Rimo; Mountain On The Silk Road

Peter Hillary, an accomplished climber, and son of Sir Ed Hillary, writes about the 1986 joint Australian-Indian expedition to attempt the unclimbed Mt Rimo, in a sub-range of the Karakoram Range in India. Rimo is located very close to the Chinese (Tibetan) border, and therefore the expedition was under much scrutiny by the Indian Army.

The book is divided into three parts - the first outlines the trek from Leh to reach Rimo, which took around a month, the second is the mountain, the third is the descent back to Leh.

The route from Leh takes them along a fragment of the Silk Road (says the book - hard to verify this), and across land not travelled by Westerners since Eric Shipton in 1946, who used this route on the way to Kashgar. Finding caves containing rock etchings of nomadic hunters, ibex and antelope, thought to be up to 5000 years old.

Whilst written in a fairly informal manner, Hillary still uses a lot of climbers jargon and technical terms, which is somewhat annoying to the non-climber. Yes, it would easy enough to google the terminology, but that isn't really the point.

It isn't a long book, and it moves pretty quickly, quite clearly setting out the progress, including a lot of gear drops and relay carrying to get equipment and food up the mountain from base camp to advanced base camp to camp 1 and camp 2.

Some of the more interesting aspects were the relationship with the Indian climbers, the Australian team (made up also of Brits and Hillary - a New Zealander) and the Indian Army. Towards the end the team became quite fractured, and there were some dangerous moments for Hillary especially, being held at gunpoint during an argument.

Spoilers below, if you are going to read the book, leave these!
The expedition ended up being hampered by weather, and the lapsing of the Army permit to remain in the area. Weather conditions weren't good enough to summit, and there was insufficient time for further attempts. Rimo remained unconquered until a joint Japanese - Indian team reached the peak in 1988. It is the only time Rimo has been successfully climbed.

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