The first ascent of Great Trango Tower's southwest ridge
written by:  Kelly Cordes

Just Climbing

The first ascent of Great Trango Tower's southwest ridge

By Kelly Cordes, 4/20/05

It seems to me that there's times and events in life –  too few and too far between – that a person never forgets, because it's a time when everything you've been looking for, dreamt of, worked toward and wanted to be finally connects with an inexplicable depth, and you realize it might never work that way again. The sort of thing that leaves you gazing off later, at random times in public places, seemingly spaced-out like some druggie burnout, except that the memories and moments replaying are vivid and real, more real than anything you've known. That's what four and a half days in Pakistan were for me, last July, when Josh Wharton and I were free.

We'd gone to Pakistan for the southwest ridge of Great Trango Tower: 7,400 vertical feet from base to summit and unclimbed, though not un-attempted and not unknown. Some have called it the biggest rock route in the world, though I don't know if that's true, nor does it matter. What I do know is that we wanted to climb it, and we didn't care what others thought. Not the fear-mongering populous, too afraid to travel, who bought into the hype and were busy wrapping their homes in plastic wrap and duct tape, watching the terror alert level rise every time Bush needed a boost in the polls. Not the super-famous, A-Team pair of climbers who called me when they heard of our plans, wondering if we were really going, because, well, they were too and, well, the one calling me had seen that route years ago (along with every other climber who's ever walked along the Baltoro or Trango glaciers) and had really, really wanted to climb it for a really, really long time and, well, are we really going? (Yes, we're really going, good luck to you, see you there, I said. They bailed.) And certainly not the many people who, clearly, gave us little chance of pulling it off, certainly not in the style we'd envisioned.

Style – some people don't care, but I do, because I love climbing and I love the mountains. "Hey man, it's just climbing," goes the cliché. I know. It's worthless. Like managing that 401k account, slaving away to buy more unnecessary crap, or most things that most people do with their lives when you really think about it. Style is indisputably a personal choice – climb how you want, so long as you don't wreck the place and are honest about what you do. But for me, it's deeper than just climbing; for better or for worse, I can't separate how I approach the things I value from the person I want to be. Yes, to me, it matters.

***

In retrospect, our "Disaster Style" plan (to use the correct nomenclature) bordered on the absurd. Fueled with delusional optimism, we figured we could climb the route with a single 28-pound pack and a relatively basic rack. And, of course, alpine-style. We had a double set of cams, a bunch of wires, a few pitons, no snow or ice pro. From a mile and a half below, the glacier descent and the mixed climbing up high looked easy, so for "ice gear" we had Gore-Tex sneakers, ultralight aluminum strap-on crampons, and one and a half ice axes between us (the "half" is because Josh's axe was a third tool that he and his father made even lighter by chopping the already diminutive shaft down; I brought a real, but lightweight, axe). We brought just one fuel canister, because we counted on finding water flowing down the rock (we went thirsty). Food comprised a couple of soup packets (useless without water) and, mostly, bars and gels (hard to choke down without water). We also brought two summer-weight down sleeping bags, one pad, one ultralight emergency tarp and an aluminized emergency blanket (no bivy sacs or tent). Not much else.

But far more than our strategy, gear or intense pre-trip training, the single most crucial element to our ascent happened early, without discussion and not while climbing. At our second bivy, our only fuel canister sputtered empty. We'd climbed some 4,000 feet of broken terrain, mostly moderate (lots of 5.8, some scrambling, and some 5.10/11, including a 5.11 R/X pitch that Josh fired) and not terribly dangerous, just one pitch of death blocks. Most of the huge, loose boulders were perched on ledges. We were feeling strong, and were halfway – the easy half – up the route. The skies were clear and we'd melted enough snow and ice for water to last through noon the next day. Continuing upward without fuel might've been illogical, but as we each settled onto our sloping rocks to bivy, we said nothing. "Nothing" because something stronger, something rooted deep in our subconsciousness, had taken hold. It was, in retrospect, reflected for us both in the closing words of my journal entry the night before starting up the biggest route of our lives: "Be mentally strong. Suffer well, it'll be worth it."

