Maiun (Mayun) Chhish (5,880m, 36°20'13"N, 74°27'58"E) rises directly above the western end of the main Hunza Valley and offers panoramic views of the Batura chain to its north and Rakaposhi to the south. The only known prior ascent was on August 9, 1993, when Peter Thompson (U.K.) soloed the north face and east-northeast ridge from the Muchuar and Mandosh glaciers.

In June 2016, Nicolas Preitner (Switzerland) and I were climbing in the Hunza and, as one of our acclimatization exercises, we approached Maiun Chhish from the Hassanabad Nallah, starting at the bridge on the Karakoram Highway just below Aliabad. Much of the local advice we had been given about trails to the high pastures of Hassanabad village turned out to be useless, presumably due to the serious flooding that had taken place in April. After one completely false start and then a long session of impromptu scrambling up gullies of caked mud and loose rocks, we finally gained the ridge crest at approximately 4,300m. Here we joined the line of a damaged aqueduct built by the village of Nasirabad; at least one local snow leopard had also been using it as a right of way. This led us very easily to the back of the drainage [Hachindar Nala on the Japanese Miyamori map], from which a scramble up scree allowed us to gain the small glacier below the eastern ramparts of Maiun Chhish. There we camped at 5,000m.

The east face is a steep snowfield (passages of 45°) by which we passed between cliff bands to reach the east-northeast ridge at 5,600m. We proceeded in softening low-angle snow and rising cumulus to the true summit. That night we camped at 5,600m for acclimatization and reconnaissance purposes. The following morning found us in an approaching snowstorm, and a predawn getaway had us back in Aliabad by midafternoon.

Bruce Normand, Switzerland