Climbing Pakistan's remote Gasherbrum peaks
The Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan is home to more than 7,000 glaciers — the largest number outside of the Poles. The Baltoro is one, sitting 63 kilometres long within the Karakoram range, and famed for some of the world's highest peaks, including K2, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum.
Tom Livingstone and Slovenian climbing partner, Aleš Česen have just returned from two months on the Baltoro glacier. The pair primarily had their sights set on a first ascent up Gasherbrum 3 — the highest mountain under 8,000m in the world. A technical climb at high altitude, strong winds forced an approach via the north face. After three days climbing in snow and buffeting winds, they made it to 7,800m on a new route and got to within 150m of the summit, but ultimately hit a dead end in bad weather. With the weather setting in, fatigue and lack of sensible alternatives, they decided to relinquish their goal, and return another time.
After some hard-learned experiences from this part of the world (Tom talks about this here), he remains intrigued as to how far you can push yourself when taking on a technical route at high altitude; "In my eyes this is one of the ultimate challenges in climbing".
Other teams had attempted routes on Gasherbrum 3, and Tom and Aleš — who operated in a small, independent, lightweight team — were pleased with their achievements: "We hedged our bets, took a chance on a line, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. You need a lot of luck in this game!"
