Climbing Stok Kangri

Stok Kangri is a trekking peak and involves almost no technical or climbing skills except when it is covered in deep snow or ice when it can challenge even the best of the climbers. Though easy by technical grade, it is a hard trek mainly due to the altitude of 6153m that needs serious acclimatization and the physical fitness required to climb that high. If you aspire to climb Stok Kangri, please train hard to get as fit as you can and then acclimatise properly before attempting the summit. Best period is Jul – August. Typically, if you fly to Leh, the climb should take 6 – 7 days Leh to Leh. I have climbed Stok many times and this is the story of my climb that took less than 24 hours from Leh to Leh; needless to say please do not attempt this ever.

We had just returned to Leh after summitting a 7000m plus peak when one of my climbing partners declared that he would like to climb Stok Kangri before we flew off the day after tomorrow. All we had with us was a day in between to climb and return. I just couldn’t let him go alone since he was after all mad as a hatter. A quick peek from our hotel window showed Stok had little snow on the top. So we had a good dinner that night and took one small knapsack each containing water bottles, biscuits, chocolate bars, dry fruits, toffees, couple of apples and oranges. We also packed in a pair of Gore Tex shell jacket and pants. And then we crashed off for two hours.


Just after midnight, a taxi dropped us at the road head in Stok Village by the river. It was a clear night and the dark sky above dotted with stars looked brilliant. Headlamps lit up our path and we walked rapidly, as we were super acclimatized and this was really easy. Soon we turned right and continued on our path. We crossed the proverbial tea tents on the way, everyone sleeping inside. With so light a pack and superbly fit, we set up a blistering pace and in about 2 hours we reached the fork where we took the left trail to cross the river over a stone bridge and then turned right to reach the Base Camp at 5000m. It was just about 4 am and many of the teams already at BC were getting ready to start the summit push. There were many headlamps bouncing around like glow-worms and the area was redolent with the general hum of human presence. As we crossed this multitude, some of them looked at us strangely wondering where we came from. We took a short break ahead.

Then we followed the steep trail to the top of the ridge on left, gaining ground rapidly and soon the bobbing headlights at BC faded below. We took another hour to reach 5300m Advance Base Camp location. The eastern sky had started to brighten and the beginning of the twilight lit up our path. The sky was absolutely clear, soon we switched off the headlamps and now I could see a trail of climbers up ahead crossing the snow field. These people must have left the BC long time back. Eventually we reached the snow field and just zipped across the freshly made trail in our sneakers. We were climbing only in our base layers now as we had built up considerable amount of body warmth. I guessed the air temperature to be around zero. We had to jump over few streams and one small crevasse and soon we caught up with the climbers ahead who were grouped below the scree slope. We were at around 5450m where the real climb begins on Stok.
We crossed the group quickly and I breathed in relief when I couldn’t see anyone else ahead or above us. We scrambled steadily across the scree field diagonally and in zigzag occasionally to hit the final ridge to the summit. The summit ridge begins at around 5800m and in one continuous sweep goes all the way to the fore-summit and then 50m more to the real summit. We took another 90 min to reach the summit. By now the sun was aglow in the sky spilling radiance all around. A panorama of snow covered peaks punctuated the stark blue sky. I stared northwest and could see K2 rising like a tiny finger. I finally checked my watch to realize we had taken little less than 12 hrs from Leh to summit Stok. We spent over 30 min on the top and then literally ran down to the Base Camp. We finally ate some of our foods and emptied our bottles as we were certainly dehydrated. I met many of my local guide friends and cooks at BC and we got several steaming tea helpings. We returned to Stok Village in another 3 hours and then got a taxi back to Leh just as the sun was setting over the Indus.