The two Spanish climbers Miquel Mas and Marc Subirana succeeded in the second attempt a n alpinistic coup in the Karakoram. According to information from the Spaniard Carlos Garranzo, the two reached on Friday via a “very direct line” a previously unclimbed, approximately 6,400-meter-high secondary peak on the southwest flank of the 7,108-meter-high granite giant Latok II. They had spent a total of 18 days on the wall so far, with the summit day alone taking 14 hours, Carlos reports. According to him, Mique and Marc christened their new route “Latok Thumb.”
Through the 1100-meter-high Southwest Face
They had first attempted the “Thumb” in the summer of 2022. They had reached an altitude of around 6,000 meters, but had then had to abandon their expedition because they had run out of time. They had left a material depot to return this summer. According to Carlos Garranzo, the route now completed is 1,100 meters high and has 31 pitches.
Huber brothers, Gutsch and Anker mastered the West Face in 1997
Latok II had been climbed for the first time in 1977. The Italians Ezio Alimonta, Renato Valentini and Toni Masé had reached the summit via the South Ridge. Twenty years later, in the summer of 1997, the brothers Alexander and Thomas Huber, together with their German compatriot Toni Gutsch and American Conrad Anker, had mastered the approximately 2,000-meter-high Latok II West Face for the first time. “Never before had such a difficult and tall wall been attempted at such high altitude, at 7,000 meters above sea level,” wrote the Huber brothers in their expedition report.
