Trango Towers: The Great Rock Walls of the Baltoro

The Trango Towers are a ridge of granite spires on the north side of the Baltoro glacier in Baltistan. Great Trango Tower (6,286 m) has what is recognised as the world's greatest nearly vertical drop, a headwall of about 1,340 metres on its east face, and the needle-like Nameless Tower (6,239 m) beside it is one of the most famous rock spires anywhere. You cannot drive to them: you see them on foot, on the third or fourth day of the K2 base camp trek, as the route leaves Paiju and climbs onto the glacier.

This page covers what is in the group, the climbs that made it famous, and how and where a trekker actually sees it.

What is in the Trango group?

All the towers stand on one ridge running north-west to south-east, between the Trango glacier on the west and the Dunge glacier on the east, which both feed the Baltoro. From the south-east end:

• Trango Castle (5,753 m), the last big peak before the Baltoro.
• Trango Pulpit (6,050 m), really part of Great Trango's south-east ridge, with walls almost as hard as Great Trango's.
• Great Trango Tower (6,286 m), a huge massif with three summits, snow and ice gullies, rock faces and overhanging headwalls under a snowy crest.
• Trango Tower (6,239 m), better known as Nameless Tower, the tall, symmetrical spire most photographs show.
• Trango Monk, a smaller spire just north of Nameless Tower.

Further north-west the ridge loses its big granite walls but grows higher: Trango II (6,237 m) and Trango Ri (6,363 m), the highest point on the ridge, share the name but are not usually counted as part of the towers.

The height is not what matters here. Plenty of Karakoram peaks are a thousand metres higher. What sets the group apart is the steepness and sheer size of clean granite at over 6,000 metres.

The climbs that made the towers famous

1976: Nameless Tower. A British team of Joe Brown, Mo Anthoine, Martin Boysen and Malcolm Howells made the first ascent. Nobody repeated it for eleven years.

1977: Great Trango. Galen Rowell, John Roskelley, Kim Schmitz, Jim Morrissey and Dennis Hennek reached the main summit by a mix of ice ramps, gullies and rock on the south side.

1984: the east face. The Norwegians Hans Christian Doseth and Finn Dæhli climbed the east face to the East Summit and both died on the descent. Their route was not repeated with a safe return until 2008, when four Norwegians spent 27 days on the wall. One of them, Rolf Bae, was killed on K2 later that summer.

1987 to 1990: the free-climbing era. A Slovenian team opened a clean crack line on Nameless Tower in 1987, still called the Yugoslav Route. In 1988 Germany's Kurt Albert, Wolfgang Güllich and Hartmut Münchenbach climbed it free, and on 20 September 1989 Albert and Güllich, with Milan Sykora and Christoph Stiegler, opened Eternal Flame, named after the Bangles song and climbed almost entirely free. In 1990 the French climber Catherine Destivelle made the first ascent by a woman. The Huber brothers finally climbed Eternal Flame completely free in 2009.

1992: the Grand Voyage. Xaver Bongard and John Middendorf took 18 days to climb the 1,340 m east headwall of Great Trango and return. Their route and the Norwegian one have been called perhaps the hardest big-wall climbs in the world.

The extreme sports. On 26 August 1992 two Australians, Nic Feteris and Glenn Singleman, BASE-jumped from 5,955 m on Great Trango to the Dunge glacier, then the highest BASE jump on record. In May 2024 three skiers made the first ski descent of Great Trango's west face.

Pakistani climbing has a place in the story too: the Pakistan Alpine Institute described its 2013 trip to the Trango area as Pakistan's first big-wall climbing expedition.

Where trekkers see the Trango Towers

The towers are on the K2 base camp route. From Askole, the last village, most itineraries walk to Jhola, then to Paiju near the snout of the Baltoro, often with a rest day there. Our guide to campsites on the K2 base camp trek covers each camp.

1. Around Paiju, the first granite spires come into view ahead.
2. Paiju to Khoburtse or Urdukas, the first day on the glacier itself, is the Trango day. Walking east up the ice, the towers rise on your left, on the north side, with the Trango and Dunge glaciers coming down on either side of them.

There is no separate trek to the foot of the towers. Climbing teams set up their own base camps off the main route and arrange their own permits through registered operators. For trekkers, the towers are something you walk past and look up at, often for most of a day.

How to get there

Seeing the towers means doing the K2 base camp trek or the Gondogoro La trek, which share the route up the Baltoro. Both start with a jeep drive from Skardu to Askole (see our Skardu to Askole guide) and need the permits, porters and season of the full trek. Foreign trekkers need a trekking permit for this route; our K2 base camp trek cost guide covers the paperwork and fees.

There is no short version. Paiju is two days' walk from Askole, and the best views of the towers come a day or more beyond it, on rough moraine and ice.

When to go

The Baltoro trekking season runs from roughly June to early September, with July and August the most settled months. Climbing expeditions on the towers keep to the same summer window. Cloud can hide the tops for a day at a time in any month, so a rest day at Paiju gives you a second chance at the view. Our best time for the K2 base camp trek guide goes month by month.

Is it worth trekking in just to see them?

On their own, probably not: the round trip from Askole to Concordia takes about two weeks. But nobody walks the Baltoro only for Trango. The towers are one of three or four sights, with Masherbrum, the Gasherbrums and K2 itself, that make it the best-known glacier trek in Pakistan. If you are already considering it, the Trango day is one of the reasons to go.

If you want big Karakoram scenery without a two-week trek, the Hushe and Shigar valleys give close mountain views from a jeep. Our best treks in Gilgit-Baltistan compares the options.

Frequently asked questions