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The steep upper flanks of the Southeast Pillar of Ultar Sar (7,300m/23,950ft) are a bad place to be pinned by a storm. Hemmed on either side by seracs and avalanche-prone slopes, the 3,100-meter buttress of blocky granite and glacial ice is a stressful descent even in good weather. Descending it with heavy snowfall and 50-mile-per-hour winds is nearly impossible. But that’s exactly where Ethan Berman, Sebastian Pelletti, and Maarten Van Haeren found themselves on June 12 and 13, huddled beneath their homemade three-person sleeping bag, as they watched over a meter of snow accumulate against the thin yellow walls of their tent. Though they had climbed to the summit a few days before, they were now trapped at 6,700 meters, and had been for over a day. “We weren’t celebrating the summit at that point,” Pelletti told Climbing. “You haven’t achieved anything unless you get down.”
Pelletti, Berman, and Van Haeren eventually completed the endless rappels back to basecamp (they “stopped counting” after 70) and their resultant route, Shooting the Moon (WI 4 M5; 3,100m), is an important contribution to Karakorum alpinism. For decades, Ultar Sar’s Southeast Pillar has been considered one of the most attractive and obvious unclimbed lines in the Karakorum range due to its stunning symmetry and steep, hard climbing all the way to the summit. But there’s a reason the Southeast Pillar has gone unclimbed since its first known attempt 33 years ago.
For one, it’s simply a pain to get to. Just note its alias, the “Hidden Pillar,” a nod to the rarified glances it receives from alpinists despite the enormous foot traffic elsewhere in the Karakorum. It’s also giant. After visiting the mountain in 2007, Colin Haley wrote in Climbing: “[The Hidden Pillar] makes the North Ridge of Latok 1 look small by comparison, and, while not as technical, it is still sustained, real climbing—very little simple slogging.” And then there’s the mountain’s remarkably unstable weather. Even though this team departed basecamp at the start of a “seven-day” weather window, they experienced high winds and snowfall nearly every afternoon. Ultar Sar has its own rhythm.
Pelletti, Berman, and Van Haeren first tried the Southeast Pillar in 2024. They made three attempts, their best to 5,900 meters, before bailing amidst unstable snow. “Each time we pushed a bit higher, as we learned to survive and thrive in the most complex environment I have ever experienced,” Berman later wrote. “Safety became a matter of position, not proximity. It was difficult to comprehend the scale of the terrain we were immersed in, and rewarding to unlock each piece of the puzzle.” During that trip, the trio learned the value of climbing at night on the Southeast Pillar. Even during periods of purportedly good weather, the route became barrelled by wind and snow each afternoon.
This season, when the trio hiked away from basecamp on June 6, they felt fit, acclimated, and mentally ready. They had trained specifically for Ultar Sar for the previous eight months, refining their climbing tactics and sleeping system like students preparing for an exam. For Berman, who received shoulder surgery immediately after returning from Pakistan last year, Ultar Sar had become a guiding force in his life. “It was so rewarding,” he says of returning to the mountain with all of last year’s lessons under their belt. “We could really go for it.”
The first two days on the Southeast Pillar were big. The team climbed 800 meters of technical ice and snow on day one, then 750 more on day two. Their blistering pace wasn’t so much out of enthusiasm as out of necessity. The mountain was unrelentingly steep; they were simply climbing from flat campsite to campsite. When they reached the upper pillar’s headwall, their pace eased. “We weren’t too affected by the altitude, but we noticed we slowed down a lot,” Pelletti says. “It took longer to leave the tent every morning, longer to climb crux pitches, and longer to recover from them.” Thankfully the climbing, at least, was all time: “Incredibly good granite and ice in all the right places.” The team climbed four distinct crux pitches at around M5 and eventually summited after six days on the mountain.
Berman says the team found success on Ultar Sar because they merged into one cohesive unit immediately upon crossing the bergschrund. “We didn’t see tasks as ‘your job’ versus ‘my job’—they were all team jobs and everyone was eager to do their part,” he says.
This crew gets along well together. Van Haeren audibly blushes when Pelletti praises him as “a fucking weapon” over the phone. And “[Berman] is cool, calm, and collected in the face of tough times,” Van Haeren says. “[He] really kept his head screwed on while pinned by the storm, when we were so far out there.” Pelletti—who became “Sergeant Seba” while on the mountain—was credited with having bottomless motivation even when the team was exhausted from another hard day of climbing. “Seba would sometimes yell at the stove for not boiling water fast enough,” Berman laughs. “And he encouraged us to always set the alarm one hour earlier in the morning. Less sleep, more climbing.”
