North Face of Koskulak Peak

Approach

Koskulak situtated in the massif of Muztagh Ata, so all the logistics of the trip are the same. Starting point for us was Kashgar (Xinjiang region). It takes few hours to drive from Kashgar to Subashi and few hours from Subashi to the BC.

Route Description

The route starts from Kalaxong glacier with long and steep snow slope. We had a plenty of snow there, progressing very slow. It makes breaking the trail rather exhausting. Finally we spend two overnights on this slope in crevasses.
Snow finishing with rock face with steepness from 70 to 90 degrees.
Main difficulties here were thin ice on the rocks, which makes climbing unsure and belaying difficult. We did not met good bivouac places during first rock part of the route and spent three seating overnights there. This part could be climbed faster, but we had not proper acclimatization and had to pull the backpack of the leading climber. Rocks were covered with thin ice or snow, what's make you to look for the relief to climb or belay. That's also makes progress slow.

Rock belt finishing with steep snow slopes with some rocks on it. Here we established last camp before summit attempt and spent first comfortable overnight.

On a summit day we had plenty of snow before platoe, moving about 100 meters in one hour. Before the summit platoe we met the last challenge on the route - big snow cornice. It was not possible to climb it with normal ice equipe, as snow could not hold the weight of climber. Finally we used two snow anchors and two ice instruments to climb it in a couple of hours. Our summit was in 300 meters from thу cornice and we reached the summit in half an hour.

Comparing with other possible way on the Nortth face of Koskulak this route has a logic of direct way to the summit. We arrived to the summit platoe in the most close point to the summit, outstanding in 300 hundred meters of very flat snow field. That allow us to escape long way on the altitude of 7000 meters.

Essential Gear

I'm not sure in proper translation from Russian to English of the following gear:
We had two ropes with us first, one static 10 mm. and one dynamic 8,6 mm, but the first one died during the first rocky day. Also we had 4 "friends", kit of "stoppers", 6 ice screws, 2 snow anchors.

Miscellaneous Info

If you have information about this route that doesn't pertain to any of the other sections, please add it here.

Images

View North Face of Koskulak Peak Image Gallery - 11 Images