Trango Link-up

The Trango Link-up was the linking of three summits in the Trango group, in the Pakistani Karakoram, in complete autonomy. An expedition that lasted a month and a half and culminated in a push of nine consecutive days up and down these magnificent mountains, the Trango Towers. It was a very long time, during which I weighed every single hour, because it was hard, exhausting and draining, and because, although I always wished it would pass faster (for all those reasons), at the same time I needed more time, since the good weather available was not enough to link all the summits. Climbs are always a race against time, because the walls are long and you climb almost only in daylight. But in this case it was even more of a race against time, because the walls turned out to be even bigger and harder than our estimates, and because we were always worn out by the fatigue of high altitude. On top of that, I was always accompanied by a sort of visceral desire to reach the end, because everything was so complicated and so uncomfortable that the feeling of racing against time became a little paradoxical.

Nine days are long and full, but what followed was just as much so, and perhaps it is precisely from the ninth day that I can begin the story of this epic.

22 July 2026

We wake up at the big granite block that serves as our advanced base camp under a light but persistent rain, soaked by the rain that began the evening before, yet another end of day with headlamps on. We are in the middle of a steep scree gully that, with the force of the rain, can turn into a hellish trap. Where we are is sheltered, but we will have to find the right moment to leave, and then do it fast. Fortunately, we are somewhat restored by a night in a bigger tent with a sleeping bag each, after eight nights in a one-person bivy tent with a single sleeping bag and a single mat shared between us.

We have a huge amount of gear to carry down, everything we used and everything we had planned as extra, lots of food we never ate.

The weather window is over. So ends our traverse, forced by the weather and by our energies, physical as much as mental, which have scraped the bottom. We are happy to have made it, even if for a shorter traverse than the one we dreamed of, but so tired and so uncomfortable that we cannot listen to our emotions. We need a hot shower, a change into comfortable clothes, real food and the quiet of base camp to process everything we have lived through these days. And instead..

A radio call from Diego (the expedition’s videomaker) hits us like the week’s umpteenth slap in the face: a bad landslide came down at 2 a.m. above base camp, everything is destroyed, they are fine but there are injured people in the neighbouring camp, occupied by a group of Basques we never met because they arrived while we were up on the mountain. They have already called the porters to leave the camp, they should arrive in two days.

We immediately grasp the seriousness of the situation, load our packs as much as we can and descend the thousand metres of gully. At the end, just before turning the corner of the wall and coming within sight of our camp, we stop for two minutes to tell each other that we will now find nothing of what we dreamed of at base camp, but that it doesn’t matter, we will have to hold on a while longer and give support to those who need it. We are about to set off again but I sit straight back down, I need one more minute alone before living what awaits us, just to let out a few tears and tell myself: “it’s over, now another chapter opens”. And so it was.

We reach base camp and the camp no longer exists. Diego, Habbas and Pargwana (Pakistani guide and cook) are shaken, you can read the fear and dismay on their faces. They are alive by a miracle and resourceful enough to have already set up a shelter with the recovered, shredded pieces of tent. Our things, more or less, are all there but soaked in mud, water and sand. Four people are injured: a shoulder, a hand, a foot and, the most serious, a head. The worst-off lies on the ground with blood-soaked bandages and painkillers to bear the pain. There is a third expedition at the camp, a group of Italians who help everyone with incredible kindness and dedication: their camp was not hit by the landslide. Two days of intermittent rain follow, partly sheltered in the tents of the other Italian guys, who welcome everyone with open arms, partly in our damp tents, waiting for the porters to leave the camp and above all for the rescue for the Spaniards. The helicopter does not fly in the bad weather of these days. Finally a totally improvised, Pakistani-style team of four rescuers arrives and evacuates the head-injured climber on a stretcher. We leave the next day, happy to be nearing the end of this ordeal ourselves.

Back to..

14 July 2026

We are ready and motivated for the push. About a month has passed since our arrival at base camp and for a good week now we have been stuck because of unstable weather: so we have the right acclimatisation and the right rest in our bodies. It is not yet clear whether the good weather that should arrive and settle for about five days will really arrive today or tomorrow, but we decide to leave because we need as many days as possible for the traverse, and if we could get a day’s head start on the window it would come in handy. Besides, we have a hellish 1300-metre gully of scree and loose boulders to climb to reach the col between the Castle (north-east side) and the Great Trango Tower (south side), where the traverse begins.

Unfortunately, as always, plans change in the mountains and the good weather does not seem willing to grant us a day’s head start at all. We leave base camp early in the morning and reach the chosen col around midday, just in time to shelter inside our microscopic tent because it starts to snow. It snows all afternoon, the Castle’s wall, already soaking wet, doesn’t change one bit, quite the opposite. We postpone the climb of the Castle to the next day, in these conditions it is not possible.

