Paul Holding, along with three other members just returned from a ski expeidtion to Pakistan to attempt to ski the beautiful mountain Laila Peak in the Karakoram range.
North West Face of Laila Peak taken from Hushpang
Here's an excerpt from the trip report to get an idea of what they faced and how they got on.
"The north west face of Laila Peak looked like the perfect introduction to high altitude, steep skiing. Not too high and not too steep. Achievable. At 6100m and with a gradient of around 45 degrees for most of the face and steepening for the last 150m to an unknown gradient (Fred’s blog puts it between 55 and 60 degrees but he was never on the summit himself), it looks like a straight forward line down."
"This is where I have to take umbrage with the Pakistani Tourist Board for their marketing ruse (and any other Flikr enthusiast who has ever taken a picture of Laila Peak for that matter). Face on, Laila Peak looks nothing like any of the picutres taken of its beautiful profile. Absolutely nothing like it. It is an enormous, complex and intimidating face with massive, terminal exposure. With the collective experience of the group, this was probably going to be the biggest line any of us had skied."
The line.
View from Col of Laila Peak courtesy of Luca Pandolfi
To read the full trip report, see more photos and videos, click here.
N.B. Apologies if you were expecting to see another version of this post. Due to Google's rules on duplicate content, this has had to be modified.
