Just returned last week from a great trip to the Latok group, in the Karakoram of Pakistan. Jermey Frimer, Ken Glover, Sam Johnson and I spent 3 weeks there trying to climb granite mountains. We had pretty bad weather overall, only two high pressure windows of 4 days each, where travel was possible above 5000m or so. Lots of good exploring with the spotting scope, bouldering, scrambling, acclimatizing...but no important summits. Sam and I made two good attempts on an unclimbed line on Latok II. The first one with Ken was an 18 hour push, where we were turned around by rock fall and altitude. A day later Sam and I tried again and ended up climbing about 1000m of ice to a camp at 5900m, and spending 3 days and 2 nights there waiting for good enough weather to go to the summit (7108m)...but too stormy, plus I pretty much felt like garbage. It was an awesome trip, and the people we met in Pakistan were great, never an ill will except in the towns along the Karakoram highway where we had to keep down below the windows, and the time in Islamabad where we got caught in a riot and our driver just about had to run over some people to get us out of there before they realized we were Americans, and the hostage situation at the Red Mosque which was about 1km from our hotel. We heard the automatic weapons and rocket fire in the middle of the night on that one. I'd love to go back. Next year Inshallah! 
Welcome to Pakistan!
Balti porters, the guy in the blue sweater always looked pissed, but he was still nice.
Rajabazar, which is a huge market in Rawlpindi. We walked around here for hours looking at all the stuff.
This is your standard Pakistani truck, used for transporting anything and everything. Almost all of them are decorated like this.
Here's our basecamp at 4500m, or almost 15,000' elevation. Nice to have grass and running water when you're surrounded by glaciers!
Sammy taking a break on Latok attempt #2. We enjoyed great ice conditions on the way up, and were able to quickly solo up 3000' of this stuff.
Ken got the flu on the 3 day hike in, so Jer and he stayed back to rest...which left Sam and I to acclimatize together. We climbed a couple peaks up near Latok IV, scrambling some nice granite features up to 5.7, and sleeping on the summits in clear weather, at about 5500m. This was our first high pressure window, warm and sunny every day.
Sam up high somewhere. To his left you can see where two glaciers come together, and our basecamp is located right where they merge, right up against the rock butress.
The west face of Latok II.
Our camp at 5900m on Latok II, where we spent 3 days and 2 nights waiting for good weather to go higher.
Cruising around the glaciers on a hot sunny day.
Here's Ken just below our mixed climbing crux on attempt #1. It was pretty spicy, but with good gear. Unfortunately we found a large amount of old fixed static rope and poly cord left by the Huber brothers on their previous trips to the W. Face. Bummer.
Advanced base camp, near the base of Latok II.
Sam at the bottom of our last rappell, after bailing from our 3 days at 5900m. You can see the bad weather, and seracs above! Yikes!
The weather was bad enough we ended up leaving basecamp a couple days early, to make time to visit Husche, the home of our awesome guide Little Karim. Here's Sammy having fun with some school kids.
Here's our legendary guide Little Karim, in front of the peak Jer and Ken named after him. Luckily, those guys actually climbed something while Sam and I were suffering on LII. They ended up climbing the ridge on the right, leading to the highest summit. A link to a write up of that to come soon.
A random friendly guy we met in Husche.
A village near Husche, and the home of Abaas, another friend we made. We had lunch here at his house with the Canadian women't expedition we were traveling with, as Abaas was their guide on the Choktoi.
We flew on a 737 at 30,000' between Islamabad and Skardu. For some reason we got invited to the cockpit to view the 8000m peaks that were eye level with us as we flew up the valley.
