Karun Koh Attempt. Towering over the mountains around it at 7350 metres (24,115 feet), Karun Koh lies north of the main Karakoram chain. It is only open to joint expeditions. It had been attempted only once, by an Austrian expedition led by Robert Schauer in 1983. (See A.A.J., 1984, page 304.) In 1984 our four-man team of Al Rouse, Pakistanis Major Ikram Ahmed Khan and Maqusood Ahmen and me followed the Austrian route. We set out from Islamabad on May 25 by mini-bus, reaching Gilgit in the day, and the following day we drove to Markhun by jeep and Suzuki van. We left Karkhun on May 29 with 30 porters. The route starts up a narrow gorge which then opens out into a wide cultivated valley dotted with small stone houses. Beyond the cultivated area, the path winds through sparse juniper woods to the upper pastures. We camped by some derelict herders’ huts at 12,250 feet. Karun Kuh was still concealed from view by a bend in the valley. The next day we reached the snow line at 13,125 feet, just short of the snout of the Karun Koh Glacier. Karun Koh first appears as you come around the comer of the glacier. The two skyline ridges looked deceptively easy, for their very steep approaches are hidden by intervening ground. We spent a fortnight acclimatizing on the surrounding peaks. On June 14 we reconnoitred the southwest ridge of Karun Koh, finding a safe route up the snow slopes to the side of the glacier and then along a glaciated shelf below the crest of the ridge. We camped in a snow basin just short of the southwest ridge and then reconnoitred a route to the foot of the ridge. This was barred by three steep rock pinnacles and the only way around them seemed to be a long traverse on snow and ice below them. Above the pinnacles a knife-edged ridge led to a barrier of séracs at about 23,000 feet. Beyond that the difficulties seemed to ease. We were back at our high camp on June 22 after a few days of unsettled weather. We shifted this camp closer to the foot of the pinnacles to 18,700 feet. On July 23 Al and I set out for our first attempt on the mountain with four days’ food, a selection of ice and rock gear and 100 metres of rope. Almost immediately we encountered hard, bare ice. We had set out at three A.M. and by ten o’clock the sun had softened what little snow was covering the ice on the traverse and we had climbed only nine rope-lengths. There seemed to be at least another six pitches before we reached its end and the probability that we should have to contend with bare ice for most of the way to the top. We therefore decided to retreat and to try to find an easier route around the unexplored east side of the mountain. On June 24 the four of us crossed the shoulder below the southwest ridge to drop down onto the glacier to the south of Karun Koh. We followed this down to where it was joined by a steep icefall which descended the eastern side and then climbed this to a col to the east of the mountain. We could now see the southeast, the east and the north ridges of Karun Koh. They were dramatically steep and narrow with the faces in between threatened by séracs. They looked even more difficult than the pinnacled southwest ridge. We returned to the southwest side to try this once more. Unfortunately the weather now broke and after ten days of continuous bad weather and one more attempt curtailed by it, we judged that it had set in for a long time. We therefore evacuated the mountain.

Christian Bonington