Symon Welfringer on top of Sani Pakkush: 6953m

We have news for you directly from Pakistan, Symon Welfringer, La Sportiva athlete, climbs the Sani Pakkush 6953m from Virgin South face!

We asked him to tell us how the expedition went, how he found himself during the ascent and what difficulties he encountered: “We arrived at the beginning of October on the Toltar glacier, where we acclimatised in our base camp located at the base of the massive south face of Sani Pakkush, which has not yet been climbed.
After two weeks we felt ready to try and climb what was for us a “great piece of mountaineering”. The bad weather conditions made us wait several days, but at a certain point we knew that the sun would shine for a week, which would allow us to make a real attempt.
After an early departure at 2 am from our base camp, we had to face the first difficulties, at an altitude of 5000m, right at the beginning of the wall, with some support pitches on ice. Afterwards we arrived at easier terrain with snow and a mixed climb. At about 5600m we made one of the most difficult pitches, an M4+/M5, only to find a small platform and settle for a rather uncomfortable bivouac.
On the second day we managed to climb higher up the wall and made two fantastic pitches on pure ice. At about 6200m we looked for a spot for a desperate bivouac but we didn’t find it so we sat on a rock and waited for the sun to return.
On the third day we were really exhausted from the two bad bivy. So we decided to put our tent at an altitude of 6400m on the summit ridge where we found a nice comfortable crevasse to rest.
On 19 October we decided to make the summit almost without equipment. We left our bivouac in place and set off for the last 500m on the snowy ridge of the summit. With the ever-changing weather, it was more and more difficult to climb up the summit, but after 7 hours of hard work, sometimes even digging in the snow, we arrived at 14:00 completely exhausted on the summit of Sani Pakkush at 6953m.
We spent our last day descending along this massive 2500m long wall. In the late afternoon of 20 October, we returned safely to base camp without all our energy, but with so much emotion in our hearts”.