In September, Cas van de Gevel, Frank Chargois, and I (all Dutch) traveled to the Djangart Range, where the hunters we hoped to hire to carry our equipment into the Djangart Valley were too busy hunting. We had to settle for a base camp in the Kaichi Valley. On the plus side, we could reach our camp at the foot of Djangart Pass, at 3,300m, by truck. From here, the Kaichi Valley runs south to the border with China.

With little information, we decided to acclimatize on a mountain near the head of the valley so we could have a look around. On 25th of September, we climbed the northeast side of a peak on the west side of the valley, mainly on snow up to 50° with some poor rock on the summit ridge. The main summit was to the west, but with high avalanche danger and very loose rock, we settled for a foresummit of the east peak (4,697m, 41°36’31.3”N, 78°49’47.9”E). We’d like to call this Pik Chargois, in memory of Frank’s father.

After a couple of rest days, we walked up the valley again to camp at 3,600m. From here we climbed a classic 50° snow/ice couloir with some steeper bits to a 4,823m col at 41°37’24.1”N, 78°49’51.6”E. We rappelled the route using Abalakov anchors without going to the summit, because the rock quality was the poorest any of us had ever encountered. We would like to name the route the Kulu Couloir, in honor of the hunters’ leader—because of him, we ended up in the Kaichi Valley.

All in all we had a nice short trip in which we did two great climbs, but because of the bad rock did not reach any main summit. [Both mountains attempted are ca 4,900m and may be unclimbed; they are both south of Pik Laetitia (4,940m), which was climbed in 2011.]

— Mike van Berkel, The Netherlands