong enough to bring us to the top of the White Sapphire.
Sapphire, the second-hardest gem on earth (second only to diamond), is forged in a similar process. What begins as an unassuming bit of ancient seafloor is transformed into resilient gems through the deep heat and pressure of a journey below the continents. Only when the gems are finally exhumed in geologic time is their beauty evident. Much like those minerals, we’d endured our own metamorphic transformation, deep in the heart of the Indian Himalaya. In a range known for its precious gems, the newfound richness of our friendship was now exhumed, emanating like the light through a Kashmiri sapphire: Brilliant Blue.
Atop the summit of the White Sapphire
October 2023: First ascent of Brilliant Blue (850m, AI3, 80°, M7+), White Sapphire (6040m), Kishtwar Valley, Jammu and Kashmir region, India; Christian Black, Vitaliy Musiyenko, Hayden Wyatt.
