The First Ascent of The Big Rock Candy Mountain

Adventures didn't get much bigger than this. Big in size: Just under 6,000 metres to be almost exact; Big in stature: presiding over this remote valley in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalaya, yet never graced with a human footprint. And finally, Big in name. Among ourselves, it had been named after song from the film “Oh Brother, where art thou?” Such a name would stick out like a culturally-insensitive sore thumb in the midst of all these locally-named giants, so we kept The Big Rock Candy Mountain to ourselves.

That song describes a utopian place where everything is plentiful and good vibes abound. A little like here, we thought. An unquestioning happiness pervaded among the Ladakhi villagers despite the physical hardships of this unforgiving land. They had food, shelter and water, and were living like millionaires. Yaks wallowed in the rivers, crops grew on terraces hewn into cliffs, prayer flags fluttered in the breeze. Life flowed in the same cyclical pattern it had for centuries. It put our plans into skewed perspective. Did we Westerners really need axes, crampons, ropes and “challenges” to attain this sort of nirvana? Perhaps we did.

The calm, sunny weather in this “high altitude desert” had degenerated into persistent rain and snow. The scientists blamed global warming. The locals said nature was angry. I supposed they meant the same thing.

The first obstacle on this non-technical ascent was a steeply-angled boulder field that resembled Brighton Beach tipped on its side. Dislodging one large block would result in the whole slope momentarily shifting down towards us.

Further up, every step in the soft, fresh snow sapped our energy as slabs of it stuck to the bottom of our crampons and our feet sank deeply. The breeze created whirlwinds of spindrift as the flakes continued to fall. I smiled at a certain irony as we plodded upwards. In these persistent white-out conditions, there was just one place this isolated virgin summit in one of the world's remotest mountain regions reminded me of: Scotland, where I live.

At 2PM, exhausted, the summit still eluded us. The decision to turn around was disappointing yet unanimous.

The timing was worthy of Hollywood cliché. At that moment, briefly, ever so slightly, the cloud parted, enough to reveal that the summit was no more than fifty metres away. A final burst of energy came from somewhere within. Minutes later this mist-enshrouded snow-dome leveled out, the ground dropping away on all sides. A quick photo, some exhausted high-fives, and we made our way back towards Brighton Beach, footprints disappearing as quickly as they'd been made in the drifting snow.

The locals had their paradise, thousands of metres below. They effortlessly merged with their surroundings and saw no need to search for anything better, least of all among the towering peaks that encircled their homes. For us, on this day at least, we had reached our Big Rock Candy Mountain.