Toughest adventure in a rocky mountain Chilton.

Описание: A mid-autumn night's adventure

Let me tell you the true story about our survival in the most dangerous and also one of the highest mountains of Baluchistan, Mount Chiltan. This rocky mountain has very deep ravines where a single slip of a foot or hand could lead to severe injury or death.
Muhammad Salahudin Khilji aka. SK Shaheen my hiker friend with whom I have scaled several mountain summits of Baluchistan sent me a few voice messages a night before the day of our venture. It was a Saturday night; I wasn't surprised by his sudden message because two weeks ago he told me to get myself prepared to conquer the mountain. He asked me if I'm fit enough for scaling the hardest target, telling me about the toughness and steepness of the mountain. And I agreedly said yes. I was eagerly prepared and immediately rushed to buy some food for the day hike up to the summit. Next day on Sunday… I offered morning prayer, packed my bag and kicked my Honda 125 motorcycle to pick him from his home. He was standing all alone on main road. We rode pillion to meet another hiker buddy who was familiar with Chilton mountain. Yasir Ali, captain of Baluch Adventure, was expecting us at the roadside in his village area. He was supposed to lead us to the peak of the mountain. It was our first meeting with him because he befriended with Salah on Facebook. So they both planned accordingly. Afterwards, we headed to Mustung toll plaza main Quetta - Karachi highway. Without passing thru the toll plaza we took a right turn towards off-road right before the toll plaza continued our journey to climb Chiltan mountain. After 15 mins offroading we reached near the base camp of the mountain. We saw few numbers of mud-houses of the local villagers. We parked our motorcycles next to their houses and stepped towards the mountain. Beginning our hike together was a fun since we were enjoying trekking while talking. The trek was slightly rough but less demanding at the first stage of Chilton. But later it started testing our stamina with a gradual increase. I'm not putting the entire step counts and climbs in detail. Middle part of the mountain was steep and straightly tricky because some rocks were loose and falling when we held to climb upon. Land sliding while climbing too often occurs. We finally managed to made our ascent to the pinnacle timely. Met some other mountaineers up there...they were sitting around the summit. So we accompanied them as one of them was my friend Bismillah Afghan, a most experienced mountaineer from Quetta. As usual we socialized for an hour or two and had lunch together. Then decided to descend back after offering zuhr prayers. Took some group pictures and then started moving to descend but thru different routes. We opted for another route which was long but less technical than the one we climbed thru. Our leader told us that this route is long but not as steep as the direct route. So it was all up to him; we started moving in opposite directions. Surprisingly, this route wasn't as easy as I thought. After an hour long movement still we hadn't descended less than half part of the mountain. I asked them, are we wending thru the right path? And they said, yeah this is the right direction that goes to the base of the mountain and soon we'll be on the ground. We kept walking technically on a rocky knife edge which was not continuously descending. It took us almost an hour or two and we descended thru a steep decline where the place was entirely surrounded by big rocky peaks and juniper trees haphazardly. Descending to find our path to the base we reached next to a slippery steep rock thru we started descending the way one climb...very technical and dangerous the entire place was. We didn't stop descending but after a half an hour we ended up with a 200 feet deep dry waterfall where descending was impossible with ropes and harness; no way to go down all around because this place had never been used by humans. We abandoned ourselves in ravines all around us. Sun was going down and the light was at dusk. So, we thought we should stay and spend the night at this place without tents or any shelter by a juniper tree. The place was quite calm but not suitable for staying with or without having tents. Any wild thing could come and eat us...I told my buddies to ascend back to the peak we could see and descend thru. But on the other hand, we had already lost enough energy and stamina in finding out the way of getting down within more or less three hours; but we had to do it. When you have no other choice then you don't think about any other thing. So, we managed to climb back to the nearest peak with a lot of stressful fatigue. Sun was almost set and the light faded away. We said this is the right place to spend a night and before dawn we would start climbing back to the summit and descend from there where we were reluctant to descend in the daytime. to be continued