Sergio Martín de Santos and I arrived in Leh on June 30, and after acclimatizing near town we headed to Stok Kangri (6,150m), which we climbed on July 6 via the normal route. This completed our acclimatization and the following day we walked up toward Sukhu Kangri (6,005m, 33º57.5051’N, 77º27.2460’E), a summit on the watershed ridge that runs south-southeast from Stok Kangri.

We camped for the night on the moraine at 5,500m and then quickly discovered that the conditions were dry and the routes we had planned at home were impractical. Instead we opted for a line on the northeast face, parallel to the one normally followed to climb the mountain; we saw there was no cornice at the exit.

We left the tent at 2 a.m. on July 8, made good progress across the hard snow of the glacier, and reached the bottom of the face while it was still dark. We climbed the first 100m (50°) unroped, then pitched a narrower stretch. The first section was mixed, and then we climbed snow or ice up to 70° all the way to the southeast ridge, where we joined the normal route. This we followed to the summit. We descended along the normal route. It was now hot and the snow had deteriorated, but we made our tent by 3 p.m. and base camp the same day. We have called our probable new line Animaren Oihua (250m, D), which means Cry of the Soul in Basque.

After a few days of rest in Leh, we set out on July 12 for the Kang Yatze Range (a.k.a. Kang Yissay) and reached Kang Yatze base camp (5,045m) on the 14thvia a passage of the Konmaru La (5,200m). On July 15 we climbed Reponi Mallai Ri (6,050m) by the standard route. It’s a perfect summit from which to check out the surrounding mountains and valleys. We saw the northwest face of Dzo Jongo was in good condition, chose a couple of possible lines, and decided to make a final decision at the foot of the face.

[Editor’s note: Dzo Jongo (east peak, 6,214m, and west peak, 6,280m, 33º43.553’N, 77º34.491’E, both altitudes based on GPS readings) is an accessible though less frequently climbed “trekking peak” immediately to the southeast of Kang Yatze. The normal ascent is via the easy east-northeast ridge from a 5,100m base camp to the north. The lower east summit is climbed more regularly than the western peak; it is not clear in which year the first ascent of the latter was made, but the north ridge appears to have been climbed in the early 1990s.]

We now had two days of bad weather, but on July 18 it improved and we were able to reach Dzo Jongo base camp in three hours. Another one and a half hours’ walk brought us to moraine in the middle of the glacier, where we made our camp at 5,670m.

The weather was poor and we couldn’t see the face, but at 5 a.m. the sky was clear. In cold, windy weather we reached the foot of the broad northwest face, some distance right of the east summit. The bergschrund gave no real problem, after which a pitch of very hard snow and ice followed by two poorly protected pitches of rotten snow led to a sheet of hard ice. Above this we followed an attractive thin goulotte on the right, through the upper rocky part of the face, to a mixed section leading to the east-northeast ridge at 6,150m. From here we followed the unstable and bouldery ridge of the west peak to its summit, arriving at 3:30 p.m. Descending by the north ridge and then the northeast flank (45°), we reached our camp at 6 p.m. We named the route Elur (350m, MD 80° M4+) after my five-year-old son.

Oskar Porras Aramendi, Spain, translated by Sergio Martin de Santos