Team Aim to Ski Trango Towers

A group of extreme ski mountaineers are reported to be attempting to ski Great Trango, one of the 6,000m+ Trango Towers, located in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan.

The mountains are however not known for their snow cover, but for their extreme steepness, with their near vertical faces incorporating the world’s tallest cliffs. Great Trango is on the right of the picture. The east face of Great Trango Tower at 6,286 m (20,623 ft), features the world’s greatest nearly vertical drop.

Jim Morrison, whose partner Hilaree Nelson died as they attempted to ski down 8,163m high Manaslu in Nepal last September, is leading the group of four.

Morrison wrote on social media at the start of the week that they were starting to push for the summit of Great Trango Tower and would ski down, having found“…an ephemeral band of snow linking an improbable descent through some of the world’s most dramatic and impressive towers of granite.”

Great Trango (above) was first climbed in 1977 by Galen Rowell, John Roskelley, Kim Schmitz, Jim Morrissey and Dennis Hennek by a route which started from the west side (Trango Glacier), and climbed a combination of ice ramps and gullies with rock faces, finishing on the upper South Face.

The east face of Great Trango was first climbed to the East Summit in 1984 by the Norwegians Hans Christian Doseth and Finn Dæhli, who both died on the descent.

In 1992 Australians Nic Feteris and Glenn Singleman climbed Great Trango and then BASE jumped from an elevation of 5,955 metres (19,537 feet) from the Northeast Face, the highest starting elevation for a BASE jump on record.