Biafo Snow Lake Hispar La trek is one of the longest glacier treks in Pakistan and indeed a lifetime experience of our trekking expeditions. My cousin Najam and I did it together back in the year 2008. In total, the Biafo Glacier, Snow Lake, and Hispar La Hispar Glacier are almost 120 kilometres, which makes it the second-longest glacier in the world outside the Polar region. It takes around 20 to 22 days to complete it, entering from Skardu, starting from Askoli village, and ending at Hispar in Nagar Valley, Hunza near Karimabad.

We enjoyed the most challenging and rewarding trekking experiences in the Karakoram region.

Here it is worth mentioning that this was my first ever trek on glaciers in my life. Before this expedition, I did a lot of small 2-3 day treks of Pakistan. Usually, people do the famous Concordia Trek along with Gondagoro La and at later stages, they come to this side, which is one of the longest treks of Pakistan.

It is a fact that at first sight when I saw the gigantic view of Biafo from the ridge from where we go downhill to step onto the Biafo glacier, I was quite horrified. It was not a bright day rather a little bit cloudy, and the sounds of glacier waters and whispering crevasses and the quantum of the glacier in terms of its depth, length, width and its first site made me a bit afraid of its greatness and it was like I was about to enter a new world that I had never seen before. Throughout the trek, there are 20-30 meters deep crevasses in the Biafo and Hispar glaciers. On the very first evening before sunset, the most terrifying thing happened as the three of us: Najam, I and our Guide Sajid were separated from the rest of the whole team. All the porters and our assistants reached safely at the campsite but the three of us were lost and the next day they reached us at the mid-point from our actual campsite as they started moving back to rescue us in the latter half of the night when the rain stopped.

The night we spent perfectly on the middle bed of the glacier was in fact the most terrible night of our lives. Since it was a cloudy day, the visibility reduced a bit early in the evening and it was complete darkness. We were completely trapped and surrounded by the dangerous open deep crevasses, chilling wind, horrifying sounds of glacier water streams, and above all, it started drizzling. We immediately took the decision not to proceed further. We quickly reviewed the gear we had with us and luckily, one tent and a personal sleeping bag of our guide were with him. Usually, the tents are with the porters, but we had it with us which proved a life saviour. The third thing Najam had with him was his slim smart mattress, which was used in the tent beneath the sleeping bag as an insulation layer.

So these three items became the source of our survival in the minus temperature of the terrible night. After careful selection of a bit safer spot in the middle of the glacier we quickly erected our tent and entered inside to keep us dry from first drops of rainwater. We spread the mattress in the middle of the tent to sit on it and fully opened the sleeping bag to use it as a rectangular quilt. Unfortunately, we had given our day packs along with all the food items to our porter assistants and it was one of our biggest mistakes since we were very much tired and had no food at all, and nothing to drink to get ourselves energized. It was one of the longest nights. Although we were extremely tired, we were not able to sleep at all. We were shivering with cold in the minus temperature with our bodies freezing. Throughout the night, we kept on rubbing our hands on our legs and back and stuck close to each other to stay warm. That was the only solution to keep ourselves safe from freezing and staying alive. The moment we entered our tent, the soft drizzle turned into heavy rain and luckily we prevented ourselves from becoming completely wet. We didn’t remove our whole trekking gear just to keep ourselves warm. Finally, the rain stopped in the last part of the night. We started as soon the morning light appeared and visibility became possible. We didn’t have wireless or any other communication system with us, the only thing we had was a whistle in my pocket, so we kept on blowing the whistle but there was no one to hear until we came closer to our actual campsite. Finally, we were rescued by our porters and the local team. We also realized our biggest mistake that we had opted for a guide who was not from the locals but rather from Punjab and he did the trek twice before taking us with him.

While crossing the Snow Lake area, we had to rope up with each other at a distance of 6-8 feet as the crevasses filled up with soft snow and become blind to us because of continuous snowfall and blizzards in the area.

The second incident on the very next day happened with me, I had fallen in one of the blind crevasses down to chest level and was gradually slipping further down. Luckily, we were properly roped up with each other, so I was safe. My guide asked me to lean forward while moving my legs slowly. Then they threw another rope towards me and made a “V“ shape to pull me out from both ends. Those unforgettable 2-3 minutes of my life were literally moments between life and death. As I was safely pulled out from there, we continued the trek in the snowstorm and spent the night on the snow-covered glacier after crossing Snow Lake towards Hispar la. The next day we started early as we were targeting to cross Hispar La and reach the campsite well before sunset.

Biafo is also known as the Highway of Ice. After crossing the easier part of Biafo, we reached the Snow Lake campsite. The next day we crossed the lake and climbed the highest part of the trek with an altitude of 5,151 m and slept in our tents after a very long day of trekking. We enjoyed the scenic view of Snow Lake from the top of Hispar La with the Hispar glacier on the other side and snow-covered mountains in the back.

After crossing the Hispar La, we continued towards Hispar Glacier, another challenging and very tricky glacier of the Karakoram range. Due to cyclic movement deep under the surface of the glaciers, gas reactions and heat from the earth, the glaciers keep on changing their shapes.

Finally, we reached Hispar village on day 17 or 18 as far as I remember. Unfortunately, we reached there in the late evening and the last bus from the village had left just before we had arrived.

We had no choice except to stay there for another night. We slept there and in the early morning we had another very adventurous experience; instead of waiting for the bus, we decided to sit on a tractor trolly along with our luggage, a whole crew of 9 porters and the guide for reaching Nagar from Hispar village.

It was one of the worst decisions in our life. You can imagine the tiredness from almost 3 weeks of trekking and our bodies filled with cramps. On the funny side of tractor-trolly is that on a very bumpy and dangerous jeep trek, we were literally jumping like stones in an iron box. We were laughing and crying to ourselves while feeling intense pain in our bodies. Finally, near Nagar city, we jumped out from the tractor-trolly and started walking along the riverside rocky jeep trek.

When we reached Hunza, our bodies were in pain, not because of the long trek, but rather due to the last terrific ride we had from Hispar to Hunza.

Whenever I recall the trip, I remember the three major adventurous incidents, “the night on Biafo Glacier”, “the Snow Lake blind crevasse incident” and the “last ride” from Hisper village to Hunza. Indeed lots of learnings for the readers who dare for the great trekking expeditions to explore the beautiful colours of nature in the complete wilderness, where you learn the tricks of survival and overcoming challenging situations.

For more pictures, click the link on Flickr,

https://www.flickr.com/photos/khobaib/albums/72157606357295410

Khobaib A Vahedy

22 July 2023

Lahore