Hammerhead Peak – FA

Elevation Gain: 7,389m
Distance: 80km
Total Time: 12 days
Date: June 30th to July 12th, 2025

Hammerhead Peak was another unclimbed summit that Andrea and I had identified as part of our traverse plans through the Kapella Headwaters. We named it in light of the Sharks Teeth Peaks theme of the area and who doesn’t like hammerhead sharks? Based on topos, it didn’t look to be all interesting, but it’s right off our planned traverse line and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to climb it. We first caught eyes of it on our way up Selachii Peak, but it would be another 2 days before we’d climb it.

Our journey to Hammerhead started on the 2nd of July after a restful sleep at our camp on the west slopes of Selachii. Intermittent rain had been rolling through the valley, but neither one of us wanted to sit around all day. We had a traverse to do after all! In the end we decided we could fare the small amount of rain, so we packed up camp and headed down the slopes.

At the base we collected all of our stashed gear and reverted to the burgeoning pack mule caravan we had started out as. Thankfully this strip of glacier is several kilometers of low angle elevation gain. The sun would occasionally poke out revealing huge broken icefalls down Mount Kapella and the surrounding terrain. Our meandering eventually landed us at the col between “Hammerhead Peak” and Mount Kapella where we promptly setup camp. We took our time making food, hanging out and feeling content that we had set off from our last spot to make some great progress.

The weather was mediocre for the rest of the day so we waited until the following day to head up Hammerhead. When the morning came around we were greeted with more low hanging clouds, but it was generally pleasant.

With that we took off to the summit. We only had a short section of scrambling to the ridge followed by some snow crossings and we had arrived at the summit. As expected it wasn’t all that interesting by mountaineering standards, but it did offer some spectacular views as the clouds burned off. After taking some time to enjoy our first sweeping views of the area, we headed back to camp to pack up and continue on with the traverse.

Our final leg of the day was a 5km trek up and over the ridges to the West side of Peak 7400 a.k.a. “Encke Peak” on bivouac. We setup shop on a perfect slabby alcove and enjoyed the best sunset of the trip.

On the following morning we made way for Peak 7400.