Gasherbrum IV

Gasherbrum IV is the last great peak on the Baltoro before the 8,000 m giants. It is not an eight-thousander, and that is why it is easy to skip on a height list. Climbers do not skip it. The west face — the “Shining Wall” — stands over the approach to Concordia and is one of the most recognized walls in the Karakoram. Balti rgasha brum means “beautiful mountain,” not “shining wall,” but the nickname stuck because of that face.

Walter Bonatti and Carlo Mauri made the first ascent on 6 August 1958, on an Italian expedition led by Riccardo Cassin, via the northeast ridge and the north summit, then a traverse of towers to the main summit. That line has almost never been repeated. The second ascent of the mountain waited until 1986 (northwest ridge: Child, Macartney-Snape, Hargis). In 1985 Wojciech Kurtyka and Robert Schauer climbed the west face alpine-style to the north summit and were forced to stop there; the climb is still treated as one of the landmark alpine-style walls of the twentieth century. A Korean party completed a west-face line to the true summit in 1997.

Gasherbrum IV is not a guided 7000er and not a stepping-stone peak. True summit rates are low, several faces remain unclimbed, and the original Bonatti–Mauri route is still effectively unrepeated. On this site it belongs with the independent 7000ers that people come for the climbing history, not the round number. en.wikipedia.org