Skardu Biafo Glacier and Snow Lake Trek
Trek the Biafo Glacier to Snow Lake — the 67-kilometer glacier that is the longest glacier outside the polar regions and its source at Snow Lake, a 40 square kilometer snowfield at 5,000 meters where the Biafo, Sim Gang, and Hispar glaciers meet in a high-altitude wilderness of ice and rock visited by fewer people than the moon.
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Askole Biafo Start
Begin the Biafo trek from Askole — the same last village as the Baltoro approach, but turning north along the Biafo instead of east toward the Baltoro, the trail climbing past the summer settlements of the Askole farmers to the edge of the glacier where the walking on ice begins.
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Lower Biafo Glacier
The lower Biafo Glacier surface — the debris-covered lower section where rock and ice intermix, the walking slow and route-finding demanding as the trail picks its way through the chaotic landscape of the glacier's lower reaches, the scale of the ice mass becoming apparent in the distances between camps.
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Mid-Biafo Ice Highway
The middle section of the Biafo where the glacier surface becomes cleaner and the walking faster — the ice highway stretching ahead between rock walls, the glacier flowing almost imperceptibly but measurably toward the valley below, the crevasse fields requiring careful navigation with local guides.
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Baintha Camp
Camp at Baintha on the glacier — the most dramatic campsite on the Biafo, situated on a moraine island surrounded by ice, the Latok group of granite towers rising above the camp in one of the most spectacular camp positions in the Karakoram, the silence of the high glacier broken only by the occasional ice fall.
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Snow Lake Entry
Arrive at Snow Lake — the vast high-altitude snow plateau where the Biafo glacier originates, the flat white expanse stretching to the horizon with no features except the rim of peaks above, the sense of entering a world of pure white and blue with no reference points for scale.
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Hispar Pass
The Hispar Pass at 5,151 meters connecting Snow Lake to the Hispar Glacier descending to Hunza — the highest point of the Biafo-Hispar traverse, the crossing between two of the world's longest glaciers, the view from the pass encompassing hundreds of kilometers of glaciated Karakoram wilderness.