The German Alpine Club organizes a three-year program—DAV Expedition Teams—to encourage young alpinists to explore unclimbed routes. At the end of the 2007–2009 program, an eight-member team traveled to the Hunza Valley for a six-week trip. The highlight was the first ascent of the southeast face and southwest ridge of Hunza Peak (6,270m, 36°22’55.89”N, 74°39’18.94”E).

On August 7, 2009, after team members had established base camp, an advanced base at 4,500 meters, and Camp 1 below the southeast side of Hunza Peak at 5,200 meters, Julian Beermann and Florian Jehle left base camp with 25 kilograms each, and two days later they reached the upper rock wall on the southeast face of Hunza Peak, right of the large couloir that separates Hunza from Bublimotin. 

The first rock pitch went quickly, but the second demanded full commitment, tunneling through a large snow mushroom into an icy chimney, requiring five hours of hard work. The next day, they managed three beautiful aid pitches on excellent rock, which they fixed before returning to Camp 1 for a day’s rest. 

Starting again on August 12, they quickly regained their high point and continued to free climb on wonderful granite before having to resort to more aid to reach and overcome an icy overhang. Above, five more pitches of challenging mixed climbing led to a ramp of good névé rising to the crest of the southwest ridge. 

After a bivouac, they climbed the remaining 300 meters up the ridge to reach the top at 9 a.m. They descended the southwest ridge until a little above the col before Bublimotin, then rappelled into the east-facing couloir that separates Bublimotin from Hunza Peak. Descending this, they were back in base camp that evening. They called their new route Sujo (5+ A3 WI4). 

Later, Jehle and Fritz Miller repeated the original 1982 French route on Bublimotin, climbing the east-facing couloir to the col with Hunza Peak, then up the northeast ridge to the 5,995-meter summit. 

Shortly before departing the area, Beermann, Jehle, and Miller, with Lukas Binder and Chris Semmel, made a possible first ascent of Sorry Peak (5,725m, 36°22'20.98"N, 74°38'9.94"E). This lies southwest of Bublimotin and was reached by climbing the couloir toward Bublimotin then branching left up a large snow couloir, eventually gaining the summit of the snow peak from the southeast. (Between this and Bublimotin is a small summit likely climbed by Doug Scott and Stephen Sustad while inspecting the south side of Bublimotin in 1985.)

—Lindsay Griffin, AAJ, with information from Florian Jehle, Germany

Editor’s Note: This climb, previously unreported in the AAJ, was probably only the second ascent of Hunza Peak. In 1991, Mick Fowler and Crag Jones (U.K.) made the first ascent, climbing from the Hasanabad (northwest) side to the col between Hunza and Bublimotin and from there ascending the southwest ridge to the top (AAJ 1992). In 2025, a Czech pair climbed the southeast face for the third ascent—see the report here. The mountain has a series of snowy tops of roughly equal height—both the British and German parties are believed to have reached the southwest top, and the Czechs reached the northeast.