Last week, two Italian climbers, Mirco Grasso and Giacomo Mauri, repeated the “Eternal Flame” route on the Nameless Tower in the Karakoram’s Trango Towers area.
Mauri and Grasso made a first attempt around the end of July, but altitude problems forced them down to base camp. Then the weather turned bad for two weeks, testing their patience.
Trango Tower. Photo: Mirco Grasso/Giacomo Mauri
“Every day you get up, have breakfast, then wait for lunch and when it’s time for dinner,” they recalled. “You are happy that the day is over.”
Finally, the weather cleared and they began climbing again.
Mauri and Grasso chose the Eternal Flame variant of the 2009 Huber brothers’ route. (The German brothers made the first free ascent.) Kurt Albert, Wolfgang Gullich, Christof Stiegler, and Milan Sykora first climbed Eternal Flame in 1989.
On the Eternal Flame route. Photo: Mirco Grasso/Giacomo Mauri
Unstable weather continued to dog Grasso and Mauri during their second push, with cold, snow, and strong winds. Fog made the final section to the summit even harder.
Mirco Grasso and Giacomo Mauri on the Trango Tower. Photo: Mirco Grasso/Giacomo Mauri
