In the summer of 2022, Moritz Sigmund and I traveled with four friends, all from the South Tyrol region of Italy, to the Kara-su valley. It was our first expedition, and none of us had ever climbed such big walls, but we wanted to open a new route. After we repeated The Diagonal on Yellow Wall and a route on Pik Kotina, the weather got unstable, so we decided to try a shorter line on the northeast face of Little Asan (ca 3,600m), the lower neighbor of Asan.

We first walked up to one of the most obvious lines in the valley, a huge dihedral, but were disappointed to find a line of bolts up the corner. (We could not find any information about this route.) Instead, we looked 200m farther left at a line that looked much more difficult—some blank sections made us wonder if it was even possible to climb. Armed with thin pegs, small cams, and micro-nuts, we attempted to climb a steep dihedral on the second pitch. The crack was very thin, and the idea of free climbing was still far away. The next hard pitch also looked impossible to free, but we used some tiny holds to reach a beautiful crack. We returned to the route the next day, and the upper pitches rewarded us with beautiful climbing. We topped out very happy about our new route and psyched for free climbing attempts.

We needed two more days to decipher all the moves on the crux pitches, but eventually, on August 4 and 5, we freed all the pitches. (Pitch two is 8a, and pitch four is 8a+.) We placed 14 bolts and 12 pitons. As a sign of gratitude for Kyrgyz hospitality, we named our route Ak‐Kalpak (280m, 8a+) after the traditional Kyrgyz hat, which stands for the pride and unity of the Kyrgyz people.

— Patrick Tirler, Italy