15 July

The weather hasn’t improved in the slightest, it snows on and off and the sun won’t do its job. During the night I vomit, I think I had an intestinal blockage because after a couple of hours of nausea everything comes out and my stomach settles. But on waking I am weak. The Castle’s wall, which could benefit from a few hours of early morning sun to dry out a little, is instead wetter and wetter and wrapped in cloud. We spend many more hours shut in the mini tent, sheltering from the snow. Being stuck like this by bad weather in this tent, at the start of the project, is disheartening. The thought of losing days potentially available to us, and of wrecking our backs right from the start because we are in a tent 50 centimetres high and a metre wide, two of us with a single mat and a single sleeping bag between us, is maddening, but at the same time, precisely because we are at the beginning, we are very patient and full of spirit for what awaits us.

Unfortunately, though, not having been able to gain days on the weather window of five, maybe six, days; together with the fact that on the Castle we had not managed to finish the new route we wanted to climb to start the traverse, which, leaving us the unknowns of a first ascent, also left us the unknowns of how long it would take to reach the summit; after endless hesitation we decide to leave out the Castle and start the traverse from the Great Trango Tower.

16 July

The alarm goes off in the night (in Pakistan at this time of year dawn comes around 4 a.m.), but the drive to finally begin our traverse leaves us no hesitation in eating a frugal freeze-dried breakfast, stuffing all the bivy gear into our packs and setting off. We cross the final stretch of ridge separating the Castle from the Great and, roughly with first light, we begin the actual climb of the Great, joining what is the “American route” (Hennek, Morrissey, Roskelley, Rowell, Schmitz). It is a mixed route, definitely one to tackle a little earlier in the season than when we find ourselves there. Moreover, this year it is particularly hot in Pakistan (as it is more or less everywhere, after all) and the conditions on this route suffer badly. The snow is soft in the lower part, and where the face steepens, where we hoped to find ice, we instead find rock dusted with snow, not easy to climb with ice axes and crampons. Then another big snowy basin follows, in strangely decent condition. After this stretch, though, the real problems begin: the snow is like sugar, but the ground gets steep and we sink to our waists without managing to move forward. There are also several stretches of rock, never easy to tackle with axes and crampons. The route description we have is a simple aerial photo of the face with a red line marking the route, and it is hard to understand exactly where to go, which will cost us a couple of hours of useless climbing to get back onto the most efficient line to the summit.

We hoped to climb the Great in a day and we brought no food for a bivouac. We certainly didn’t want to sleep on the summit, because a night at altitude weighs on recovery from the effort. We have everything we need to bivouac on our backs, except gas and food, because we will find them on the other side of the mountain, where in the previous weeks we organised the various caches. This detail too will cost us a significant loss of energy, because the conditions are very hard and we are forced to keep going for a couple of hours into the evening, lit by our headlamps, to reach the first acceptable spot to pitch the little tent and try to warm up a bit in the sleeping bag. We are on a small saddle at 6000 metres, only 200 metres separate us from the summit, but we are exhausted and frozen: the last two hours in the dark were gruelling, both for the difficulty of the climbing and for the cold. We shiver and the only thing we can manage is to slip into the sleeping bag fully dressed and try to warm each other in an embrace.

17 July

The ridge separating us from the summit is simple at first, then a bit more exposed and crevassed, but it is only 200 metres and the day’s sun warms us and gives us a little energy. Unfortunately, the few hours of rest in the mini tent, at 6000 metres and without food, have left us somewhat wrecked and, even though the terrain is now easier, we climb slowly. But soon we are on the summit, 6286 metres: the first summit! The weather is splendid and the view is breathtaking, over some of the biggest and most important mountains on earth. For a moment we forget the thinness of the cornice our feet are resting on, and enjoy the beauty of this place.

We then descend the Great by its normal route, a big steep glacier where you descend fast, paying attention only to some enormous seracs that force the way sometimes left, sometimes right, and sometimes into an abseil off an Abalakov.

The face is so steep and direct that we can see right away the col waiting for us for the next bivouac, where we made the cache in the first week of the expedition.

We reach the col fairly early, we have the whole afternoon to recover.. Even if the sun is so strong and our tent so small that it isn’t easy to find any peace.

18 July

We climb the Little Trango Tower (around 5445 metres) via the PM Wall route. We have no specific information about this route either, just a red line on a photo of the wall, but it is fairly obvious because it follows a system of chimneys and offwidth cracks leading straight to the top. The climb goes well, we are at ease on the rock and in a few hours we are on the summit. The descent will not be as straightforward, because we find ourselves forced to rig every abseil anchor and to look for the best line to stop the ropes from jamming. In short, what could have been a totally fluid route had more than a few complications on the way down.

Anyway, we get back to the tent in the early afternoon and it is insanely hot. From here we have to descend a section heavily exposed to rockfall, especially with the current conditions of heavy snowmelt, and we try to move fast down this slope. The snow is soft, the heat is scorching, several volleys of stones accompany our descent, but everything goes well up to the next cache, where we will spend the night. We are a hundred metres or so from the col where the Eternal Flame route on Nameless Tower begins. We eat and bivouac at the lowest altitude of the last four days and immediately feel the benefits. Between the time lost reorganising all the gear for the next route, melting snow to drink and cook, and for the next day, dinner and so on, we end up ready to lie down as darkness falls. The temperature is unexpectedly mild, we keep the tent open since you can’t breathe anyway. We are exhausted, and we trust in a wave of a magic wand to give us the energy we need to climb the Nameless.

