Diran Peak Summit – Helias Millerioux

11 July 2021 – 3pm.

“Yannick Graziani, Patrick Wagnon and i were standing on top of Diran Peak 7260m, after 3 days climbing Alpine style North Ridge. This summer was tough in Pakistan we get 24 days of clouds and bad weather on high altitude. It has been this small window forecast to catch for a rapid ascent on Diran Peak in pure alpine style. This climb was tough even if it was not technical.

“Lot of snow to manage, with lot of avalanches hazard to deal. breaking the track to knees on the 2200m ridge and 5km lenght was hard job especially for the last day with the 1160m elevation gain to 7260m. The 9 july we left our base camp from 3600m to camp 1 at 5400m were we slept in a snow cave. The 10 july we climb the ridge to 6100m and crossed what we named the “impossible ridge”. This 200m long ridge is a ackward traverse on spines and ice flutes very unconfortable and exposed to traverse who commit really the climb. it took us 5 hours to do this 200m traverse… The 11 july we left camp2 from 6100m at 5am to link the summit 7260m at 3pm.

“On top we can’t really enjoy the summit we saw no landscape sadly. The storm was heading from Rakaposhi. Few minutes later we were in clouds, snow and wind. We came back to camp 6100m not without stress. I knew it was still this “impossible ridge ” to cross back and the bad weather from the 12 july pain us. Especially we were obligate to move one before 13 july and the heavy snow fall forecasted… finally late afternoon we were at bottom of the ridge at 4900m… light Heart and happy with a nice ascent in our memories.”

Helias Millerioux