Day three started cold, and I leapfrogged our biggest cam up a crack until it turned to hands. Before long, we'd reached the "headwall," and Josh took over, masterfully piecing it together – on the second pitch of the first day, our jury-rigged gear sling came undone and we lost one-quarter of our cams, all key sizes for the headwall. Above, I took us up more moderate terrain to a bivy, and day four continued into steep rock blended with sketchy sugar snow. Late in the day was the technical climbing highlight. Were it not such a spectacular lead, it might seem silly to single out one pitch on such an overwhelming total package. We were close to the top, near 20,500 feet and a day past the previous high points and the relative comfort of their proven retreat paths. It'd been 30 hours since we'd drunk the last of our water. Rappelling down the overhanging big-wall faces on either side of the often knife-edged ridge wasn't an option, given our rack and no bolt kit. Reversing our course, with the multiple tension traverses, pendulums, and runouts, would have been problematic at best, and we knew the summit, and therefore our descent had to be close. Our plan was to rappel from the top and connect to the serac-riddled, avalanche-swept hanging glacier to the northwest.

It was Josh's block, and he'd just punched it, for 20 unprotected feet above a ledge, through a 5.10+ offwidth. Above, he led left around the corner onto the smooth bigwall face (home to the famous American and Russian routes of 1999), linking together 5.11 free climbing, dubious aid moves and pendulums to reach the only passage possible without a serious aid rack: a verglas smear in a right-facing corner, down and left. He strapped one of his crampons to his left rock shoe, put his pint-sized kiddie-toy of an ice axe in his left hand and tapped his way upward, climbing verglas with his left side while crimping and smearing 5.11 granite with his right. Thirty-five feet above his last pro, an equalized knifeblade and beak, he gained a perfect bivy ledge. Following, I lowered out multiple times, pulled some of his scant gear under body weight, and jugged vertical to overhanging granite 7,000+ feet above the Trango Glacier in awe. It was the finest lead I've ever seen.

On the ledge, I cultivated a tiny pile of ice chunks by my head – my ritual throat-wetting – and curled into a ball for another night of something resembling sleep.

As storm clouds crept close on our fifth morning, I took over leading and, wearing every piece of clothing I had, grunted up a vertical, mixed off-width capped by an overhanging cornice. Three more mixed pitches brought us to the west summit, where I didn't stop or even pause, missing out on what must be one of the grandest views on earth. I scratched over the top of the snow-covered slab and down the other side, to where I could get an anchor and we could descend. After several rappels, the wall grew increasingly blank, forcing one rappel from a single RP in a seam, backed by two horrible knife-blades. Our relief—if that's what a virtually emotion-less state could be called—at reaching the glacier was short-lived as, after 70 feet of pulling and with the other rope end midway up the smooth wall, our ropes became stuck. We both yarded with all our remaining strength. Nothing. Jugging on the mystery jam, with the other end unsecured, was a roulette spin we were unwilling to take, so we cut what was left: 70 feet of our tag line. We had no snow or ice pro, and our decimated rock rack was useless. Ahead lay 2,500-vertical-feet of crevasse and serac-riddled glacier. We'd traverse, punch-through slots thigh-deep, downclimb ice up to 60-degrees and make one short rappel from an ice bollard. But before starting down and just after tying in, I said to Josh, simply, "No mistakes." Our thousand-yard stares met, he nodded and we began downclimbing.

A couple of tense hours later we reached the toe of the glacier and fell upon a stream of melt-water, gorging ourselves. We soon scrambled down to the Nameless gully and unroped. Josh's words of congratulations and our embrace momentarily snapped me out of my trance, and I felt a surge of emotion. It seemed fitting that it was only us, no hype, no web reports to send or sat-phone dispatches to make (especially since we didn't have one). There was, however, one spectator. As we stumbled down the rubble-strewn gully, a lone figure, clad in tattered clothes and sandals, scrambled rapidly up toward us. It was Ghafoor, our good friend and cook, coming with the biggest smile I've ever seen and a huge hug for us both. I felt tears, like I was crying, but my body spared no moisture. Ghafoor placed glittery ribbons around our necks and grabbed our pack – he refused to let us take it down, "No-no, Sir, I carry, I carry!" (no matter what we said, he insisted on calling us "Sir") and set off at high speed, hopping over boulders, to prepare one helluva hot meal. Ghafoor had told us that he'd be watching from camp through our binoculars, though we doubted he'd be able to see us. Once we were high on the ridge, he hustled out to the nearest "village" (a very loose term), bought some Coca-Cola and, somehow, found some cheesy party favors. He and his little brother (and assistant cook), Karim, had strung our camp with banners and home-made congratulatory signs, spelled in wonderfully broken English, and built stone-lined walkways from our tents to the cook-tent.  

