In 2008, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk attempted to be the first climbers up the mixed-route/big-wall climb of the Shark’s Fin route on 20,700-foot Mt. Meru in the Garhwal Himalayas. They failed mere feet from the top, and they’d nearly starved themselves in the attempt, collectively losing nearly 60 pounds during the climb. In a recent sit-down with Chin and Ozturk, Renan deadpanned about their massive hunger at altitude: “We took food for seven days. And we were on the wall for 19.”

This year they went back and in September the trio summited in just 12 days…and brought about eight days worth of food, so they starved, but not quite as much.

We wondered about their provisioning for a trip to a mountain at the headwaters of the Ganges, the holiest of peaks in all of India. What did they eat, when they did eat, and what were their food crutches?

So first, describe the climb.
Renan: Conrad said it best when he said it’s like climbing Denali [because of the snow and ice to be conquered from base camp] and then climbing El Cap. [The wall itself is 4,300 feet.]

And how do you stay healthy, especially having to eat locally in a country like India on your multi-day trek up to base camp?
Jimmy: It’s a big job just trying to stay healthy. You have to be really careful what you eat or it’s going to be gnarly.

Renan: First, you try to make sure it’s been boiled. If you have to eat something fresh, like fruit, you must be able to peel it. The entire thing. [Laughs] Then, anyway, you kind of assume you’re going to get something. I always do.

Jimmy: And you always take antibiotics, several different ones, with you, just to tackle this.

Renan: And then you need several kinds of water filters. Lower down you have to be able to thoroughly filter for everything. We have a Miox, one of those tiny pens and a bigger gravity filter.

Jimmy: Higher up you can drink straight from glacier, since nothing lives up there. You use a straw.

Renan: If it’s been warm during the day on the wall often you can shove a straw right into a crack and drink directly from the run-off, otherwise you’re just getting more and more dehydrated the farther up you go.

So that’s hydration, but what about grub. What were your go-tos in base-camp, things that really reminded you of home, that made you happy?
Jimmy: Oh, man, we bring quite a lot of comfort food, because we’re there for like two months. So there were dried mangos, M&Ms, because I really like chocolate, roasted, salted nuts; popcorn’s great in base camp; gummy bears are pretty key; I bring a lot of hard candies like Werther’s.

R: We brought Peet’s coffee.

J: And then there’s literally like a 70-pound duffel of Clif products.

What about booze?
R: Sure. Either you pick up a bottle of whiskey in the duty free or you’re at home and you empty out a water bottle and refill it with some sort of booze; Conrad had a Sprite bottle of whiskey and a Sprite bottle of gin at camp.

J: You always travel with these plastic coke bottles, because they’re built to withstand really rugged abuse and incredibly high pressures.

That kinda covers the vices. What about necessities?
J: We bring good hard cheeses because they don’t spoil, some really good Northern Italian dry salamis, for the same reason. These things taste good and they’re real food and they’re dense with calories so they’re great climbing food and you can pretty much add them to any meal to make it better. All those things are huge; you don’t think about them because you’re so focused on the climbing gear and the photo/video stuff, but it goes so far in making you feel human.

And then what happens to all this yummy stuff when you start the business of going up?
R: Once you leave the ground comfort food goes out the window. We had the same meal every day for 12 days. It’s whatever’s most energy efficient. It’s oatmeal in the morning, couscous at night and Clif bars during the day and we’ll bring hard cheese because it’s super dense and fatty, and calorie efficient…

So, dinner’s just couscous and cheese?
J: Well we’d put some bean mix or spice mix in there, and olive oil because it’s really good calories by weight and it’s great for cooking and you can pour it on anything and it tastes good. If you don’t have that much food you can pour olive oil in it and get more calories.

R: And we’ll cook it in one stove and pass the pot. We’ll just have one pot and one spoon and pass it around.

J: I forgot; we also brought chocolate.

What happened on the first attempt where you had so little food for so many days?
R: On the first attempt we were hit by a storm early on so we knew to start rationing very early. The best food like the cheese and salami ran out around day 15. By the end we were splitting Clif bars for meals and then having 15-plus hour days of labor at altitude…it was full on depletion. Also, at serious altitude like the Shark’s Fin other factors take over that supersede eating: you’re usually so consumed by the intricate climbing, nauseated from the acclimatization process and beat down by storms that you do end up going very slow and starving.

Okay, but this time you triumphed, and Anker perked up some summit coffee, actually lugging the stove for the final day, after three straight days of 15 hours of climbing, right?
R: Yes! But that wasn’t the Peet’s. On the wall all of our coffee was the lighter weight Starbucks VIA instant packets.

Renan, you and Conrad are the coffee geeks, so how’d you brew it?
I normally use my Alessi 9090 percolator in camp but this time we just had a drip filters. On the wall we all had Nalgene bottles to use for the instant brews.

Ledge photo by Jimmy Chin

Tagged as: alpinism, coffee, dirtbag gourmet, food