Planned Climbing Route

The photo on the left is of the North side of Khan Tengri and you can see the route that we intend to climb. We fly in by helicopter to Base Camp and there are 3 camps above that.  All up, we expect to be 2-3 weeks on the mountain as a lot of time is required for altitude acclimatisation and also for load carrying.

Base camp is on the glacier at the bottom of the photo at an altitude of 4000m. The summit is at 7010m, so you are looking at 3 vertical kilometres of mountain. A photo simply can’t do the scale justice!

Our planned route goes up the ridge on the right hand side of Khan Tengri to the small peak in the right quarter of the photo. This peak is 6100m high and is called Chapayev. It then descends down the ridge between Chapayev and Khan Tengri before ascending up the final ridge to the summit. We plan to make 3 camps above base camp, two on the Chapayev ridge and then the last between the two peaks. From here we will go to the summit, which is about a 15 hour climb.

Other mountains that Paul and Fiona have climbed include small peaks in New Zealand & Nepal, as well as climbing Argentina’s Aconcagua (at 6,960m, this is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas), and Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro (5,895m).