Mt. CB-13A summited by a team from Bengal via South West ridge

Eight Climbers from Bengal along with two High Altitude Porters reached the summit of CB-13A (6240m) on 17th August at around 2PM.

Three climbers from the team were actually trying to summit CB-14. However, they had to return after the Col due to heavy rock fall. The trio then joined the CB-13A team and reached the summit together. The team took the conventional route, south-west ridge to reach the summit via two upper camps.

Timeline of the expedition:
15th August
The team started for camp-I at 9 am with full load. The trail was full of moraine and reached South Dhaka Glacier. After three hours of treacherous walking through moraine they turned left towards South. From this point they started climbing upwards till the nallahcomes down from the first true right flank of South Dhaka Glacier. After About 150m of vertical climb from Glacier through scree and after covering 300m distance they reached Camp-1 at 2pm.

16th August
The whole team except Kalyan Deb proceeded to Camp-2. He stayed back due to chest pain. They reached camp-2 (5,300m ) at 1.30 pm. Camp-2 is located in cwm of CB-14 and CB-13A. The trail passes through moraine and through glacier in the south. Three members from the team, Debraj Dutta , Munmun Ghosh and Saptagni Das had planned to climb CB 14 but  had to abandon the plan due to less snow and continuous rock fall. The trio joined the rest of the team members,who were planning to climb CB-13A.

17th August
The team left for the summit push at 5 am. They started climbing towards west through hard ice to reach the col (5700 m). Before reaching col they fixed about 120mtr of rope as the gradient was about 70 degree. From col they started climbing through North-West Ridge and reached the summit of CB-13A at around 2 pm. The route proved to be a challenge because of the presence of loose rocks. Ropes of around 600m were fixed in the entire route. They started climbing down at 2.30pm and reached summit camp around 6pm.

Expedition summary:
Route: South-West ridge
Team: 17 climbers and 2 HAPs
Summit members:
Debraj Dutta, Munmun Ghosh, Swaptagni Das, Jyotirmay Maiti, Prasenjit Saha, Sudhanghshu Gupta, Dipak Kumar Das, Satish Kumar Subhramaniyam, Ramesh Chauhan (HAP) and Chander Lal Thakur (HAP)
Summit time: 02.00 pm (17th Aug 2017)
Organised by: Pioneer Adventurers, Kanchrapara