Late Notice Broad Peak attempt ahead for Saulius Damulevičius
Saulius Damulevičius is on his way to Broad Peak, but only just!
Here he explains a crazy past few days…
“A week ago it was hard to believe that the expedition would still happen. Got my visa in less than 24 hours and the flight from Lithuania.
“Then a PCR test was done, finished work, bought inventory and medicine and spent the rest of the night on packing.
June 15th 12:00 pm “I went with Turkish Airlines to Istanbul and fell asleep to the before reaching top height. In Istanbul (not completely) unexpectedly met Romanian climbers Laura and Justina with whom we climbed in 2019. Of course, they also waited for the flight to Islamabad, they talked about the same visa troubles and quarantine restrictions that were tough to overcome.”
June 16th 3:25pm “We are in Islamabad. I still can’t believe I’m already 4000 km from Lithuania. Meet Belgian climbers Nyls and Jefs who came to climb K2 (8611 m) and a group of Polish trekkers. Short sleep, money replacement, dinner together and again repacking things at the end until dawn.”
June 17th “Flying to Tin (2350 m) located 300 km from Islamabad. On the way we saw Nanga Parbat (8125 m) top from Diamir side drowning in the dark clouds. Brrrrrr…
On June 18-20, “We are acclimatizing on the hill of Khusargang (6050 m) near Singi village. We climbed up the dust slopes for two days (we stayed at 3840 m and 4850 m height), we returned 2500 vertical meters back to the village for lunch. Good – legs time, high loads are suffering.”
June 21th “We are ′′ selling ′′ again in Tin. I buy food (snickers I only found in Hussain general store, cookies, noodles, etc. ), hygiene supplies, used inventory from Ajip, a tank to transport items and replenishment of the sim card. In the evening we meet newly arrived expedition members from Italy, Poland, Peru, Bolivia, Russia and other countries. Everyone’s goals are similar – one or the other Baltor’s ′′ eighth “. After dinner I’m going to pack again because bags can’t exceed 25 kg.”
June 22th. “It turns out that we can’t go to the track yet – we won’t get all the ′′ blessings ′′ of institutions. If everything is ok (or as it is constantly said, Insha Allah), we will leave tomorrow. That’s why I’m sitting in the Mashabrum hotel room now writing this long post.
You think: ′′ Are you ready?” If you haven’t already guessed, I will reply before leaving in another message (Insha Allah).
*****
“Addition to the answer: this year’s expedition goal is one of the Baltic giants, 8047 m high Broad Peak.”
