Pakistan – Karakoram, Spantik, 2006
The expedition to Spantik (7 027 m) started from Islamabad driving by bus along the Karakoram Highway to Skardu and from Skardu by jeeps to Arandu village (2 665 m). From Arandu we started our 3 day approach trek up Chogo Lungma Glacier through camps Chobob Langsa (3 230 m) and Bolocho (3 700 m) up to Spantik base camp (4 300 m).
Spantik, originally called Sapang Tik, is considerd to be one of the most accessible seven thousand meter peaks in Karakoram. The route to the summit is either along the South-East ridge or a very technical one up the Western Golden Pillar which gave Spantik another name Golden Peak. First team to summit Spantik was a German expedition led by Karl Kramer in 1955. Currently there are 6 to 10 expeditions every year. We have chosen the route over the South-East ridge, from Camp 3 left the ridge and took a more difficult route just above the East face directly to the summit.
From Base Camp we started to build high camps. We have built Camp 1 (5 100 m) on the ridge just on the snow line. The weather was not very favourable, on our way up we have built Camp 2 (5 650 m) and then spent the following 24 hours in tents due to a snow storm. In deep new snow we descended back to BC. At our second attempt we continued up to Camp 3 (6 220 m) in sunny weather. The weather changed again during our summit push. We started at midnight in minus 20 oC. After 6 hours four climbers decided to turn around and go back to C3. The remaining five people continued for another 5 hours towards the summit. We were stopped below the summit just above the 7 000 m line due to a whiteout. We descended for 5 hours in a snow storm back to C3. We have spent the night in C3 and in a continuing snow storm descended to C2, where we have spent the night expecting the wind to tear our tents into pieces. The tents survived and so did we. We descended from C2 to C1 the following day in deep new snow, but in sunny weather.
We have spent 15 days on the mountain. Even though we have not summitted, we believe we have climbed the mountain and we consider the expedition successful. Our achivement of 7 000 m was more demanding in the difficult weather conditions than a successful summit attempt of many other teams, who climbed the final few more meters and summitted in good weather.
We returned from Spantik along the same route, down the Chogo Lungma Glacier to Arandu village, by jeeps to Skardu and back to Islamabad.
