First ascent of Tumladen Sar in the Karakoram by Matej Prcin, Tomasz Rodzynkiewicz, Marco Schwidergal

We chose the Ghujerab mountains of the Karakoram due to its remoteness and a lot of unnamed and unclimbed peaks. Our expedition started the 1st of September in the village of Shimshal. After 4 days of trekking we established a base camp on the Virjerab glacier, the old Polish base camp. The goal was to climb some of the unclimbed peaks alpine style.

We didn’t have any photos of this valley or its mountains, so during our first week we went to the first Virjerab valley, established ABC and had a closer look at the mountains. We got lucky because we managed to find beautiful peak plus the mountains seemed to be in condition. During acclimatisation we went deeper into the main valley to explore more the other, south side of “our” peak for possible descent routes.

On 20 September 2025 everything was ready. We made a bivi and the base of the wall and at 2:00 am the next morning we started our climb.

The first day involved climbing a steep couloir with ice up to 85 degrees, and few mixed pitches up to M5. A lot of wind-blown snow made the climbing quite difficult. We didn’t find any suitable place for a tent, so that night we endured a very uncomfortable sitting bivi.

The second day was predominantly endless sustained ice pitches up to 80 degrees, plus 2 mixed pitches thrown in for good measure. Fortunately the second bivi was way more comfortable, and we even managed to get some sleep. On the third day of climbing we followed the obvious snow and ice ramp to the ridge and then continued more easily to the top.

The descent to ABC took another 2 days. After 10 rappels down the south side we found a very ruined glacier. With luck on our side we managed to navigated this complex glacier, made two more rappels over seracs and then set off on the last section, only 18 km back to our basecamp.

We named the peak Tumladen Sar, while our route is called Flame of the west (1800m, M5, 85°).

- Matej Prcin, Slovakia