Tom Livingstone climbs north face of Pakistan’s Latok 1

A British mountaineer has completed ‘the ascent of a generation’ by scaling one of the world’s most notorious peaks just days after a Russian climber died on the same path.

Tom Livingstone, from Llanberis in North Wales, battled a dozen avalanches a day to climb the north face of Latok 1 in Pakistan’s Karokoram mountains.

The ridge towards the top of the 23,442ft peak has been called the ‘impossible ridge’ because so many expert climbers have failed to overcome it.

Tom Livingstone, 27, and Slovenians Luka Stražar and Aleš Česen (pictured together) completed the ‘ascent of a generation’

This graphic show the route that Mr Livingstone’s team took to get to the mountain top

Just a month before Mr Livingstone’s seven-day climb, a Russian mountaineer fell to his death and his partner had to be rescued by helicopter after six days alone on the mountain.

The 27-year-old said this scared him and two Slovakian climbing companions but not enough to put them off. 

‘You would not be human if you said it didn’t affect you,’ he told the Daily Telegraph. 

Mr Livingston, who studied sports science at Bangor University, said the climb pushed him to the limit and left him exhausted.

He said his group ‘pushed it quite far’ and added: ‘There were times when we just couldn’t fall.’

The group got through the climb by minimising risks, he said. For example, they didn’t scale the whole of the ridge on the north side but switched to the south side for the final quarter of the ascent.

One of Mr Livingtson’s companions Ales Cesen scaling the notorious north face of Latok 1

Tom Livingston on Latok 1. He captioned this photo: ‘Checking into my altitude pain cave’

He told the Telegraph: ‘We stopped early in the day, so that when the sun hit the walls above us, we could watch the rockfall thundering and smashing down, thinking “oh good we’ve stopped in a safe place”.’

Describing the mental battle he faced during the climb, the 27-year-old said he was constantly worried about the weather and his next camping spot – and tried not to think about home because it would distract him. 

Mountain guide Kenton Cool, who has climbed Everest 13 times, said he spat his coffee out when he heard of Mr Livingston’s climb and described it as ‘the ascent of the year, possibly of our generation.’ 

After getting back to base camp, Mr Livingstone described his climb as a special experience. 

Not content to rest on his laurels, he is now planning to scale an unclimbed route on a mountain in the Indian Himalayas. 

After getting back to base camp, Mr Livingstone described his climb as a special experience

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk