At 10:30 a.m. on March 9, 2012, as Polish climbers Bielecki and Golab were descending from the summit of Gasherbrum I, having made the first winter ascent, Austrian Gerfreid Goeschl contacted his home country by satellite phone to say that he, Ced...
The Karakoram 2009 Trentina Expedition—Michele Cagol, Fabio Leoni, Elio Orlandi, and I, all over 40 years old—proved to be a success, without injuries or other nasty surprises. We managed a new route up the southwest pillar of K7 West, reaching an...
In August, the four-man team of Adrian Laing and Scott Standen from Australia and Bruce Dowrick and Jon Sedon from New Zealand free-climbed a variation to the route Ledgeway to Heaven (Favresse-Favresse-Pustelnik-Villanueva, 2007) on Nafees Cap, a...
The Swiss team of Simon Riediker, Mirco Stalder, and I completed several routes in the Charakusa Valley, including the first ascent of a 6,200-meter peak. We arrived in the valley on July 19 and left August 15. In order to acclimatize, Mirco and I...
Bad weather thwarted our plans to attempt unclimbed Hassan Peak. Instead, Lorenzo Angelozzi and I looked elsewhere and attempted three other summits, on two of which we were successful. Our first ascent was Margherita’s Peak, a previously unclimbe...
Miguel Anta, Ruben Calvo, and I spent 35 days from mid June to the end of July on the Charakusa Glacier. For the first 10 days base camp was covered with snow. We planned to attempt a new line on the southwest pillar of K7 West.As temperatures wer...
In April 2010, Tim DeRoehn and I were awarded one of the inaugural Copp-Dash Inspire Awards. It would be our first trip to Asia. We had big goals, specifically to make the first complete ascent of the southwest pillar of K7 West, and to explore th...
Our party of eight departed base camp (ca 6,400’) for the Easton Glacier route at approximately 1 a.m. on June 9, 2013. It was very windy and cold. We had to shout to be heard, even in close proximity. I noticed on the Roman Wall (steepest secti...
Ondrej Mandula and I climbed a new route on the southwest side of Latok IV (6,456m) in July. We established advanced base camp four or five hours up the Baintha Lukpar Glacier from our base camp by the Biafo Glacier. The next day we crossed the he...
In May 2008, when I was making my first ski traverse from Shimshal to Askole via the Lupke La, the high pass connecting the Braldu and Sim Gang Glaciers, I climbed an easy peak north of the Sim Gang Glacier (36°01’36.8” N, 75°41’41.1” E) while the...
One of the Latok group’s most coveted objectives, the 2,000m west face of Latok III, was finally climbed by a four-man Russian team led by Alexander Odintsov. The ascent realized an 11-year dream for the veteran leader. Considering past events on ...
The Bondid Valley extends to the west of Kande village, opposite the well-known Nangma Valley. Mojca Svajger and I visited this valley in September after an unsuccessful attempt on Rakaposhi. We set up base camp at 4,500m on the left side of the M...
“Not even the American ambassador to Pakistan is getting past these gates. Closed means closed!” These are the words that welcomed us to the Kondus Valley of Pakistan…or just short of it. Months earlier, Matt Hepp and I had applied for a “special ...
In the summer of 2009, Eamonn Walsh, Ian Welsted, and I traveled to Pakistan to play in bigger hills than the Canadian Rockies back home. We had first visited the Hispar Glacier region in 2006, when we attempted the southwest face of Khunyang Chhi...
Bruce Miller, Steve Su, and I left the U.S. on July 11 for an attempt on unclimbed Pumari Chhish East (ca. 6,900m). This peak and our base camp were located on the Yutmaru Glacier, a tributary of the Hispar Glacier. Steve and Pete Takeda had attem...
From August 20 to September 20 Martin Jakobsson and I, both originally Swedish, visited the Hispar Glacier, establishing base camp at its junction with the Khani Basa Glacier. Our goal was 6,651m Tahu Rutum by a new route, the northwest ridge [thi...
In July and August 2010 a Joint Japanese-Pakistani expedition visited the Bara Khun Valley, north of the Karakoram Highway. The team was led by Japanese cartographer Tsuneo Miyamori, and both he and Shizuo Akai carried out considerable GPS survey ...
Within a year Pakistan Youth Outreach has organized three expeditions and a training camp for youngsters in the peaks of the Shimshal region. Its purpose is to educate young people in mountaineering and the outdoors, to promote women’s adventure, ...
Rising west from Gulmit village on the Karakoram Highway is the Bulkish Yaz Glacier, dominated at its head by an outstanding peak named Gulmit Tower, one of several summits toward the end of the long ridge running east from Ultar. The village is ...
I first caught sight of Karim Sar in 2007 from the top of a small, previously unclimbed peak between the Baltar and Toltar glaciers. Lorenzo Corona identified the lovely ice-capped mountain to the south as the one his friend Ivo Ferrari was attemp...