Simone Moro tries the ascent of Batura II (7,782 meters), the highest still unclimbed peak of the world
On Sunday, June 5, 2005, Simone Moro will leave from the Malpensa airport, to attempt the first ascent of Batura II, the highest unclimbed peak of the world, in Pakistan, in the western Karakorum, in the Batura Muztagh group. The mountaineer from Bergamo will try the route on the south face of Batura II with the American Joby Oqwyn, who is also a cameraman. The style of the expedition will be ultra light, without high altitude porters and without using artificial oxygen during the ascent.
The only support to the two friends climbing in Karakorum is the Pakistani cook, who will take care of the base camp.
Thanks to modern technology it will be possible to follow daily the progress of the ascent on the site www.simonemoro.com. A Thuraya satellite phone, a laptop, photo equipment and digital video camera will make possible the transmission of words and images to the western world. Solar panels and a small generator will supply the necessary power for the equipment.
Here some thoughts from Simone about “his” alpinism and his imminent project in Pakistan.
Oscar Durbiano

High altitude considerations
Too many people on the 8000-meter peaks, and they are all collecting the 14 summits above that elevation. The mountaineers who aren’t collecting the 14 summits still try anyway to reach the top without worrying much about the route, in 95% of the ascents the climbers follow the normal route, that, also if not easy, still always is the one of the first ascensionist, half century ago. Another trend is to be the first of a special category on the summit “X”; the first Italian, the first American, the first Senegalese, the first deaf, the first cripple, the first woman, the first one walking backwards, the first white, black, yellow, the fastest, the most beautiful, the richest, the most …idiot.
I have personally met some of them and I am also guilty of climbing on the normal routes, but I have understood long ago that the true alpinism has a different physical and mental approach towards the vertical adventure. Therefore I have tried, sometimes successfully, sometimes failing, winter ascents, new routes, traverses, fast ascents, trying to follow the great mountaineers of the past. In short, I have tried to make my own alpinism and not to clone the one already made in a great way in the past.
The world of the extra European alpinism of today is shortsighted and has little imagination, and with few and pleasant exceptions, the mountaineers are very similar in thinking, climbing, telling stories and inventing their mountain career.
Virgin peaks, new routes on unknown faces, second ascents, winter ascents, enchainments of several peaks and many other forms of mountaineering are absent in the actual trends of alpinism. There are very few climbers who accept the challenge of these new frontiers of adventure, often they come from Eastern Europe, and we can find very few of them in the national and international stage.
There are many reasons for that, first of all the lacking of acceptation of potential failure and the fear that the big public could appreciate lower mountains (7,000 – 6,000 meters) less than 8000-meter peaks.
Just surf the Internet in the seasons before and after the monsoon, and you will see a lot of ascents of the world’s highest summits, but they are all the same…
It is always strenuous and uncertain to climb a mountain, I am the first to assert it, but besides the hard work there should be a little imagination, creativity, desire of unknown and adventure, it is not enough to have a satellite phone or not, to create or eliminate these presuppositions. With the instruments of communication it is possible to write exciting pages of true alpinism, as well as very boring never ending efforts to drag yourself along to a summit, already climbed hundreds of times in the same style and along the same route. Also the taste of failure is different, if the climber has tried to play an innovative game, and not the usual actual cliché.
Among alpinists, the most frequent questions are “how many 8,000-meter peaks did you climb?” or “how many times did you climb Everest?” and this seems to be the measure with which they make a ranking and give the awards. If you try to make a different alpinism, if you speak different languages, if you write books (and don’t have somebody write them for you), if you easily move on all terrains (rock, ice, mixed), if you can fluidly talk about what you do and what you feel, if you declare success and failure in the same way, the protagonists of the alpine scene don’t like and don’t tolerate you. The reactions to these qualities are in fact critics and distrust. And still Messner, ever since the number one, should have taught polyvalence of physical, sportive, mental and entrepreneurial attitudes.
