Pakistan's Trango Towers have seen plenty of bold expeditions, but few as unusual as the one captured in the new climbing film Keep it Burning: Making History on the Trango Towers. It follows Spanish climber Edu Marin as he returns to the Nameless Tower to attempt Eternal Flame, the legendary route first climbed by Wolfgang Gullich and Kurt Albert back in 1989 — this time with his father and brother as partners.
The family angle is the heart of the story. Marin's father, Francisco "Novato" Marin, is 70 years old, and his brother Alex — like their father — had little big-wall or high-altitude experience before the trip. Marin picked them anyway, saying he knew they would stay until the end. The route had only been free climbed once before, by brothers Alex and Thomas Huber, two decades after Gullich and Albert established it. Both Huber brothers appear in the film to recount that first ascent.
The expedition itself was anything but smooth. After establishing base camp at 4,200m and fixing some 1,200m of rope on the wall, the team was hit by an avalanche in the middle of the night. Nobody was hurt, but the camp was wrecked and had to be dug out before the climb could begin. Then, at the 6,000m Snow Ledge, forecasts delivered a week of bad weather.
What Marin did next is arguably the toughest part of the whole story. Rather than descend and lose all their progress, he stayed put on the exposed ledge through eight days of below-freezing conditions — a wait Thomas Huber suggests may have been the hardest thing about the project. His father and brother dropped down to wait out the storm lower on the wall. When the sun finally appeared after ten days, the trio reunited and pushed for the top. All three summited, with Marin completing only the second-ever free ascent of Eternal Flame.
For travellers, the film is a vivid introduction to one of the Karakoram's most striking landmarks. The Trango Towers, in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, draw elite climbers from around the world, but the surrounding Baltoro Glacier trek is accessible to fit hikers as well — the towers loom over the trail to Concordia and K2 Base Camp. Even if you'll never pull on a 7c crux at 6,000m, the valleys, villages and glacier camps below Nameless Tower make for one of the most dramatic trekking arenas on Earth. The film also doubles as a practical look at how these expeditions work: acclimatisation schedules, fixed ropes, weather windows and the sheer logistics of sleeping at altitude — useful context if Baltistan is on your list.
At its core, this is a story about family, patience and refusing to give up ground on a mountain. Novato's closing line — that sharing the sport with his sons is the best thing there is, and he'll keep going as long as his body allows — is a fitting end.
