Passu Cones

PeaksGilgit-Baltistan,Pakistan

A limestone ridge above the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan, cut into bare spires so sun-struck that snow slides off them all winter.

September·Edge of season

Jun–Sep

Summer opens the high ground: the Passu Glacier walk, the three-day climb to the Patundas ridge and the trek up the Batura Glacier to the summer pastures all run, and the road is clear to Khunjerab. But the valley is green rather than gold, and meltwater turns the river opaque grey.

Year-round Tupopdan's bare grey-gold spires and the white Passu Glacier stand over the Karakoram Highway every month; the valley's colour, its snow, its open guesthouses and its trekking are what come and go.

The Passu Cones stand over the Karakoram Highway in northern Pakistan as a row of bare limestone spires, and snow does not stay on them. The Wakhi name is Tupopdan, hot rock, for exactly that: through the winter the domes all around go white while this ridge sheds what lands on it and stays grey-gold. Behind it sits the Batura glacier, fed by Batura Sar at 7,795 metres, and that peak marks a corner of the world. No mountain anywhere rises higher to its north or to its west. At road level the bridge at Hussaini crosses the Hunza to Zarabad, and most of the people on it are villagers with somewhere to be. The planks are set far enough apart to watch the river sliding underneath, and from the middle the cones fill the valley upstream. Beside the deck hangs the older span the floods took, ropes frayed and boards missing. That wreck is the bridge in all the photographs captioned the world's most dangerous crossing, and nobody uses it. Above the village, on a shelf wedged between two glaciers, Borith Lake is salt enough that no fish live in it. Ducks and geese still put down there on passage, and tents go up on the grass at its edge. Where the highway enters Passu you can step off the tarmac and walk up toward the glacier, under an hour to the snout. Most of the ice in this valley lies buried under grey rubble. This tongue stays clean white, and up close you are standing at the edge of the very ice that ground out the trough you walked up. The village fields below are hand-stacked stone walls and lines of poplar marking irrigation channels led down off the glaciers — a patchwork you could cross in twenty minutes, with a six-thousand-metre wall over it. Cloud tears across that ridge all afternoon and the limestone burns gold in the last light. Beyond it the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush and the whole spread of Central Asia fall away lower. From here the planet's high country simply stops.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The rock only turns gold at the ends of the day — catch the ridge in the first or last hour of light; midday sun flattens the row into one grey wall.
Upper Hunza turns a week or two after Karimabad — if the lower valley's poplars are already bare in late October, Passu can still be at its peak.
The Passu Glacier trail gives you both at once — an hour or two up from Borith Lake puts the white ice and the cones in the same frame.
The Hussaini bridge is sound, but it moves — steel cables and solid planks now, yet the gaps are wide and the deck bucks in the wind. Cross slowly, one at a time.
Passu is tiny and October fills it — a handful of houses take guests and the same three weeks draw everyone, so the bottleneck here is beds rather than the road.

Things to do

1
Cross the Hussaini suspension bridge
The bridge links Hussaini to Zarabad, and most of the people on it are villagers with somewhere to be on the other side. The planks are set far enough apart to watch the grey Hunza River sliding underneath, and from the middle the cones fill the valley upstream. Beside it hangs the older span the floods took, ropes frayed and boards missing — the bridge in all the 'world's most dangerous' photographs, and the one nobody uses.
2
Camp on the shore of brackish Borith Lake
A small salt lake on a shelf above the village, wedged between the Ghulkin and Passu glaciers, too saline for fish but a rest stop for migrating ducks and geese. Tents go up on the grass at its edge, and the trail to the Passu Glacier viewpoint carries on from here.
3
Walk up to the Passu Glacier's clean white snout
Where the Karakoram Highway enters the village, step off the tarmac and follow the ground up toward the glacier: well under an hour on foot brings you near the snout. Most of the ice in this valley lies buried under grey rubble, but this tongue stays clean white. Up close you stand at the edge of the very ice that ground out the trough you are walking through.
4
Walk Passu's stone-walled fields beneath the spires
Hand-stacked walls divide the plots, lines of poplar mark the irrigation channels led down from the glaciers, and the whole patchwork sits directly under the cones. Walk it late in the day for the scale of the place: farmland you could cross in twenty minutes, with a 6,000-metre wall standing over it. Cloud tears across the ridge through the afternoon, and the limestone burns gold in the last light.

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Nearby

13 km