Region: Central Asia & The Far East

Edward Lemon with Martin Jones, Dr Gareth Mottram and Jacob Wrathall (July-August 2009)

This team originally planned to base their expedition on the Malitskovo Glacier, but then discovered that many of the peaks in the area were climbed in 2007, so decided to use the Sarychat Glacier instead. Access to this was delayed by a driver who did not know the area, eventually dropping them 30km short of their intended base camp. Once established they were further disappointed to find that, instead of being good quality limestone, the local rock was shale. Nevertheless, they climbed three mixed routes ranging from Scottish II to V. They reached five previously unclimbed summits, the highest being Peak 4989m, although their GPS recorded it as 5014m.