Mt. Alirathni Tibba 2022: Expedition Report

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On 8 September 2022, a team of four climbers from West Bengal made the first Indian summit of Alirathni Tibba (5470m), a peak located in Himachal Pradesh, India. They climbed the mountain through West Ridge in alpine style. A search mission was carried out by the Indian Airforce, ABVIMAS Institute, and the state disaster management team after the climbers lost their communication with the base camp during their summit bid. However, later they found safe on their way down to the base camp. The leader of the team had written us the expedition report, which is now printed below.

Alirathni Tibba

Summary of the expedition:

Route: West Ridge
Camps: Base Camp (3474m) ; Camp-1 (4050m); Summit Camp (4700m)
Team members: Abhijit Banik (leader), Dibash Das, Chinmoy Mandal, Binoy Das, and Manoj Nath
HAF/Cook: Lakpa Sherpa
Summit date: 8 September 2022
Summit members: Abhijit Banik (leader), Dibash Das, Chinmoy Mandal, and Binoy Das

Expedition Report

Our Mountaineering Expedition to peak Mt. Alirathni Tibba(5470m) in Himachal Pradesh was from 18 August to 15 September 2022. It was sponsored by Tata Steel Adventure Foundation and Crux. We started our journey from Kolkata on 18 August 2022. Our team comprised 5 members Abhijit Banik (leader), Dibash das, Chinmoy Mandal, Binoy Das, and Manoj Nath. On 20 September 2022 our cook Lakpa Sherpa joined us at Manali.

Team

Climbing Team

After reaching the road-head on 22 August, we trekked for the next three days and established our base camp (3474m) on 26 August after crossing the Manala River. Our first challenge in this expedition was to cross the Manala river. Next couple of days We were busy establishing our camp-1 (4050m) and summit camp (4700m) for the next couple of days after traveling through crevasses. During our stay, we faced a lot of turbulent weather, which forced us to revisit our schedule. According to the last international climbing report of 2019, we planned to climb through Southwest ridge but we could not identify the route. The first team moved towards the summit camp on 5 September and on the next day they reached the preliminary route to the summit.

On 7 September the 4 members team moved towards the summit bid at 6:00 am and climbed via west ridge and reached the upper section ramp in the evening. To avoid the night march to the summit, the team quickly identified a shelter and decided to enforce overnight bivouac. On 8 September in the morning, we pushed for the summit bid at 8:40 am and hoisted the flag for the first time. As per our preliminary research, we believe we are the first team to reach this summit of Alirathni Tibba in alpine style. The GPS recorded an altitude of 5501m. At 9:50 am we started down the upper Ramp. Ultimately we found South West ridge and after 6-7 rope rappelling reached the Summit Camp by 6:30 pm.

West Ridge route

Climb

Icefall on the route

After reaching the summit camp we could not find Lakpa Sherpa and thought he had gone to the lower camp. We took a full day's rest at the summit camp. As Lakpa sherpa did not arrive the next day, we finished the summit camp on the 10th and left for the base camp. Due to bad weather, we reached Camp-1 at 7:30 pm. The next morning (11 September 2022) the weather was fine. At 10:30 am we located the helicopter. After some time the search team met us and informed us that the rescue operation had started for us. We returned to our base camp with the rescue team. Finally, we reached Kolkata on 15 September 2022.

- Leader of the expedition team

From the summit camp

On the Summit

Photo: Team