The target for the Joint Service quadrennial expedition in 2004 was the South East Ridge of Makalu (8463m). This route was chosen on the walk out from Kanchenguna following the successful 2000 exped, and the task of leading the trip fell to Colin Scott, an RAF Squadron Leader and member of the Kanch team. The climbing team, 14 strong with 16 reserves was chosen after a selection week in November 2001, leaving considerable time for preparation and planning. As always that time passed very quickly leaving the usual ever lengthening list of jobs to be completed before we left the UK for Nepal in March 2004. The South East Ridge of Makalu was a challenging objective. The ridge was first climbed by the Japanese in 1970 with a huge, strong team of 16 climbers and 25 high altitude porters. The ridge has been attempted many times since with only 4 successful ascents of the ridge itself and a couple of successful summit attempts avoiding the main technical difficulties on the ridge by dropping into the cwm to the Northern side of the ridge.

The ridge itself is normally reached via an icefall to a camp at the foot of its rocky crest (6600m). The ridge then climbs on relatively easy ground to a rock obstacle (the "black gendarme" at approximately 7800m. This gendarme took the Japanese 28 days to overcome in 1970! Beyond that a sharp rocky ridgeline leads to the summit, the fifth highest in the world.

One of the great things about a trip of this nature is the time and focus for training. The team had weekends in Wales and Scotland, two JSAMs on which to climb together and a week in Norway. Unfortunately the week in Norway fell during Op Telic 1 so only the RAF could attend! The busy nature of recent service life meant that there were many changes to the team with the eventual line up consisting of 3 members of the RNRMMC (Adrian Mellor, Andy Muddiman and Alec Burrel), 6 RAF and 5 Army.

The exped was officially launched with a very successful presentation at the Royal Geographical Society in London and the following day - 17 March two team members (plus two HADT members) flew out to Kathmandu as the advance party. They had the onerous responsibility of sorting the several tonnes of stores freighted out through the British Gurkhas' system. The advance team did a sterling job (in addition to keep Norwegian high altitude skiers awake at night) and smoothed the way for the main body of the team to arrive on 24 March.

After a couple of days in Kathmandu completing necessary admin and team building (during which we suffered the first injury with a sprained ankle) we left for the airport to fly to Tumlingtar. Approximately 6 hours later we returned to the hotel, high winds having made the journey impossible. The following day we tried again, managed to get airborne and halfway to our destination before turning back to Kathmandu. It began to feel that the frustrations of high altitude mountaineering were beginning a little prematurely! It was third time lucky and on 29 March we successfully made it to Tumlingtar, the last road we would see until the first week of June and the start of the trek to base camp.

The walk to base camp took 11 days. Initially the going was easy along gentle paths serving the local villages and following a ridge line through forest and cultivated areas. The population explosion in Nepal was very evident in the multitude of smiling, filthy children who greeted us, "namaste", as was the deforestation to provide food for them. Both these issues are sure to cause trouble for the region in the long run. After three days the trail descends steeply to the Arun river and ascends again (equally steeply) to reach the entrance to the Makalu Barun National Park. The hard work started here, gaining the 3 km of altitude to base camp over the next week. The trek has a great altitude profile enabling all of us to reach progressively higher altitudes with no more than a headache. It was day 8 of the trek before we got our first view of Makalu, still some 30 km away, before the cloud rolled in for the usual afternoon trekking in snow! The latter part of the route crosses the Shipton col into the Barun valley and follows the route of the Everest reconnaissance of 1952. The Barun valley becomes increasingly glacial as the route gains altitude before turning the corner to our base camp at approximately 4850m.

The most striking feature of the route on arriving at base camp was that the icefall looked to have receded, leaving a large expanse of slabs at its base, and looked just about ready to fall over at a moment's notice. Early recce trips found a decent campsite close to the foot of the ice and Ian Venables and Dave Bunting spent a night there listening to rumblings and crashing ice! This left a hard choice, run the gauntlet of the ice fall, carrying loads in an obviously very unstable area or take the circuitous route along the tail of the SE ridge, over the summit of Peak 3 and down to the col at 6600m. The latter was by far the longer option and had its own difficulties in terms of distance and technical difficulties but was chosen as the best and safest way forward.

The ridge line over Peak 3 provided some spectacular climbing. A long boulder field extending above base camp provided a route to camp 1 (5800m). Above this more technical climbing on fixed ropes followed a snowy ridge then broken mixed ground around the Tibetan side of the ridge. After a false start, a good day's work by the exped leader and Alec saw the establishment of camp interim (initially hoped to be just that) at 6150m. This camp was well sheltered by a huge ice cliff on an extensive snowy plateau. When the cloud stayed away the views across Tibet and across to Chamlang were stunning. Much of this period we were dogged by high winds and poor visibility making the situation between camps 1 and interim much more reminiscent of a day on the Ben (complete with spindrift avalanches). Slowly the route was pushed out above camp interim but it was three weeks before camp two was reached. The route to camp two was long, necessitating fixing about 3.5 km of rope! It was also unrelenting with the promised easing off of angle never really materialising. The ridge did provide superb climbing with huge cornices overhanging the quick way to Tibet, views of Everest and Lhotse to the west and Kanchenguna to the east.

From camp 2 Andy Muddiman and Val Singleton made a good effort fixing ropes higher towards the black gendarme (made even harder for Andy when his camera decided to take a quick trip down towards basecamp without him). Dave Bunting and Uisdean MacDonald then took over, supported by our three high altitude porters and established a fourth camp (camp 3!!) at 7300m on the main ridge. It was now mid May and although we were well placed to make an attempt on the ridge the weather now deteriorated markedly with a large amount of fresh snow falling on the mountain making progress unacceptably dangerous. It was at this time that base camp received visitors in the way of Major General Sam Cowan (the Service Patron) and his wife Lady Anne who had trekked in for a six day stay.

During the latter half of May conditions failed to improve leading to many frustrating days. Progress up the mountain was effectively halted by the avalanche risks and although we did have a few good days there were never enough to allow further progress much beyond camp 3. Andy, Dick Gale and Colin managed to spend several days at camp 2 waiting for a break in the weather only to be rewarded with desperately hard conditions on the descent of the mountain. Eventually on 24 May with time running out the decision was made that we would attempt to strip the mountain and head for home.

The team did not climb the mountain, defeated by a combination of the length of the route, time taken in route finding and bad weather. A high point of 7500m was reached and over 4 km of rope fixed. The route itself, especially via Peak 3, remains an awesome objective and one deserving full consideration at some point in the future. One small grain of consolation was that on returning to Kathmandu the Ministry of Tourism informed us that Peak 3 was only opened last year and that we have been recorded as the official first ascentionists! We happen to know that Doug Scott was there before (and left some rope to prove it) but never let the truth spoil a good dit!!

Camp two was situated on a snowy saddle at the top of the ice fall. We had taken over three weeks to reach it via our long and circuitous route, to reach the same point had taken the Japanese 3 days!