Asia, Pakistan, Charakusa Valley, Badal Wall, New Route to Shoulder; Nafees' Cap, First Ascent; Iqbal's Wall, New Route

Publication Year: 2008.

Badal Wall, new route to shoulder; Nafees’ Cap, first ascent; Iqbal’s Wall, new route. After failed attempts on three new routes, the team of Nicolas and Olivier Favresse (Belgium), Adam Pustelnik (Poland), and Sean Villanueva (Belgium) succeeded on a new route called Badal (1,200m, 5.12+ A1) on the huge rock wall on the west side of K7 West, all free except for 5m of icy cracks. They then made a single-push, all-free first ascent of Nafees’ Cap, a spire at the base of K7’s south face, by a new route called Ledgeway to Heaven (1,300m, 5.12+). Before leaving the valley, Nicolas Favresse, Jerzy Stefanski (Poland), and Villanueva returned to one of the lines they had failed to climb earlier and made the first ascent of the Ski Track (400m, 5.11) on Iqbal’s Wall. Nicolas Favresse’s story about this expedition appears earlier in this Journal.