This is my entry for #monomad challenge by @monochromes.
I have dreamt to be under this mountain for many years.
I have noticed it in an old postcards from my travel to Karakorum in 2005.
In 2022 I had the opportunity, being in Karakorum again, to admire the great beauty and elegance of the shape of its ridges, similar to the teeth of a huge shark!
Laila Peak is located in Hushe Valley. It is 6096 meters high.
You can see it after climbing Gondogoro Pass (5700 meters high), almost the same altitude of the summit.
Here a picture before sunrise:
Descent from Gondogoro Pass is not easy and it is very long, also for the high altitude and the lack of ossigen.
Not alpinism but very dangerous if condition are not good. It is better to afford it before dawn, because of during morning and afternoon, the heat of sun can defrost ice between rocks, and the risk of falling rocks becomes very high. Also at dawn, some rocks had fallen near our group, at an impressive velocity and unpredictable trajectories. There was also some ice on the path, and a rope to help us to go down.
You can see also a big glacier under our feet and above our heads.
Path was extremely tiring and steep, with some invisible dark ice mixed with deep mud.
When path becomes less steepy, we had a break.
Porters walk only with socks (they have more friction than plastic shoes), and they take them off, leaving it there.
In fact this valley is also called 'the cemetery of socks' by joke.
This is the ambient around, hostile and wonderful at the same time:
We approaching Laila Peak, even if I was so tired that it seemed to me always at the same distance!
Finally, the camp!
And a majestic view of Laila Peak!
It also was skied down by Andrzej Bargiel e Jędrek Baranowski in 2021.
We had walked from 10pm of day before, until 10 of the morning. I was very very tired, but I could not sleep because of in the tent there were almost an hundred of
flies! So I stayed awake, taking also some portrait to our heroes, the porters...
... and enjoying the evening under this unique mountain!
Pictures taken with Sony Alpha 7iii.
22.08.2022