Most of the descent from the 6,859-meter summit of Kaqur Kangri involved exposed downclimbing. Photo by Spencer Gray.
Three teams will be honored with Piolets d’Or in Italy this December, and all three contributed feature articles about their climbs to the 2025 American Alpine Journal (AAJ). Tom Livingstone wrote about his and Aleš Česen’s new route on Gasherbrum III in Pakistan; Dane Steadman described the first ascent of Yashkuk Sar, also in Pakistan, with August Franzen and Cody Winckler; and Spencer Gray told the story of climbing the southwest arête of Kaqur Kangri in Nepal with Ryan Griffiths.
There’s a lot to love about Spencer’s AAJ piece—it documents an amazing ascent. But we were also struck by the final passage, in which he reflects on the inherent and sometimes insidious risks of Himalayan alpinism. No one got hurt on the climb of 6,859-meter Kaqur Kangri, but afterward Spencer tallied 20-plus incidents that each could have ended very badly. Honest self-assessments like this are essential to a long life in the mountains, so we’ve shared Spencer’s thoughts here for readers to consider in light of their own climbing.
Kaqur Kangri: A Dangerous Game
Objectives like the southwest arête of Kaqur Kangri used to be what most climbing was: trying something kind of hard, an inconvenient distance from home, and relying on imagination as much as effort to turn a thing dreamt into a thing done. There are still plenty of places to contrive that same experience. We just have to look harder—and be willing to court risk in an unpredictable operating environment.
Our team didn’t have what we’d consider a close call, but in debriefing, I still counted 23 discrete times when the risk ticked up. A mule nearly broke my knee with a kick when I tried to bring it into camp one morning. On our first day of climbing, we hustled up a ramp that was probably at the outside edge of the ricochet zone of the upper serac band. Two days later, Ryan [Griffiths] and I both simultaneously realized that we were pushing our unroped luck on low-angle but hard-frozen talus above the west face. “If we slip here, it’s to the bottom, eh?” I said.
Of four minor rockfall incidents, we mitigated two by our choice of protected belays and bivvies. Another was friendly fire: On rappel, I chucked a baseball-sized rock so the ropes wouldn’t dislodge it. But I misaimed, and the rock bounced down the snow slope and nailed Ryan in the shoulder. I reasoned that Ryan had probably done something in a prior life to deserve getting punched in the clavicle. He was less sure.
On day three, below the snowfield, we pulled through suspended, stacked blocks in a roof that would have chopped the rope had they dislodged. On the upper headwall, my ice tool tethers got tangled behind a cam after I had campused out a diagonal rail. I couldn’t reverse the move, and I couldn’t continue until I had unthreaded the tools. Half growling, half screaming, I locked off on one arm, frontpoints screeching, and freed myself. When he followed, Ryan simply lowered out and jugged.
On the descent, Ryan and I had probably our riskiest moment when we crossed a 40-foot-wide wind slab partway down the upper northwest face. It appeared suddenly, a shallow pocket of cross-loaded danger in an otherwise stable snowpack. The tension on the slope and the soft, hollow thump as our boots and ice tools pressed through the snow put us both on edge. But with no other signs of failure or propagation, and a morning of downclimbing a similar aspect and angle above us, we each judged it safe enough to proceed.
An hour before we regained the base of the mountain, fed up with navigating the messy corners of the final glacier, we briefly but obtusely committed to soloing steep glacial ice, embedded with crushed pebbles, as we traversed 15 feet above the bottom of a closed crevasse. We were spurred on by our friend Matt’s tiny light in the distance and the promise of fresh Snickers. Perhaps a week on the mountain and the tedious descent had dulled our nose for risk.
Three days later, we stopped at Chyargo La on the trek back out and took in our final view of Kaqur. I crouched beneath fluttering prayer flags to lounge against a rock, my fingers getting sticky pulling globs of gulab jamun out of a can we’d saved until now for a treat. Kaqur’s summit seracs glinted in the midday sun from what seemed like a very long ways away. Matt and Ryan laughed as I passed them the can for a shot of syrup to wash it all down.
—Spencer Gray
In the decade between 2015 and 2024, 73 individuals received Piolets d’Or to honor alpine-style ascents completed in the prior year. Eight of these highly skilled climbers—about 11 percent—subsequently died in the mountains. It is no secret or surprise that high-level alpinism is a very dangerous game. Nonetheless, Spencer’s words remind us that the hazards are manifold and ever present, and that these often superhuman achievements also come with heavy potential costs. —Dougald MacDonald, Editor, AAJ
Ryan Griffiths rappelling the northwest ridge of Kaqur Kangri. The team exited to skier’s left off the glacier below to return to their advanced base camp. Photo by Spencer Gray.
Spencer Gray on beautiful rock at about 6,000 meters on Kaqur Kangri, below the hanging snowfield that separates the south face’s serac bands. Photo by Ryan Griffiths.
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
New Cutting Edge Episode—Ultar Sar’s Southeast Pillar
Ethan Berman, Sebastian Pelletti, and Maarten van Haeren (left to right) on the summit of Ultar Sar. Photo: Maarten van Haeren.
The Cutting Edge podcast has returned for a new season of in-depth interviews with climbers just back from great ascents. The October episode highlights one of the climbs of the year from the Karakoram: the first ascent of the southeast pillar of 7,388-meter Ultar Sar in Pakistan. Host Jim Aikman interviewed climbers Ethan Berman and Maarten van Haeren, along with Karakoram expert Steve Swenson (more than 20 expeditions to Pakistan!) and AAJ editor Dougald MacDonald.
New episodes of the Cutting Edge will appear each month during the 2025–2026 season! Subscribe to the feed wherever you get podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
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