Kangtega - The Snow Saddle - is another beautiful mountain, which rises majestically to a saddle shaped summit from the Khumbu and Hinku Valley and sits next to another prominent mountain Thamserku to the north.
Our approach to this mountain is from the south side over the Tsetrawala pass and then through the Hinku glacier. We take about a week to reach the Kangtega base camp situated at the bottom of the Kangtega Ice-Fall, which resembles with the infamous Khumbu Ice Fall of Mt. Everest. Setting up our base camp at 5,182m/17,000ft. Though an obvious route up the mountain would be to follow the Ice Fall, we have to go for the rock face leading to a ridge around 6,070m/19,909ft and rappel down for about 70 meters to reach at the top of the icefall to avoid possible icefall hazards.
Camp I is placed here at an altitude of 6,000m/19,680ft. On ward we overcome some narrow crevasses and climb some interesting snow slope to reach camp two at 6,400m/20,992ft. on the south ridge of the mountain. Before the sun totally goes down, impressive mountain views can be viewed with a blue sky turning to golden and to crimson...
Next day, an early morning pushes through 45 ~ 50-degree snow slopes soon leads to knife edged short summit ridge. The summit offers great mountain views and the valley surrounding. Our Sherpa support will help carry food, fuel, equipment and fix the rope.
