What It Took to Achieve the Ski Descent of Pakistan’s Famed Peak

Field magazine

Can you describe your Great Trango Tower route? What does the crux look like?

Christina Lustenberger:

Base camp sits at just over 4000 meters [elevation], leaving camp you turn up the Nameless Gully, the same approach used to climb the Nameless Tower. From here it’s straightforward to high camp. High camp is 5000m under a huge boulder, somewhat protected from avalanche and rock fall hazards. When leaving highcamp we trend climbers right ascending towards the ramp system, and a beautiful line that leads to the upper part of the mountain. While this is still exposed, compared to the rest of the upper mountain it feels quite mellow. About halfway up the ramp there is a 5.9 rock step. We only had summer beta on our first attempt. In 2023 I led this pitch, and fixed a line for the crew to ascend. The rope was still there, and we used it again in 2024.

Once you reach the last rock stance it’s time to traverse onto the big glacier face. From the traverse, you continue up right to the narrow arm that eventually leads to a large horizontal crevasse pretty much spanning the entire face. This shut us down in 2023. In 2024, I was belayed across the crevasse protecting with three ice screws and eventually building an anchor for the rest of the group to follow. In 2024, once across the crevasse I knew we would summit.

Above the crevasse it’s mostly snow walking, avoiding big crevasses and assessing the snow on the steeper slope. The summit ridge was steeper and was protected by a schrund. We belayed Jim across and watched him climb to the summit. Watching him reach the summit was pretty amazing, his last big trip ended in tragedy, and it was uplifting to see him stand on top after so much hard behind him. We followed to the summit, and all stood up there together. On descent Chantel rappelled the steep section, while Jim and I chose to ski it. The ski descent was amazing. I built a V thread above the crevasse and the group rappelled through it. We continued skiing down with one more rappel through the mixed step.

What’s unique about climbing in Pakistan compared to other places?

Chantel Astorga:

It’s a much more wild environment than climbing in places like India and Nepal, everything takes longer to get to. Pakistan doesn’t have the infrastructure set in place that these other Himalayan countries have developed for tourism/trekking. It’s still “behind the scenes” so to speak.