Josh and I staggered into our decorated base camp just hours ahead of the storm, and for the next week I lay around camp sleeping, resting, eating, drinking; trying to hydrate and recover, though I couldn't seem to regain my energy. We'd gone the final 48 hours on Great Trango without water. I didn't care as much as I might have about the mysterious health funk I'd developed, reeking of ammonia on any physical exertion and having unprecedented, erratic swings in blood sugar. It continued on the trek out, and for months I'd be tired, napping, sleeping late, unable—or maybe just lazily uninterested—in doing anything demanding. Regardless, my reflections on where we'd been and what we'd done were purely introspective, but this is no place for the clever omissions or misleading details that seem all too-common today. Here's what we did:

We had two ropes: a 9.1mm lead line and a 7.9mm tag line. We did no fixing. We carried no bolt kit. We started climbing around 9 a.m. on July 24 and summited around noon on July 28. The second jugged with the pack where it was steep, which was probably half of the route. We clipped fixed gear when we saw it—mostly belay bolts, and perhaps a half-dozen protection bolts—but did not use any of the fixed ropes we saw, disappointingly, abandoned from prior attempts (we later scrambled up and cleaned one that someone had fixed and abandoned at the start). We carried off all of our garbage (empty fuel canister and food wrappers) but left a few pieces fixed along with five (or six?) rap anchors (many cams) and, unfortunately—my only regret of our climb—our ropes (save for 70' of the tag line that we salvaged for the remaining descent) that got stuck on our last rappel.

Our route starts on the lower right of the broad southwest buttress, at just under 4000m and climbs to the West Summit (ca. 6237-6250m, depending on the map) of Great Trango Tower, which was 17 pitches (including the hardest climbing) beyond the highest anchors, or any trace of passage, that we found from previous attempts. (The highest was from a team of four Spaniards, who climbed 61 pitches, with fixed ropes and camps, over three weeks in 1990 while making a movie—they claimed to be just a few pitches of easy terrain from the top…). Josh led the hardest pitches, including five that were 5.11 (one included M6). My hardest leads were 5.10+ (and M5), though not as serious as Josh's. With 60m ropes and some simulclimbing—a handful of pitches on the lower half—we climbed 54 pitches. Twenty-five of the pitches were 5.10 or harder. I led 30 and Josh 24, but Josh was indisputably the ropegun, leading the hardest and most dangerous pitches. We named the route Azeem Ridge and rated it 5.11R/X M6 A2. Azeem is an Urdu word we learned from Ghafoor and Karim. It means "great," both in terms of stature/size but more importantly as a greeting of fondness and respect between friends which, in a word, describes our feelings about the wonderful people we met in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. Our friends in the Charakusa (and later, Nanga Parbat), one of only two other American groups climbing in Pakistan in 2004 to my knowledge, were met with the same warmth. The widespread, sweeping nature of fear and propaganda at home is absurd and carries an ugliness disturbingly similar to racism in its de facto portrayal of all people in one entire region of the world as "bad." People need to quit listening to the Fox News and Bush regime drivel and do a little thinking for themselves. 

***

A week later we tried to make the first alpine-style ascent of the Slovenian Route on Trango (Nameless) Tower. We bailed about two-thirds up on the second day, because of all the normal excuses: weather, icy cracks, etc, etc. Because right then—since wanting it is part of being good—we weren't good enough. But that's okay, because for four and a half days on Great Trango, we lived everything I've always dreamed of. I know it might seem worthless, even silly, to everyone else—after all, it's just climbing—but it meant everything to me.

--Kelly Cordes, 36, lives in Estes Park, CO, and is assistant editor for the American Alpine Journal.