Trip Report by C.J. Carter

We came to the Karakoram Range of Pakistan not to chase a summit, but to connect two lives that had long run in parallel. For years, this range, and the ancient kingdom of Baltistan, has been my workplace alongside a very talented team at Iqra Fund as a planner working on girls education. Focused on training, mapping and meetings — my movement on those trips is limited to human settlement and closely watched in this sensitive area along a border with an 80 year old war with India over Kashmir. This summer’s trip with my fiancée Maya and close friends beside me would be different. We entered as guests of the mountains, on trekking visas with open schedules, intent on alpine movement, shared time with local friends, and reciprocity. The Karakoram is wild beyond comprehension: immense scale, severe and the densest concentration of the world’s highest peaks, the Third Pole of ice, and a living landscape for more than half a million Balti people whose lives are inseparable from land, risk, and change.

In this range, you don’t head into the hills alone. Local knowledge and trusted networks are essential—not only for safety, but for navigating cultural protocol and red tape. To receive a visa, we also needed a host agency and a full ground logistics team. Thankfully, friend and local guide Karim Hushevi runs one of the few Balti owned guiding operations — and was eager to support a creative, alpine style expedition. Like the Sherpa of Nepal, the Balti people of Pakistan have a long, understated history of world-class ascents and mountain work, forming the backbone of many successful expeditions. Karim handpicked a team of local legends, creative cooks, and humble crushers. After the brief war with India in May 2025, expedition work for local climbers and businesses dropped by nearly 60 percent. With fewer opportunities during peak season, some friends joined us to train and research routes to guide, while others came on as porters, cooks, and liaisons. Especially this summer, it felt right to travel as tourists and hire local professionals.

From a warm welcome touching down in Skardu, we moved slowly to altitude. To acclimatize we followed goat trails to high summer pastures, sipped tea with families, and listened to stories in stone huts as storms rolled through. Warm bread, fresh yogurt and meat were shared freely alongside stories of glaciers, family, and loss. Then, with final blessings by elders, and stocked with care by porters we left Hushe – weaving up the Nangma Valley then to the Mashebrum group,  "Queen of Mountains" in the Balti language, to a basecamp at 4,000 meters. The warm and wet summer of 2025 in the range made its presence known quickly. Heat never lets the mountains rest. Relentless loosening rock, ice and land up to 7,000m. Rockfall echoed day and night, glaciers cracked open and lakes beneath them began to burst, beginning a cascade of floods that would reach far beyond the range after we were safely home. As other teams turned around across the Karakoram, we felt the same tension building. Near 5,800m (19,000 feet) on the southwest face of what's locally referred to as Masherbrum II, tucked beneath a rock overhang, we reached for our crampons, a gut feeling arrived before the rocks did. The face above released a large volley of rocks across the crux of the route and the cave's lip. My fiancé, local climber and friend Ali Hassan and I looked at each other and shared a refrain we had learned from many aged local mountain workers, “Allah gives you one life, not two.” The decision was immediate and unanimous. We put the crampons away and spotted each other across lower gulleys exposed to the thawing rock face above. At high camp that night sparks of rockfall illuminated the north face beyond our toes in an otherwise inky night sky as we slept. We were done climbing.

With climbing boots traded for running shoes, the trip softened and expanded. We ran skylines and across glaciers and trekked high trails above pastures, sharing more meals at camp with a rotating cast of elders and herders. More stories flowed – of fairies on glaciers and generations grafting different colors of ice to steward the ice. Ties to these mountains ran deep. On our final evening, regional leader and dear friend Ghulam Muhammad Satpara arrived down from pasture with an armful of wildflowers for my fiance Maya. “Now we begin your wedding,” he said. At that moment, the distance between the Karakoram and the North Cascades disappeared and it was clear we’d be a part of each other’s life for years to come. Mountain people are special like that, big hearts.

The heat continued, floodwaters rose and damaged crops, bridges, and roads. We adjusted our plans and focused our time with local friends and what they were working on. We joined planning sessions for a regional climbing school and helped complete maternal health training with 12 frontline midwives and female health workers, drawing on Maya and her friends’ experience as health professionals. As the mountains and valleys faced increasing strain, it felt natural to support work people we care about are leading—local efforts to make life in a severe place a little safer and a little better.

What stays with me from this expedition wasn’t altitude, difficulty or a future objective. What sticks is an ethic of shared care that defines mountain life everywhere. And being able to tie my own family and friends into this incredible place — to let them feel the scale, the severity, and warm heart of Balti people. It felt like opening a door between two parts of my life that needed to meet. As mountain people, we teach each other how to stay alive, and how to live amidst change and chaos. The great mountains of our planet are shifting fast, and so must our relationships to them—and to one another. This expedition wove together twenty years of mountain climbing and an opening life chapter into one mantra: collective care and relationships first – summits optional. In the Karakoram, progression isn’t measured by summits reached, but by staying alive, and relationships, connections and humanity we choose to nourish along the way.