In reply to pneame:
personally, i think the 'karakorum issue' (which involves several factors) needs readdressing in the light of the stuff youre reading.
its funny how access from china, and all that it entails, is seen as too difficult. a) its not, at least on the scale of things, and b) we are not talking about ten pin bowling here.
xinjiang has its issues, but they dont even rate compared to those of pakistans, not in a long shot. sure it may take a day or two longer to access from xinjiang, but those are extra days in greater safety and comfort than coming from islamabad will ever be.
indeed that is a point of contention i have with the blog reply on swensons post; the way access from china (a small part of the matter admittedly) is semi-dismissed. thats just lack of information. to have expense as the root? the math doesnt look that way, but i suppose it depends what price convenience is to someone.
this equation is made sillier considering pakistans peak fees - that there are dozens of big peaks that can be climbed with zero or negligible fees
if people look beyond the big game peaks.
of course it will be a bigger deal with different costing - theres no tourist highway to K2 on the chinese side. trips to karakorum northsides run on an 'as needed' basis, not filling prebooked slots.
indeed many trips are even run thru kyrgyzstan because organizers are afraid to deal with the chinese, even tho that really pushes prices up.
china/tibet/xinjiang freaks out many climbers because they dont understand how it works - they only view it spoon fed thru the reverse-binoculars of the companies.
its worth noting that independant polish, russian, japanese etc teams have little issue getting to these places.
access thru xinjiang isnt hard (kashgar can be flown into from east coast china, and flights to bishkek are being planned, urumqi can be connected to from lots of hubs including istanbul, astana and moscow).
from the chinese side, with appropriate negotiation, 8000m peaks can be attempted with costs comparable to pakistan, even cheaper considering the difference in logistics. i know because ive been there and tried. it just takes a process of developing the system, something it seems the big operators dont want to do. ive personally accessed pakistan from china to go into the karakorum and hindukush half a dozen times.
most times after trips were done i was sitting in kashgar with a martini looking at girls in short skirts whilst the others were still trying to get out of skardu.
the contaigen of safari climbing, whilst having its place, has calcified the way karakorum takes place, to the point where the security risks of pakistan are accepted but alternatives barely are.
a good dose of what montgomery and shipton had (and i dont mean syphillis and skullduggery) wouldnt go astray in rebooting the spirit of karakorum climbing.