Peak 7400

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

A day and a half of bad weather blew by without much fuss as Andrea and I took the opportunity to rest on our 1850m tent site near Cornice Peak. We had climbed up and over Encke Peak in the good weather prior to this. Now with a mid day break in the weather, we were both keen to get moving again. The next part of the traverse involved getting over Peak 7400 just a few kilometers to the North. When Mark Grist and Mike Buda had been in the area, they had also climbed Peak 7300 directly West of Peak 7400 and then rappelled onto the north side and traversed the glacier to reach Peak 7400. Our plan was just to climb Peak 7400 and continue on to Sharks Teeth Peaks after.

We packed up the tent and headed out on to the obscured ridge line ahead. After a quick up and down on one of the ridge points we reached a red looking peak, a touch too small to be a summit and scrambled up third class rock to the top. We had hoped we could just go up and over instead of taking the glacier bypass below. Instead we found a 4th class ridge section to get to tamer ground. I ditched my backpack to scope it out, but with the heavy packs I knew it’d be too much.

On the way up, we had both spotted a snow ramp on the north west side and so we decided to check that out as a bypass. Again we ditched our packs and crossed the snow with ease to the section of ridge beyond the 4th class bit. Sure enough, it went! With that, we returned to our packs, made the crossing once more and then we were back on tame ground. Now for the plan on Peak 7400. With the clouds moving in and out we had just caught a glimpse of an easy option. A long running bench on the west side lead to several reasonable looking scree ramps up to the south ridge. The west ridge where the col between Peak 7400 and 7300 resided, looked to be complex climbing. At the time we did not know how Mike and Mark had gained Peak 7400, but we had considered the route they ultimately took on the north facing glacier. For us, the scree gully looked like the best option.

We roped up and traversed across the glacier bowl to the west side of Peak 7400 and then found easy scrambling up the aforementioned gully to the ridge. The sun was now finally out and so we quickly ditched our packs on the ridge and scrambled up to the summit of Peak 7400. The true summit was a bit hard to gauge, but after some water-level based surveying we figured out the western most summit was the highest. It was marked by 3 distinct pinnacles and thankfully the easiest to reach was the tallest. Afterwards we visited the eastern most point and then returned to our bags.

The ridge here too didn’t offer a load of options for camping, but Andrea spotted a relatively flat spot and we managed to build a perfect tent site. Our half day of good weather ended as soon as it started and the next morning we were in the clouds and rain again. Our forecast was calling for high winds as well, so we busied ourselves building a massive rock fortress around the tent.

When the storm finally hit, it threw the tent into a violent fit. The intensity increased as the night bore down and several of our guylines were shredded in the process. We quickly replaced them with some dyneema slings, but in my head I began to wonder at what point does a summer tent get shredded from the wind? Andrea and I spent the entire night playing word games to distract from the hellacious wind and rain. By morning it finally died down and we spent the day catching up on lost sleep.

We lost one more day to bad weather, now having spent 2.5 days total marooned on this exposed ridge below Peak 7400. Finally on the 9th we’d be greeted by calm winds and sunshine. Our chance to head up Sharks Teeth Peaks had arrived.