Shispare. On June 16, Yukiteru Masui, leader, Seiji Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Hitoshi Kokubu, Naoki Satoh and I started from Barut with two high-altitude porters and 70 local porters. On the 18th, we made Base Camp at 4100 meters at Youch on the north side of the Pasu Glacier. We selected the first spur of the northeast ridge of Shispare as our route and placed Advance Base on the glacier at the foot of the spur. We climbed on the west side of the spur to reach the upper plateau of the glacier, where on June 25 we placed Camp I at 4800 meters. We climbed a steep snow face to the ridge and followed the knife-edge, fixing 1500 meters of rope to the plateau above the ridge, where we placed Camp II at 5750 meters on July 7. We crossed the plateau and climbed a snow ridge to a col after passing three small peaks and climbed a 6350-meter peak with 200 meters of fixed rope. We made Camp III at 6300 meters on July 13. Camp IV was put at 6800 meters on the plateau leading to Shispare’s summit on July 18. On July 20, Masui, Kokubu and Ozawa left Camp IV at three A.M. and reached the summit (7611 meters, 24,971 feet) at one P.M. after overcoming soft, difficult snow 100 meters below the peak. This was the second ascent of the peak. We used the same route as the Polish-German party in 1974.

Katsumoto Seko, Komono Alpine Club, Japan