The Outside Penguin: A New Route in Pakistan
September 2007Skirting a gendarme during the first ascent of the Outside Penguin on Peak 5,750m, Latok Group, Pakistan. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Frimer.
Jeremy Frimer and Sam Johnson
Summary
Jeremy Frimer (Canada), Ken Glover (Canada), Ryan Hokanson (Canada), and Sam Johnson (U.S., 2007 Spitzer Award recipient) traveled to the Latok Group in Pakistan. The team found its primary objective out of condition, but climbed a new route on a rock spire and made two attempts on Latok II.
Jeremy: The summer of 2007 in the Karakoram was unusually wet, thwarting most attempts at climbing. Backed by the AAC’s Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Award and Mountain Equipment Co-op, our original objective was the unclimbed feature just under and southwest of Latok II (7,108m). We facetiously named this gargantuan gendarme “Latok II¾” (~6500m); its southwest face presents a ca. 1,500-meter wall of near-vertical, unclimbed granite. With all the bad weather, this objective was shrouded in verglas and powder, rendering it too full-on for the likes of us.
Sam: With Latok II3/4 out, Ryan Hokanson and I made two attempts at the first complete ascent of Latok II's northwest ridge. The first was with fellow expedition member Ken Glover. We climbed ice and mixed ground up to M7 (M6 R) up the west face and began a snow-traverse line to the ridge proper. Ken became sick at approximately 5600m, and we made the decision to descend. We found lots of Huber-Anker fixed line and bolts.
The next day we rested in ABC and returned to base camp at the junction of the Uzun Brakk and Biantha Lukpar glaciers, where we made the decision to return to Latok II as a team of two, leaving Ken to climb a lower-altitude objective with Jeremy, due to his difficulties adapting to altitude.
Jeremy: Ken and I turned our attention to lower altitudes, and settled on Peak 5,750m, located two peaks down a ridge to the southwest of Latok II. Italians may have climbed the peak in 1977, and Americans Doug Chabot and Jack Tackle climbed it from the north in 2000. Its triangular south face rises 1,200 meters out of the talus-covered Baintha Lukpar Glacier and appears to have some of the best granite in the valley. At the tail end of one of the few high-pressure systems of the season, we started up the rightmost of the twin buttress with light alpine packs; one sleeping bag, two down jackets, and a siltarp comprised the extent of our bivy gear.
The face presented three steep headwalls; we hoped to weave our way up the wall via a devious line of weakness. After an initial broken section, we reached the base of the first headwall, framed on its right by a ridge crest. By traversing two pitches, we reached the crest and followed it upward for a pitch before it stopped us at a blank overhang. A slab traverse rightward dropped us into a chimney, which we followed for three pitches to a sandy ledge atop the initial headwall. The second steep headwall loomed above. Searching for the line of weakness, we traversed for two pitches to the right again, where we climbed a ramp system before slipping behind a prow to find a hidden corner. Above the corner, moderate terrain led to a scree slope and a comfortable bivy. At each daunting wall, we had luckily found a moderate solution.
Seven hundred meters up the face, we hoped for a quick, sun-bathed dash for the summit on Day 2. Instead, threatening skies and false summits made for a more blue-collar finish. After soloing up moderate terrain past the false summits, we reached the base of the third and final headwall. A long, broken pitch led to a steep cirque with no obvious line of weakness, where our streak of luck appeared to end. Straight up presented thin, vertical cracks; to the left stood a complex prow blocked by an overhanging wart of granite; the right was blocked by a crackless buttress and an overhanging rotten ice gully. Ken scouted the right-hand options, launching into ledge-fall potential on an unprotectable face. He wisely retreated as the difficulty ramped up. Next, I tried the left prow. By stemming past an ice-choked corner, I reached the base of the overhung wart, where our luck returned. A moderate ramp allowed us past the previously hidden side of the gendarme, beyond which the crux pitch gave way to the wart’s top. Ken then led two mixed pitches with our one pair of crampons to the summit, as snow began to fall.
We began a descent immediately by scoping our first option, a line that may have lead into easy descent gullies. This appeared to be far more involved than we had anticipated whilst scouting. Hence, we began rappelling our line of ascent; shortly thereafter, darkness and a powerful snowstorm descended upon us. At the first decent ledge, we endured a miserable, sleepless bivy as the storm raged on. On the third day, we continued rapping and down climbing our line of ascent. We reached the base that afternoon in the pouring rain, after some 800 meters of rapping, overjoyed for having made the most of what the weather gods permitted. We called the route the Outside Penguin (V 5.10 A1).
Sam: On July 30, the same morning that Jer and Ken left for what would become the Outside Penguin, Ryan and I headed back to Latok II. This time we bypassed the mixed ground of our first attempt and simul-soloed a 3,000-foot ice ramp of 50-60 degrees. We arrived at 6,000m in the afternoon and set up camp tucked under a gendarme on the horizontal section of the northwest ridge. We were then battered by intense storm and wind for three nights, with significant accumulation of snow. After the third night at 6,000m, we decided to descend in the face of continuing bad weather. We rappelled from V-threads, being hit by significant slough avalanches several times while at an anchor or on rappel. During one of these I was hit by slough while making the transition from rappel to anchor, which was rather exciting.
In summary, bad weather plagued most of our trip this time around. We had two weather windows, one of 2-3 days during our acclimatization period, and one of 3-4 days during our first attempt on Latok II with Ken; this good weather ended after the first day of our second attempt.
Ryan and I look forward to returning to the Latok group for one of a multitude of inspiring objectives, one of which remains the first complete ascent of the Northwest Ridge of Latok II. The ridge was partially climbed in 1997, when Franz Fendt and Christian Schlesener ascended the main couloir on the west face and then climbed the upper quarter to third of the northwest ridge. We found tons of bolts and fixed ropes, apparently left by the Huber Bros on one of their climbs, either in 1995 or 1997. Unsightly. We also found boulders in their base camp that had chipped holds, which we climbed on.