Shifkteen Sar peak in Shimshal, Karakoram range

Shifkteen Sar peak,Shimshal valley, Gojal – Karakoram range Pakistan.

4 of us, lead by Shaheen Baig (Shimshal, Pakistan), Abdullah Bai (Shimshal, Pakistan),Najeeb Khan from Karachi and me from Malaysia.

Shifkteen Sar is a non-commercial below 6000-meter peak in Shimshal valley, Karakoram mountain range, Pakistan. The mountain is a good start if you want to experience Karakoram range, since other peaks in Karakoram are highly technical.
We travelled from Gilgit - Hunza - Passu, from Passu there's link road to Shimshal valley. Shimshal is a beautiful village located in Gojal, Hunza-Nagar district, and the valley is a very remote area, and the most northern village.  It lies at an altitude of 3100m above sea level and it is the highest settlement in Hunza valley of Pakistan. The people of Shimshal are Wakhi and they speak the Wakhi language. It took almost 3-hour to reach Shimshal from the main road. The offroad is very narrow and dangerous.
The beautiful village has no phone line connection, they only have satelite phone for emergency cases.

The plan was to attempt to the summit of Shifkteen Sar during 30th or 31st August since this expedition was near to my country’s independence day (31^st Aug), but due to bad weather (rain on the basecamp and snow on the high camp) we waited till the last reserve day.
We started the Shifkteen Sar summit attempt at 7:00 am from the high camp. It was a late start due to bad weather conditions. We had been waiting for 2 days at the high camp for the weather to improve, but on the 3rd day the weather did not improve that much, but our trainer/lead guide Shaheen made a decision to give it a try.
It was 1000++ meter elevation gain from the High camp to the summit.  The snow falls started from the High camp when we started the climb. It was slippery at the beginning although the trail was not that steep at first stage.The snows were continuously falled and getting worst half way of the climb. But with the experiences and expertise of our trainer/guide Shaheen, he lead us to the safe route to avoid any potential risk of avalanche. Shaheen is an experience mountaineer, he has summitted K2 without oxygen, the most dangerous mountain, few others 8000-ers meter peak, led many expeditions with foreigners and rescue operations in Karakoram mountain range.

Shaheen & me decided to proceed when my other team member Najeeb decided to turn back 300++ meter from the summit due to the weather & time constraint,  accompanied by Abdullah.
Yes it was not a bad decision to turn back at this weather condition. It was challenging to climb in a bad weather.

200-meter from the main ridge was the steepest part, we started to use the safety rope & tied to each other from here. I got slipped few times at this area.
We can see the peak after we reached the main ridge. It looked so close yet sooooo long to reach. The traverse was so long to reach due to heavy soft snow that we need to stepped into.
Half way on the traverse, I was about  to quit but when Shaheen said to me "look. that's the summit. in 20 minutes you'll be on the summit". so I focused my mind to keep my feet moving. The visibility was getting worst and less than 10-meter when we finished the traverse. 20-30 minutes later at 3:15pm, me & Shaheen was exactly on the summit, not even 1 meter less.
It was a satisfaction that cannot be described although me & Shaheen can only seen each other & not even single other thing from there.
During normal weather conditions, there's 360 degrees of beautiful scenery from the summit including the view of beautiful Shimshal valley at the back. There're few other technical peaks next to Shifkteen Sar peak, i.e Shimshal Whitehorn, Malangutti Sar and few other beautiful peaks. IMHO, Shimshal Whitehorn is the most beautiful one. Apart from that, there's also a huge glacier, Malangutti glacier that we need to cross before reach the basecamp.