The Avalanche

It was getting late. The sun was dipping behind the mountains, and as the daylight went, the air got colder. We shivered in our cycling tights and pressed on, looking for a good place to stop and pitch our tiny two-man canvas tent. There was bound to be something around the next bend, we were sure.

Max and myself had decided to ride mountainbikes along the old caravan route from India to China, to see how far we could get. It was to be an adventure.

The mountains towering over us were the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering the road from Srinagar in Kashmir to Leh in Ladakh. We realised we needed to stop soon; at around 2,500m above sea level and headed for the 3,500m Zoji La pass, we were now very, very cold.

We pedalled our mountainbikes ever higher, between walls of snow. No camping spot came into sight, but something else did.

A man in crisply-pressed business trousers and a shirt and tie, carrying a cardboard briefcase walked jauntily around a snow-covered spur. He looked pleased to see us; he must have already walked kilometres over the pass in his less than mountain-ready clothes, meeting absolutely nobody if our experience so far that day was anything to go by. He asked us how far it was to the next village, then set off down the road into the gloom, shiny leather fashion shoes glinting in the last of the sunset.

After another kilometre or so up the rocky, cliff-edge road we decided it was getting just too dark and too cold: we would have to stop at the merest whiff of a suitable place to camp.

We groped around a bend and there it was — a flatter, darker area just off the road by the edge of a valley. Far below we could hear the soothing lullaby of a river deep in the gorge. Perfect!

We quickly pitched the tent by torchlight, pulled on all our clothes; thermals, socks, jeans, t-shirts, jumpers, jackets, overtrousers, hats and gloves, parked the bikes and got into our sleeping bags. The snow hissed and cracked outside as the temperature slumped even lower, the only other noise a constant burble from the river way below.

We fell into shallow sleep; but it was so cold we hardly slept longer than half an hour at a time, tossing and turning constantly because of the cold. We woke properly at about 5am as the sun cracked open the view up the valley. It was stupendous.

The road clung to the rocky edge of the mountains, with the river about 250m below, still murmuring its way down the gorge. The highest mountain range in the world displayed its gigantic peaks to every horizon, pure white snow gleamed in every direction, and huge icicles hung where last night a trickle of water had run off a ledge. The only other sound was the fierce call of an eagle, turning in the early thermals off a high ridge on the other side of the valley.

In the glow of the sunrise, we were able to see more of where we had camped; it was a flattish patch of snow just off the road, with lots of dirt streaks through it. We assumed it had been pushed there by the snow-plough that had been up the road a day or so before.

Curiously, on all sides of our tent there were bits of branch and splintered wood sticking up out of the snow. We hadn’t noticed them in the gloom of the previous night, but had luckily avoided putting the groundsheet over them. That would have made it even harder to sleep — even possibly punched holes in it. Lucky us, we agreed, smiling at our good luck in pitching the tent in just the right place.

Then Max, keen to see the river far below, our friend of the night that had lulled our fitful sleep, walked to the edge of the patch and looked over and down.

He came running back, and said he though we should get out of this place pretty quick; it didn’t look safe. He began to yank the tent pegs out of the dirty snow and cram the flysheet into his luggage bags. “What’s the rush?” I asked, wandering over to the edge. There, I got a clear view down to our friend the river, and saw what he meant.

Between the road and that burbling river (apart from us and our tent) was unsettling, to say the least. There was a massive plume of snow, dirt, rocks, and the remains of splintered and shattered trees, all headed straight down from the edge of the road into the river bed. We were bang on the central reservation of Avalanche Avenue.

It wasn’t a small avalanche either; it must have been about 25m wide all the way down. And our frail little tent was right in the middle of its killing zone. We looked up, and saw remains of its trail stretching up above the road, more rocks and snow hanging frozen over our heads, waiting for the sun to warm things up before it let loose another few hundred tons of debris onto our pitifully exposed tent, bikes and puny bodies.

We packed the tent and our bikes really fast. We were out of there in minutes, realising as we did so that the comforting noises of the night before weren’t all bubbling water and plashing voles on the riverbanks below. Small avalanches had been peeling off all night long, making gentle rumbles as they did so. Us not being buried under a ton of snow and rubble that night was a miracle — plus I suppose the luck of the ignorant.

We rode slowly upwards, along the side of the valley towards the head of the pass. As we got higher, the snow became deeper and more churned up, and progressively more difficult to ride on, or carry the bike through.

Admittedly, riding our bikes over clean snow wasn’t a problem — as long as it wasn’t in direct sunlight that melted it, the crust was thick enough to support our riding weight, provided we kept moving. But where the sun had hit and warmed it, the surface was like chilled rice pudding. It was incredibly hard to make progress across or through it. Eventually, the snowplough cutting petered out completely, and we were onto virgin snow. And disconcertingly, the road itself also went missing.

Up to then, roadside poles and shallow cuttings had showed us the way ahead. But at this point, the road had been completely swept away by other avalanches. We could see where it used to go round the sides of the valley, but there was a huge gap between where we stood, and where the road wound up the other side of the valley. There was no way round. To keep moving towards Leh, we had to go down to the valley floor and straight up the other side. Across the river, which at this altitude was covered with frozen snow bridges of uncertain weight-bearing ability.

Good old British derring-do, a fear of having to go back down Avalanche Avenue, plus a dose of stupidity urged us to keep moving. We jumped off the face of the mountain, down the steep slope and into the valley.

We slid through the snow, clutching our bikes as we plunged into a deep defile we hoped we could get out of. The slide down filled our jackets, pants, pockets, socks and balaclavas with snow. It ripped the pannier off Max’s bike. But I guess that all drag helped slow us down as we slid, so it wasn’t all bad.

Once at the bottom, we had to cross a snow-bridge, and climb the other side up a 45deg slope, covered in deep snow, hauling heavily laden mountainbikes. A challenge, you might call it.

We got across the river OK, listening to the water rumbling below our feet.

The next stages followed a basic pattern. Steady ourselves in the snow (up to the waist at times) then throw the bike, fully laden with camping gear, food and clothes, a metre or so ahead, up the steep slope. Then struggle around and above the bike, grab it, and repeat. Max’s diary relates: “fucking hollow, loathsome, no alternative.” It was.

I’m not sure exactly how long the climb out took, but it was certainly a long time, with scores of bike clamber/throw/repeats to tax our strength. I remember being soaked in sweat, and swearing at Max violently under my breath for getting us into this mess. He presumably was doing the same; we had by now stopped talking to each other.

Eventually we made it back to the line of the road on the other side of the valley, and into an ethereal zone where we rode over crisp frozen snow, down what seemed the most pristine and beautiful valley on Earth, and back to where the road was visible again.

A few days later, we rolled into Ladakh, the first vehicles to have made over the (4,100m) Fotu-La pass from Kashmir that year. We high fived, and continued into Leh for a decent meal and a bed.

We agreed it had been an adventure alright, and that one day we would look back and laugh. Perhaps that day is getting closer . . .

Want to see more photos? Click HERE. Want to read more stories from the road? Click HERE.