Nameless Tower, Trango Towers, Baltoro Karakoram. Our members were Andrew Atkinson, Stuart Holmes, Alan Scott, Ian Lonsdale and me as leader. We wanted to climb a new route on the Nameless Tower alpine-style. We arrived at Base Camp on the Trango Glacier on June 12. We hoped to complete the route in ten days and carried that amount of food and fuel. After a reconnaissance to look at the face above the Dunge Glacier, we decided that we would attempt a line from the bottom of the southwest face, much lower than the start of the 1976 American line, which took the hidden ramp. We climbed to a huge comer system which eventually led to a junction with the 1976 route just below the snowpatch. Bad weather forced a retreat on the fourth day with nine inches of snow falling. We returned after another three days to establish camp on the snowpatch, using a Photon tent and three portaledges. We then took a line up the central slabs, moving slightly right and up to the broken line below the huge rock scar. A broken crack system led up to the right of the scar on very steep rock. Only one ledge, not big enough for us five, was encountered in nearly 4000 feet of climbing. At one P.M. on the sixth day we were all just above a small snowpatch below the right end of the summit snowfield. The weather had worsened steadily all morning and it broke early in the afternoon. We had only a pitch and a half to reach easy ground, but we couldn’t ascend the final 8-inch offwidth crack. Hail poured off the snowfield like cement from a cement chute. Wearing double boots on verglas, we had little choice but to go down for the night. The next morning was no better and with only one day’s food and fuel, we descended after an hour’s try to jümar the ropes above us, which were covered with a half-inch of ice. We had climbed 29 pitches. An alpine grade of ED would seem appropriate.

David Lampard, England