Project Batura II
My alternative alpine journey has started from this critical, hard and uncomfortable analysis of the world I belong to, already a few years ago, and I founded my next project on this base.
I have tried to combine the concepts of high altitude, difficulty, loneliness, uncertainty, adventure and unknown in a single alpine project. I wondered which was and where was the world’s highest unclimbed peak.
It is well known that there are hundreds of virgin and unexplored peaks on this planet, and I wanted to find the identity of the highest one.
It is named Batura II and is 7,762 meters high, is located in Pakistan, in the western part of the Karakorum in the Batura Muztagh group. The Batura II is also called Pik 31 or Hunza Kunji and it has already been difficult to discover it and to find the exact information about its history. Many Websites and a few magazines indicated it had already been climbed, in 1978 by Japanese expedition.
I have later discovered, thanks to the valued and scientific information of German Wolfgang Heichel, that that summit had NEVER been climbed and that there had been even four attempts to reach the top. The first attempt was in 1959 by an English-German expedition, then the attempt of the Japanese in 1978, during which Ishikawa Ito and Makoto Ohkubo reached Batura IV, after the expedition had tried the south face of Batura II. Ito personally informed me about the details of the climb and confirmed to have reached the top of Batura IV.
The Polish tried it in 1983, but eventually they fell back on the Batura I, after an attempt to the Batura II. The Germans made the last try in 2002 and from Markus Walter, a member of this expedition, I was able to get some information and images taken recently during their attempt…
Thank God alpinism is far from dead. There still is somebody who tries to save it from fossilization and I try to help this inversion of the trend.
Batura II with its 7,762 meters represents today the world’s highest still unclimbed peak. Although there still are some satellite summits of higher mountains that haven’t been climbed yet, like for example Lhotse middle east, 8,376 meters or Nuptse central, 7,815 meters and a few others, these summits aren’t considered independent and autonomous like Batura II, that at all effects is identified also with a different name (Batura II and not Batura east or west or central), like a peak being part of the group of Batura Muztagh, in the same way of the peaks belonging to the Annapurna group, also identified with the name I, II, III, IV, etc, according to their elevation and independent location.
The south face of Batura II, my project, is definitely harder, but a little less dangerous than the west face. It is the same side of some of the past attempts, but I will try to follow a new line, different from the one climbed until now.
My climbing partner will be the American alpinist and cameraman Joby Oqwyn. We two will be alone in the whole mountain region of Batura Muztagh and this will guarantee the solitude and total independence that is at the base of our choice and philosophy. If we combine these factors to the very high elevation of the summit, the uncertainty of the route and the complete “virginity” of the upper part of the mountain and the summit itself, it’s clear that the project is at the same time exciting, difficult and adventurous. Exactly what I was looking for and that only in the true winter or in very few other situations or faces it is possible to find also on the 8,000-meter peaks.

Expedition timing and communication plan
The departure is planned on Sunday, June 5, 2005 from Milan Malpensa. We will arrive in Islamabad on the 6th and after having taken care of the bureaucratic formalities, made the briefing at the Pakistani Tourism Ministry and prepared all mountaineering gear and equipment for the next two months, we will leave towards Batura. We will follow the road until Chilas and then to Alibad. The third day with a jeep to Hassanabad. From there after four days of trekking we will reach the base camp on the glacier Batokshi at an altitude of about 3900 meters. We will spend about two months trying to climb the mountain and to explore the area.
We will not have high altitude porters and artificial oxygen for our climb and only a Pakistani cook will help us at bas camp. That means an ultra light style, that will be daily reported through the satellite technology Thuraya (supplied by Intermatica srl for the voice channel) and through a Regional B-Gan modem (supplied by Telemar for the data channel). Every day it will be possible to follow our progress on the mountain and see the images directly on the Website www.simonemoro.com in six languages simultaneously. Solar panels and may be a small generator will provide the power necessary for the radio, telephone and computer equipment to send data from base camp and from
Simone Moro