ISLAMABAD: After becoming the first climbers to climb the east and west faces of K7, two American nationals launched another nail-biting summit attempt on the K7 central, said the Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP).

It said the American couple — Priti and Jeff Wright — came as close as 100 metres of the summit when the crack they were climbing petered out. “That’s when they decided to descend,” an official of the Alpine Club said.

The duo descended via the central route, a canyon with overhanging seracs, some 60 metres high, avalanche chutes and endless crevasses barring their way.

“Although the duo did not summit, they climbed a huge new route alpine-style on a completely virgin terrain. They are now safely back in the base camp,” an official of the ACP said.

He said Priti and Jeff Wright were the first to reach the K7 central main summit and the first on the difficult and still un-climbed K7 central reaching 6,585 metres.

“For good reason, nobody has ever gone up or down this central couloir, but it allowed us to descend 2,000 metres of complex terrain back to the base camp in a day,” the climbers wrote on social media.

Meanwhile, on the 7,821 metres Masherbrum, the Czech team of Tomas Petrecek, Marek Holecek and Radoslav Groh found themselves in a dreamlike setting surrounded by beautiful high peaks but far from the crowded 8,000’ers, said the ACP said.

The trio has been acclimatising on the hills around 6,781 metres Biarchedi for the last four days. The expedition was preparing to attempt the un-climbed west face of the 7,821 metres Masherbrum.

Marek Holecek, Tomas Petrecek and Radoslav Groh, along with photographer Tomas Galasek, climbed as high as 6,200 metres on Sunday.

The expedition said: “It was not easy. Crossing the highly crevassed glacier was exhausting, especially in the scorching heat. For safety, we had to rope up and jump over the crevasses.”

They described Masherbrum higher, harder and more beautiful than the surrounding peaks.

The ACP also said as three climbers from the Polish Beskid Expedition team — Mariusz Hatala, Piotr Krzyzowski and Radoslav Wozniak — scaled K2 on Friday, Bartosz Ziemski, also from Poland, summited Gasherbrum II on Friday and descended. None of the Poles used bottled oxygen.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2022