Hitting The Roof

At a tour agency in town we found a deal for a guide to take us up Fansipan as a private group on a two day tour.  The guy booking our deal had enthusiastically shown a trophy stating that it was one of their guides who had achieved the fastest ascent time of three hours.  The schedule was to reach the base camp at 2800m and stay overnight on day one, then to summit the next morning and return on that second day.  We would be picked up the next day for 8am and driven to the start point of the trail at 1800m altitude.

Our guide was called Po, a small and wiry Hmong who communicated with us in Vietnamese but in Hmong to the other guides and porters who we passed along the trail with the sun breaking through the forest canopy.

We kept up a good rate as Po took us further up into steeper scrambles in the humid heat of the mountain forest.  He had ridiculous balance, carrying a basket of supplies on his back whilst nimbly walking up rocky inclines in flip flops in surefooted ease.  We concentrated hard on following each of his footfalls.  We passed a larger guided group and stopped for lunch at the first camp at 2200m.  There, the guide of the larger group identified Po as being the current record holder for the quickest ascent.

Our smaller group pressed on and we soon reached the final 300m ascent along a ridge to the base camp, stopping to look up at the way ahead.

Upon reaching base camp at 2800m we met two others and their Hmong guide Ar, a 19 year old girl who was on her third ascent.  It was about 3pm and we decided to push on for the summit together as the weather was clear and sunny.  The guides explained that the weather was very changeable and that to summit the next morning could mean doing it in mist.

The final sections to the summit involved some serious scrambling but nothing that required ropes, just care and attention.  This included crossing smooth weathered rock using natural roots to clamber up and down, plus one or two sections where ladders had been placed to help climb steep rockfaces.  We reached the summit and standing on the rooftop of indochina, found clear views all around, with China to one side and Vietnam to the other.  After a deserved break, we started our descent to base camp and took in a beautiful sunset, stumbling back just before darkness fell.

It had been a hard day of sweaty trekking and our legs had been put through their paces.  Apparently not many people manage to summit on the first day and we had pushed hard.  The toll was our sore and aching limbs, just the warm up we needed before starting our cycling.