Trango Towers

The Trango Towers are a family of rock towers situated in Gilgit-Baltistan, in the north of Pakistan. The Towers offer some of the largest cliffs and most challenging rock climbing in the world, and every year a number of expeditions from all corners of the globe visit Karakoram to climb the difficult granite. They are located north of Baltoro Glacier, and are part of the Baltoro Muztagh, a sub-range of the Karakoram range. The highest point in the group is the summit of Great Trango Tower at 6,286 m (20,623 ft), the east face of which features the world's greatest nearly vertical drop.Structure of the groupAll of the Trango Towers lie on a ridge, trending northwest-southeast, between the Trango Glacier on the west and the Dunge Glacier on the east. Great Trango itself is a large massif, with four identifiable summits: Main (6286m), South or Southwest (6250m), East (6231m), and West (6223m). It is a complex combination of steep snow/ice gullies, steeper rock faces, and vertical to overhanging headwalls, topped by a snowy ridge system.Just northwest of Great Trango is the Trango Tower (6239m), often called "Nameless Tower". This is a very large, pointed, rather symmetrical spire which juts 1000m out of the ridgeline. North of Trango Tower is a smaller rock spire known as "Trango Monk." To the north of this feature, the ridge becomes less rocky and loses the large granite walls that distinguish the Trango Towers group and make them so attractive to climbers; however the summits do get higher. These summits are not usually considered part of the Trango Towers group, though they share the Trango name. Trango II (6237m) lies northwest of the Monk, and the highest summit on the ridge, Trango Ri (6363m), lies northwest of Trango II.