Posts

First Ascent of Yazpurs Sar (6030m), Pakistan

Image
This is an English language version of the article published by Norsk Tindeklub in the Tidsskrift for Norsk Alpinklatring 2025 . The hillside woke up a few hours after our torch lights went out. Evidently, it had set its alarm several hours ahead of the one on our watches. Immediately it made its feelings known that it didn't approve of our camping spot by casting rocks at our general location. 'Wooaaahh, that one was close!' Murilo excitedly gasped while I lay semiconscious at the opposite end of the tent. I was getting a running commentary from the tent entrance about each rock that flew down the nearby scree gully - in terms of how fast it was travelling, how large it was, and, most importantly, how close it passed by. 'Shit, that one was only about 25m away'. In resignation, we crawled out of the tent to jointly assess the situation. In a sleepy haze, I s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A First Ascent and Two New Routes in the Boesam Valley, Pakistan

Image
This is a preprint version of the article that appears in the  2024 UK Alpine Journal . 'How are your plans?' asked Zishan at our guesthouse in Shimshal. Privately, I thought 'not good', but replied, 'I think we'll wait a bit longer'. It was our first full day in Shimshal, and only two porters had appeared earlier in the morning out of the fifteen that we needed. Not a good ratio. Our plan was to trek to a base camp midway along the Virjerab Glacier, to the southeast of Shimshal, but the feedback from our guesthouse was that the way was hard for porters due to the undulating terrain. The lack of advance warning regarding our itinerary probably hadn't helped matters. Only two weeks earlier, Arran Turton-Phillips and I had pulled the plug on our trip to the Indian Karakoram. To cut a long, tedious bureaucratic story short, our climbing permits were a...
Post a Comment
Location: Shimshal
Read more

Kjørlifossen (WI5, 400m), Lærdal

Image
We were in Hemsedal because Murilo had been keen to have another go at Midtlinja on Hydnefossen after a couple of failed attempts. A few days ice climbing in the area and Murilo sensed his form wasn't where it needed to be for the route, and I was also a little ambivalent after climbing the line in 2020. With this plan scrapped, a large carrot was immediately dangled in front of my nose via social media. Kjørlifossen had just been climbed and this was apparently a massive classic, despite me never having heard of it before. Despite this icefall potentially being as hard as Midtlinja, the spirit of chasing the ephemeral got the better of us, and the following Sunday morning we were driving over Hemsedalfjellet en route for Lærdal - somewhere I had never climbed before. We were not the only people with this plan, and on the final stretch of the approach we passed a team of three descending French climbers. They were not happy with a horizontal crack at the base of the initial pillar ...
Post a Comment
Read more