Paul Ramsden and Tim Miller Go 8 Days on Unclimbed 6000-meter Peak

On October 25, U.K.-based climbers Tim Miller and Paul Ramsden reached the summit of Surma-Sarovar, an unclimbed 6,605-meter peak in a remote corner of Nepal. The climb, which ascended the 2,100-meter North Face, was graded “extremely difficult” (ED), a terse grade that feels appropriate for the duo’s proudly minimalist climbing style. The route lacked any “cutting edge” technicality but proved challenging due to the altitude, long and convoluted approach, and unfavorable weather and snow conditions.

“Just getting to the bottom of the mountain and managing the gorge, which is really complex to navigate, was difficult,” Miller told Climbing. “And there’s all these river crossings. Just doing anything in the valley is really hard.”

For Ramsden, a five-time Piolets d’Or recipient and veteran alpinist, the trip was one of two he wanted to embark on before starting a new job, which would require him to dial back his mountaineering expeditions for the next few years. The first, which the two climbed in 2022, was an ascent of the 6,563-meter Jugal Spire near Kathmandu that earned them a Piolets d’Or. 

The main goal of this trip was to simply explore the remote Salimor Khola Valley, which is tucked in the northwest corner of Nepal near its border with India and Tibet. To cover more ground and trade beta they brought good friends and climbers Matt Glenn and Hamish Frost, who wanted to attempt a first ascent of their own.

Ahead of the trip, the climbers, who met in 2014 when Ramsden picked up the then-carless Miller while he was hitchhiking after a climb, had little information and an extremely loose plan. Ramsden had noticed three peaks on Google Earth he thought would be worth looking at, but not much was known about them. The two tried to unearth as much intel as they could, but, from what they could gather, the valley had only been visited a handful of times by climbers since the ‘80s, and the summit they ultimately climbed had only been attempted twice, in 2021 and 2022, by Benjamin Lieber and John Kelly (which they found out about upon their return home), although it’s unclear if they even made it to the base of Surma-Sarovar.

“A lot of the trip reports mentioned this gorge at the start of the valley, which made access into the upper part really difficult,” recalled Miller. “So the plan was just to explore this rarely visited valley and try to climb something there.”

After a flight from Kathmandu to Dhangadi, nearly two days in a jeep on rough, winding roads, an earthquake scare, and six days of walking through villages and into the mountains, the group reached the infamous gorge that was rumored to be the first major obstacle.

“It’s a steep gorge and you end up having to traverse across a vertical cliff side,” said Miller. Thankfully a shallow ledge system ran widthwise across the mountain, but the traversing was firmly fourth class above 200 meters of exposure. 

The climbers didn’t rope up for the traverse, but it was too technical for their porters to manage, so they were forced to set up their base camp below the gorge, which added a difficult five kilometers every time they wanted to acclimate or get eyes on a potential objective.

After a week of exploration, Miller and Ramsden decided on the North Face of Surma-Sarovar. Meanwhile, Frost and Glenn settled on an intimidating-looking peak with a compact rock face that they weren’t able to climb due to minimal protection. They also attempted a second 6,500-meter peak that stopped them 200 meters below the summit due to bad weather and unstable snow conditions.

Miller and Ramsden’s objective, Surma-Sarovar, appeared to have manageable ascent and descent routes with one questionable headwall.

“It’s a really complex mountain with lots of ridges, hanging glaciers, seracs, and buttresses,” Miller said. “We were looking through the binoculars and managed to see a spiraling weakness—it almost twisted around the mountain like a bit of a corkscrew, which made it hard to get a view of the full face at any one time. And then we also managed to see a bit of a descent.” With that brief reconnaissance, the pair decided to commit.

Getting to the base of the mountain, which required two full days of walking and a river that forced them to walk miles past their targeted valley to cross, was the first crux. But once they began the actual climb, the difficulties eased.

The climb began with 800 meters of steep snow-climbing in a gully that snaked up the face, occasionally giving way to some narrower, steep sections of mixed and ice climbing up to approximately WI 3 and M4 that they pitched out. Ramsden, however, is reluctant to assign technical grades to specific sections of the climb, preferring to use overall grades like TD or ED.

“I don’t really do grades,” Ramsden said. “[They’re] so subjective at high altitude, and are effectively meaningless. It’s also a minor stand against the overinflated grades you see from professional climbers on social media these days.” 

After the first 800 meters, they were able to bivy just outside of the gully, under a steep, protective rock face.

Miller and Ramsden started their second day simul-climbing on similarly easy terrain that brought them to a 60-degree section of calf-burning water ice. A steep rock headwall loomed above—the biggest unknown of the climb. The two bivied under the headwall after a second consecutive 800-meter day.

“We came to this rock band, which seemed steeper than the rest of it,” said Miller. When we were looking up from below, we thought it was going to be really steep vertical climbing—maybe [requiring] some aid climbing. It looked quite intimidating.”

But they quickly found a chimney system hidden behind a tower. 

“I just thought it was gonna be a really steep rock band of bad, compact rock,” Miller explained. But when we got there it was actually good quality rock that was easier than I thought it would be. I remember really enjoying those pitches.”

After some moderate mixed climbing on the headwall that started around M3 and gradually built to M5, they reached the top of the tower, which also proved to be a spectacular bivy spot ahead of their summit push.

On the fourth day of their ascent, the two set off for the summit, reaching it around noon. While the final stretch to the summit didn’t have much technical climbing, cold temperatures, increasingly heavy snowfall, and low visibility prevented them from moving as quickly as they had the previous three days. 

“We would do two minutes of climbing and then have to shake our hands to get the blood flowing again,” said Miller. “I had to keep cutting a ledge to swing my feet because I could feel my toes getting really cold. So each pitch ended up being quite slow.”

The weather continued to turn for the worse, yielding a viewless summit and making route finding for the descent challenging. They spent the night just below the summit, opting to wait out the weather. Unfortunately, the storm had dumped a foot of snow, spiking the avalanche risk for the descent.

According to Miller, the descent, which took two full days, ended up being the crux of the entire climb due to deep snow, complex, diagonal rappels, dodging seracs, and downclimbing on loose, snowy, and rocky slopes. At a certain point, Miller even recalled feeling and hearing a layer of snow beneath them collapse, a reminder to stay sharp. Thankfully, the slope didn’t give way and they continued on, returning to base camp two days later—eight days after they first left.

“Paul and I were both just completely knackered and could hardly string a sentence together,” Miller recounted. “It was really time-consuming and was quite mentally draining because of these avalanche hazards. We would keep slipping on things, but we eventually made it back down to the glacier and could walk out. But we were really dehydrated as well.”

For Miller, the summit itself always tends to be relatively anti-climactic—the reward is simply spending time in the mountains.

“It’s always the little moments you catch—like when you stick your head outside your tent in the morning and there’s a nice sunrise and you take a minute to look around and appreciate where you are,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like you’re on a different planet. The mountains are glowing orange and you’re at 6,000 meters and everything just seems completely surreal and different from everyday life.”

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