A Night in the Ultar Meadow

Trip Start Nov 14, 2007
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Trip End Apr 20, 2009


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Flag of Pakistan  ,
Saturday, July 5, 2008

We have just returned from an overnight camp in the Ultar Meadow (3300m), perched 750m above Karimabad. To get there involved walking along a precipitous 'path'. The path is actually a barrier for a water channel cut into the side of a canyon and sluicing with glacier melt headed for Karimabad. You would work out pretty quickly whether you suffer from vertigo on this path. Being a shareholder in Pina Ford's genes, you'd think I'd be rather predisposed not to try this sort of thing out, yet somehow I have managed to avoid such handicaps. But, back to the Meadow.

Though the meadow was not the Edelweissian fantasy I was hoping for, the appeal of the place is the Ultar Ridge that encircles it (save for the thin canyon in which a glacier escapes)- a wall of peaks 6000m to 7300m high: a true 3000m deep amphitheatre. Whilst not technically as high as the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat, the enveloping wall is probably more impressive- it feels much closer and more intimate with legendary formations such as the Lady Finger, to name one.

We were fortunate to witness a spectacular avalanche high on the the 7350m Ultar II peak as the sun was leaving the amphitheatre Lady Finger from Ultar Meadows
Lady Finger from Ultar Meadows
 . It left a cacophonic rumble wich spun around the meadow. Many more rumbles of avalanches and groans from the nearby glacier followed right through the night.

The morning put the meadow in a new light. The Ridge was no longer so 'soft', as the afternoon light from the day befpre had made it. All of the angles of the shattered rock were revealed in the light and the ridge took on the feel of a mutated stealth bomber deflecting all right into our eyes. Yesterday, it was the sound that was concentrated on the meadow, today the light.

We waited for the sun to get behind the ridge before we headed back down the water channel to Karimabad in relativce coolth.
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