'Shooting the Moon' climbed on Ultar Sar (Pakistan) by Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren, Sebastian Pelletti

Alpinists Ethan Berman, Maarten van Haeren and Sebastian Pelletti have forged a magnificent new route on Ultar Sar, the striking 7388m peak above the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan. The trio spent "eight wild days" on the mountain's Southeast “Hidden” Pillar, breaching difficulties up to WI4 M5 with to establish Shooting the Moon.

After acclimatising on Batokshi in the Muchuar Valley the mountaineers started on their push on the 6th of June. Writing to planetmountain, Pelletti explained "We climbed alpine style, leaving our base camp with heavy packs, and returning to base camp 10 days later. There were no fixed lines or caches of equipment. We just climbed with the stuff in our packs from the bottom. Our last bivy was at 7100m approx. and from here we planned on launching our summit bid. We left all unnecessary gear strung up on the wall, and we launched at 11pm. A final rock buttress at 7200m gave us a final crux at around M5, which Ethan led, bitterly cold and snowing. From here a long 70 degree snow slope connects you with the summit slope, which although is easier angle, seemed eternal as you traverse north to the true summit." They tagged the 7388m main summit at 9:00am, then initiated the descent back down the line of ascent.

Five bivies had been needed on the way up, followed by a further two on the descent which was made more difficult due to a storm. "We spent 24 hours stuck in a storm after summiting, before the morning break let us free and we continued down. From here we did something like 70 rappels, and one continuous 31-hour push all the way to base camp."

Asked about the overall experience, Pelletti concluded "Our team just works really well, we all have a similar mindset but a different skill set, which is super helpful and complementary with a common goal. We are still digesting the whole experience, but are super amazed at how you can just focus on a day at a time with a really good team, and somehow the pieces of the puzzle slowly come together. Our route name refers to this, ‘shooting the moon’ is a play in a card game called ‘hearts’ that we played a lot in base camp, and basically you try and tip all the factors in your favour for one mega play, that’s the way this feels. I try to judge my climbing on the experience, having a good laugh with friends, seeing beautiful places, being physically challenged, having to grow as a person to be at the height of your objective.. and this trip has ticked all those boxes."