r/HighsoftheWorld • u/LouQuacious • Apr 18 '21
Kerguelen Islands - Mont Ross 1,850 m (6,070 ft)
As remote and lofty a perch as there is
One of the tough feral cats with some penguin friends
2007 route up the east face
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u/PocketOperatorsRule Sep 23 '22
This post sent me down a cool rabbit hole about these islands. There's a cabbage-like plant on them that is edible and helped sailors suffering from scurvy!
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u/LouQuacious Sep 24 '22
It’s about the only thing that grows. Check out Heard Island too it’s a fun one.
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u/Adidax Apr 19 '21
This is the scariest looking mountain ever!
Btw thank you so much for this subreddit, great work and really interesting!
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u/LouQuacious Apr 18 '21 edited Apr 18 '21
The wild and windy Kerguelen Islands are crowned by this magnificent monstrosity of a mountain. "Jesus Christ" was my first thought upon seeing this thing, it is obviously not messing around. It was only conquered by climbers in 1975, the last peak of note in French territory to be summitted. Although a military engineer flew up to the top by helicopter in 1960, that's cheating. No ski descents yet as far as I could determine.
There's actually video from that initial climbing expedition, believe it or not, it's in French though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeMgCEde_gY
The altitude isn't the challenge here so much as the absolute desolation. This antipode of the US (one of our only ones) is about as far from civilization as it is possible to get so there is no margin for error. The mountain itself isn't that high but looks to be all up, all the way from sea level to summit and this after navigating the interior of the island to approach it. It's obviously very glaciated and the weather is notoriously furious on these lost isles of the roaring 40s. Then there's that sketchy looking knife edge ridge, I'm not a fan of thin serrated saddles like that at all, add in the threat of getting literally blown off and that's a big nope for me. I found this trip report from the first folks to traverse the summit ridge in 2007: http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP20/climbing-note-foissac-ross-antarctica
There is a population of very tough feral cats on this island, first brought as mousers but now ruling the roost. I heard they are studying them to see how they adapted to survive the brutal Kerguelen weather.