On September 29, Crystal Davis-Robbins and I climbed a new route on a possibly unclimbed sub-summit east of Castle Peak. After filling our bellies with chai and momos in Shukto, the last village up the Miyar Nullah, we loaded horses with 10 days of food and fuel and began the 34km hike, arriving at the standard Miyar base camp eight hours later. There were six inches of fresh snow at camp, and the mountains were frosty white. We spent the next five days waiting out spells of bad weather before clear skies led us to pack for four days and set off up the Takdung Glacier, with the intention of trying the east face of Neverseen Tower. However, once we saw how much snow was on the peaks, we opted to stay low on the glacier and set up camp at 4,200m on a sandy beach, with views of the Ogre and a stream only a few feet away.

That day we had spotted a rocky summit east of Castle Peak. It was not marked on our map, so we decided to check it out. Next morning we approached up the moraine and spotted a wide chimney/offwidth system that split the middle of the south face. Thinking the climb would only be five pitches, we started around 11 a.m. Crystal began climbing run-out slab and face to reach the first pitch of the chimney. I then led a full pitch of stemming, chimneying, and offwidthing. The terrain continued to be wide and sustained, and we swapped leads for six more pitches until topping out on a false summit. The ridge above eased off and we switched into boots for a couple of hundred meters of simul-climbing over snow and blocks. The sky darkened as we climbed, and we finally reached the summit around 8 p.m. Luckily for us, the moon rose full and bright, helping to guide our path off the mountain. We knew we did not want to rappel our route, due to the flakes and chockstones we had encountered, so we climbed back down some of the easier terrain on the ridge and then made many rappels down the east shoulder into a large gully that led us to the bottom of the route. We made it back to camp around 2 a.m. under a brilliant night sky. We named our 600m route Poornima (5.10) and found no sign of other ascents of this summit.

Whitney Clark, AAC