Mountain Adventures - peak Communism

Borodkin classic route to climb peak Communism 7495m

First ascent was done at 1968 by climbers from Moscow club “Burevestnik” (Thunderbird): Youri Borodkin, L. Dobrovolski, V.Masukov, E.Kusov and V.Putrin.

The route looks very  logical and nice.

There are 3 “tricky” points (at least I could remember just 3 at the moment):

  • one should traverse during ~1hour  under hanging glacier on the way to camp 5100. It happens during the day that ice fells down here, crossing the route with avalanche of snow and ice! The usual practice is to cross the spot VERY early in the morning. That’s why some teams prefers to start from BC late in the evening, to sleep at camp 4600 and to start climbing with the very first light. Other option is to start from BC at the night to reach the dangerous traverse at appropriate time.
  • Climbing the top of Borodkin ridge one should descend down to the Big Firn Table Land. To have vertical drop of ~150m down when climbing up is OK, but climbing up the same ~150 on way down is a rather serious  obstacle for climber exhausted by altitude or worse by altitude disease
  • Big Firn Table Land – the real wander of the World! It looks at good weather so nice but one should remember that the snow cover HUGE crevasses. It is EXTREAMLY dangerous to cross BFTL using NO rope.

Photos of  Pavel Chochia with consent of authors