CHONGOR ( Rakchham Plateau) 2024

 The walls of Chongor 

 

Rehab Line Wall

Rakchham is located in the Sangla valley, 11 km before Chitkul, on the banks of Baspa River. It has emerged as a popular tourist destination over the last 10 years, and has become an attractive place on the Kinnaur Spiti circuit for adventurous and enthusiastic tourists.

Rakchham offers some of the best granite climbing in the world. This place offers all the different forms of rock climbing of the very highest quality, the boulders, cliffs, and bigger walls provide ample opportunity to the intrepid climber to create lines of great quality and difficulty.

In the previous posts, we delved deeper into the great climbing the valley has to offer., and shared our experience on these amazing climbs. in this post we share our experience of exploring and climbing on the amazing alpine walls of the Chongor  a.k.a Rakchham plateau

The best alpine rock climbs in the valley lie above Rakchham village. A short approach leads to Chongor, a very sacred place for the villagers. Here, in many of the granite walls surrounding the plateau, many high-quality routes have been established

in October 2024 we joined Christoph Ogier and Alberto Urtasun to scope out some new route potential in Chongor. 

Chongor is very sacred place to the local villagers and they only allow permission for a very short duration to camp up in the plateau. This factor allows only fast and light alpine style attempts on these walls for now 

On 7th of October we went up to Chongor and set up camps for about 2 nights to have a first look and check out possible new lines 

On 8th October we made a recon to "rehab line" with a future free ascent in mind. The line is a sixteen pitch 7b/A2 which would go free at around 8a, estimated by first ascensionists, We found out this would require a big wall style and for now we decided to focus on other lines 

During the same day Christoph and Alberto made the FA of Indian Brothers on furthermost wall of the plateau by climbing 250 meters on a east facing buttress 

 

After the first trip up to Chongor we came back to the village , and rested , celebrated Christoph's birthday , and enjoyed a few great bouldering sessions  

On 13th of October we went up to Chongor for the second time for about 4 nights and set up our camp. This time Christoph decided not to focus on the alpine objectives and stayed down to redpoint the hard projects in the valley down 

On 14th together with Alberto we attempted a new line on peak Midi d' Ossau (4.670 MT) . We could locate a possible line through a series of corners and started up the wall. 

After the first pitch we encountered a steep overhanging section which Alberto opened with aid, and we freed on second go. The crux involved Steep overhanging laybacking and we felt the difficulty is around 7a. 

The climbing that follows are classic alpine granite pitches with steep corners, squeeze chimneys slabs and traverses to connect the cracks and the corners. After climbing for around six pitches we felt the pitches are hard and we will not make it to the top of the wall today , and decided to bail. We rappelled down beside left of our ascent line  leaving a few pitons and slings on the wall. Our partial new route climbs 240 meters (approximately) on Midi d' Ossau with difficulties up to 6a A1 (oblg)  7a (Max)

Steep corners & chimneys

Steep overhanging corner 

                         

Approximate line of our partial New route
'Latin brother' on left 

After coming down from the wall we decided to rest for a day. And at the last days we  decided to make a repeat ascent of the Indian Brothers 

All in all it was an amazing time climbing and exploring these granite walls. the future project of a free ascent of Rehab line still awaits and we will be back for that