New 1,100-Metre AI5+ M5 on Pik Alpinist
Dane Steadman, Jared Vilhauer and Seth Timpano have established the impressive Trophy Hunt up Pik Alpinist
An impressive new route has been climbed up the northeast face of Pik Alpinist in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Trophy Hunt is an 1,100-metre AI5+ M5 established by Dane Steadman, Jared Vilhauer and Seth Timpano. Earlier this year, Steadman established a new route on Mount Huntington in Alaska, read about it here.
The team has written a report for the American Alpine Club Cutting Edge Grant, which includes this from Timpano: “After 10 days of acclimating and window shopping for different objectives, we set our sights on an elegant and sustained ice line on the Northeast Face of Pik Alpinist (5,482 m). Given the steep ice climbing on the route, we determined our best strategy was to attempt the route without carrying bivy gear. We left our bivy at the base of the wall at 3 a.m. and crossed the Bergschrund (the terminal crevasse), or ‘schrund, shortly after that. Using 70m ropes, we made 16 pitches, many of which required 10+m of simul-climbing through difficulties up to AI4 on the steeper pitches and 60+m of simul-climbing on the lower angle sections.”
The route took a total of 27 hours for the round trip. “We chose this timeframe based on two factors,” said Timpano, “1) The temperatures are significantly cooler than mid-summer and, therefore, better for ice climbing objectives. 2) The weather seems more stable with less afternoon convective build-up and precipitation. However, when winter does come early to the Tien Shan, it can make travel into and out of the region challenging, and most people said we should be out of there before October.” Shortly after they left the region, a snowstorm blanketed the area.
Pik Alpinist was first climbed by a team led by M. Lebedev from Aug. 15 to 19, 1993, up the steep east face to the north ridge. In 1996, a German and French trio climbed the left edge of the rock face at the foot of the north ridge and continued up the ridge to the summit. There have since been other technical routes added.
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