19 July

Magic wand indeed, we sleep very little this night and the feelings on waking are terrible. On top of that, my period has arrived completely unexpectedly early and I am disheartened by this premature discomfort. We are truly tired, only a long restorative night could have given us new spirit, and instead we feel even more broken than the evening before. But we have a mission ahead of us (and a very beautiful one at that!), so without any hesitation we get moving towards the wall. Climbing back up the gully costs us effort, as do the first moves on the rock. But then something clicks: the physical feeling doesn’t improve, but the weather and the route are so perfect that they fill us with fresh enthusiasm. Stefano knows the route, he spent 9 long days on it two years ago, solo..! His knowledge of the route lets us move fast, without doubts. For me it is all new, and the incredible perfection of this line leaves me stunned: long, regular cracks of the perfect size to climb follow one after the other, on a shield of rock coloured orange and set ablaze by the sun. I understand why the route has earned its reputation as the best route in the world! I am so happy to be climbing on rock.. and on this rock!

We climb non-stop. A short break at the first big ledge, the so-called Sun Terrace, to melt snow and refill our bottles, and then up again non-stop. The last pitches before the second big ledge (Snow Ledge), where we planned to spend the night, catch us in the dark once more. As soon as darkness comes the temperature plummets and, as cause and consequence, progress becomes painfully slow. So we climb for another couple of hours, gruelling, holding back the shivers at every belay, until we pop out onto the ledge and pitch the tent. I melt snow, I know I absolutely must drink and eat to be able to carry on the next day, Ste is even more destroyed and, after vomiting liquid, manages only to drink without eating.

20 July

We wait for the sun to set off again and, with the sun, that sense of apparent wellbeing that only the warmth of its rays on the skin can give. The route is still splendid and the excitement for the approaching summit keeps morale high. One of the last pitches before the final mixed section is one for the anthology: a regular crack close to the edge of an arête suspended 6000 metres up, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I climb it with a few pauses, both because the altitude doesn’t give me enough breath to climb it in one go, and because I have to look around: it is too unrepeatable a moment not to enjoy it fully.

Then the mixed section, Ste leads with a cool head, the conditions are terrible because of the heat of these days. And then twenty metres or so of snow lead to the summit, 6238 metres. I have seen this summit image, from this perspective, so many times in Ste’s film “Eternal Solo” that I feel as if I am inside the film myself, now. Ste lets me arrive first, I touch the summit rock and find exactly that piece of iron I have seen him touch so many times in the film. Something bursts inside me. He is there too, right behind me. I can’t believe I have climbed up here too, now. That I have somehow stepped into his film and changed its plot. I turn towards K2, I want to see it, because two years ago, at this precise moment, Ste touches the iron wedged in the summit rock and looks for me, up there on K2. K2, though, is wrapped in cloud: it is a splendid day and everything on the horizon is clearly visible except K2, higher than any other mountain and for that reason able to catch unpredictable clouds. Ste says it’s right that way, because now I’m not over there but up here with him, so there’s no need to see it. Wow.

A couple more minutes of emotion up here and then down, a thousand metres of abseiling await us and very little desire to end up in headlamp light again. Everything goes smoothly, except the first abseil, where the rope jams twice and costs us more than an hour of climbing back up and attempts to descend. We sleep at the bivy spot where we already slept before climbing the Nameless.

21 July

Today is the last usable day of the weather window. Already in the afternoon the weather should close in and the bad weather arrive, and then from nightfall terrible weather is forecast for at least a week. We have to play our very last cartridge of energy and motivation and try to climb the Monk as well. First, 400 metres of ascent up a snowy gully await us, where the snow conditions, as usual, squeeze out what little energy we have left. A little behind schedule, we start climbing the Monk’s wall. The first part is easy, but we have to dodge a couple of rockfall zones. The second part, though, is very hard: pitch after pitch that is complicated to read and just as hard to protect, where, strangely, ice is still hiding, and this time we haven’t brought the crampons. We don’t have the right protection, unfortunately, as with the other routes we have no information on difficulty, gear needed or anything else, and what stops us for good, three pitches from the summit, is a long pitch of pure aid to be done with pecker hooks and pitons: we have three pitons in total and one ice axe to hammer them in. The alternative is a wet offwidth pitch to be protected with the big number 5 or even 6 cams, and our rack stops at a 4.

The weather is clearly changing, by now the sun has disappeared and clouds laden with moisture have been circling us for a while. Reluctantly we are forced to give up the summit and begin the descent. It starts to snow on the last abseils, and to rain as we lose altitude.

As on almost every day, today too the headlamps come on to keep going a little longer, to advanced base camp. There we finally have a two-person tent waiting for us, another sleeping bag, another mat and food in abundance. The thought of that extra comfort awaiting us, and the awareness that we have more or less finished, that tomorrow we will no longer have to squeeze out what little energy remains, lets me relax but at the same time makes me feel even more tired. I feel as if I’m unable to feel emotions. Unable to realise that it is over and to congratulate myself and my partner on the crazy adventure we have shared. So much effort and so much beauty mix together inside me.