Patrice Bret, David Girard, and I (France) spent mid-July to mid-August in Pakistan with the main goal of repeating one of the routes on Trango Tower. We spent around a week climbing the Slovenian Route, though the top pitches were in poor condition, and so we finished via Run For Cover.

The extraordinary weather allowed us an additional window of opportunity, and after two exhausting days of walking up the broken Trango Glacier, we set camp at 4,700m on the North Hainabrakk Glacier, below the serac-torn north face of Shipton Spire (5,885m). An obvious rock and ice spur, protected from icefall, rises directly to a point on the ridge west of the summit.

At 5 a.m. on August 5 we left camp and climbed a 100m goulotte to reach the crest of the spur. The rock above went free up to 6a/b and was followed by steep mixed terrain. We were forced to use aid from pegs and jammed axe blades to bypass the last crux. From there 150m of ice flutes took us to the crest of the west ridge, where we terminated the route after 16 hours of climbing. We made a bivouac on the crest at 5,500m and spent all next day rappelling from pegs and Abalakovs. We named the route to the ridge Bismillah (800m, TD+ 6a/b A2 WI4+ M4), which locally means “enjoy your meal.” 

Pascal Trividic, France

[Editor’s note: The north face of Shipton was attempted in 2006 by Slovakians Gabo Cmarik and Dodo Kopold, possibly using the same start to get to the plateau above the initial seracs. They bailed after 500m when Cmarik got sunstroke.]