Rakaposhi Base Camp

The weather gods were against us. During the remaining days we were in Minapin, the sun barely broke through the clouds. It even rained. Instead of lingering at the Rakaposhi base camp for a day or two as planned, we decided to hike up and see how far we could get in a day. A few Australians and a Brit had arrived a day earlier with similar intentions. We decided to team up for the day's outing.

The trail meandered through wildly varying scenery.

At times, the trail was so steep you instinctively slowed down to make sure there was not a sharp drop appearing at your feet.

A number of small waterfalls accentuated the steepness of the surrounding hills.

After a few hours, it didn't seem that unreasonable to try and reach the base camp, with time to spare to make it down the same day. In hindsight the cloud cover and chilly wind were a blessing. Attempting to reach the base camp in one day with a full pack under sunny conditions would have been punishing. Some of the mountains best viewed from the Hunza valley were visible in the distance.

Shortly after, we arrived at the end of the glacier. 

Two of us spent an hour and a half fighting our way up a dry rocky riverbed, covering the last few hundred meters of the ascend. From the top, we looked back on the tail end of the glacier.

The real prize was just over the edge, as you can see below.

In the end, it was really worth the effort. The base camp is at 3,261 meters. We descended the 1,206 gained meters in just over 3 hours to make it home before sunset.