Koz Sar, First Ascent. Ichiro Yamagata led an eight-member team from the Sendai Ichiko Alpine Club of Japan that made the first ascent of Koz Sar Peak (6677m) via a small ridge in the south face. From 5000 to 5900 meters, the climb offered a crumbly rock slab with an average angle of 70 degrees. In the last 300 meters of the route we found good rock on a few vertical sections that we were able to overcome by free climbing. But we couldn’t use rock shoes due to bad conditions. Instead, we climbed the steep rock gully and slab using ice axes and crampons. Other expedition members were Takashi Ota, Manami Takahashi, Toru Nagasawa, Kazuhide Watanabe, Katsuyuki Kuriyagawa, Yasufumi Saito and Kotaro Takami.

We left Islamabad on July 13, arriving at Gilgit the same day at 11 p.m. On the 17th, we left Giligit by jeep and reached Bad Swat. The next day, we started trekking from Bad Swat to Mahtran Dan. Base Camp (3800m) was established at the foot of south ridge on July 20, Camp I (4500m) at the upper end of right-hand side of the moraine of the west glacier on July 24, Camp II (5000m) just below the snow plateau at the bottom of the south face on August 4, Camp III (5600m) on the small ridge located on the south face on August 10 and Camp IV (5900m) on the southwest ridge on August 14. We used a total of 1400 meters of fixed rope from 5200 to 6200 meters. Nine hundred meters of 9- and 10mm caving rope was fixed from 5200 meters (just above the bottom of the face) to 5850 meters (the crest of the southwest ridge). It took five days to fix this part of the route. Two hundred meters of 9mm caving rope and 300 meters of 9mm climbing rope were used for fixing the route from Camp IV to 6200 meters. It took only one day to fix this part. Takashi Ota and Katsuyuki Kuriyagawa reached the summit from CIV on August 17. For the anchors, we used approximately 100 pitons, ten bolts, ten ice screws, five snow stakes and one set of nuts. The team left BC and descended to Mahtran Dan on August 21.

Takashi Ota, Sendai Ichiko Alpine Club, Japan