The next morning, we woke at 1:00 a.m. and drank some soup, leaving us with two Clif bars each. We jugged the thin ropes back to our high point. Jonny took the lead, efficiently climbing around ice and loose blocks under clear-blue skies, the Karakoram Range spread out before us.
“I need my boots and crampons,” Jonny yelled, halfway through a rock pitch. He pulled them up, and the rope began to move again, but this time more slowly. I knew it had to be hard and held the rope saying nothing, just as Jonny had done for me the day before. The pitch looked intricate and loose, forcing him to climb difficult stretches of rock between large ice smears in the steep corner.

We had spent nearly four days on the wall. As I started up from the belay on the 21st pitch, a microwave-sized block of ice and snow plummeted from the summit, hitting Jonny on the head. “Are you OK?!” I screamed. There was no reply. I yelled again.
“Yeah, I think I’m OK,” Jonny at long last replied.
The massive chunk had brought the indestructible Jonny to his knees, knocking him out for a second, but he shook it off. I continued leading, reaching the summit ridge moments later.
Jonny jugged up. His face was pale and sweaty as he pointed to his cracked helmet. We said little else about it. I re-racked and led the final chimney pitch to the summit. It was the first time I’d summited an unclimbed peak. I stood atop Shafat Fortress with my hands stretched out in front of me, taking in the landscape as the thin air and cold wind surrounded me. Jonny joined me moments later, hollering like a cowboy. He took a few pictures, and we began the descent.

We didn’t want to rap directly down the corner system, to avoid rock and ice fall, opting instead to gun 15 feet to its side . . . which required us to be crafty. At one point, Jonny equalized a RURP and a half-beaten-in, 3/4-inch angle backed up loosely to a blue TCU. When it was my turn to rap, I pulled the TCU and descended — damn if we were leaving any booty.
A day and a half later, we were back on the glacier, tired to our cores. In an almost hypnotic fog, we staggered back to our initial basecamp, Campo Italiano. There were no congratulations or traditional celebration. Rather, Purtemba told us that the police had come and that we needed to visit the local station, seven miles away. The Italians, it seemed, still wanted us arrested. After a few days rest in camp and some more bouldering (and no trip to the police), we decided to confront them.

“I love the Italians,” Jonny said, as we headed toward their cook tent. “All we can do is be friendly.”
My heart pounded. We unzipped the tent door and stepped inside. We all stood face to face, and Jonny and I, elated by our first ascent, had yet to wipe the grins off our mugs. The Italians picked up on this and instantly changed their tune — one minute cold and unfriendly, the next slapping us high fives and sharing their food. Did I just miss something? I wondered. We sat, our hands still cracked and bleeding, as they cut a slice of ham for each of us. I glanced across the small camp table at Jonny and smiled bigger. We had fulfilled our first goal. A few nights later, like old friends, our egos drowned by rum, we all drank and danced under the Himalayan sky.

Micah Dash and Jonny Copp, recipients of the 2007 American Alpine Club Lyman Spitzer Cutting-Edge Award and WL Gore’s Shipton/Tilman Grant for the trip, spent the following three weeks in basecamp bouldering. The Italian team, meanwhile, reached a high point 650 feet up the wall.