For almost fifty years, a single image kept climbers away from one of the Karakoram's most striking peaks. Taken by Italian photographer Vittorio Sella in 1909, it showed Muztagh Tower as a narrow rock blade dropping vertically from summit to glacier. The caption in a 1941 mountaineering book called it "The Last Citadel," and generations of alpinists took the hint: this one looked impossible.
The picture was, in a sense, a trick. Sella shot the 7,276-metre peak from the upper Baltoro Glacier with a long telephoto lens, and the mountain's two summits happened to line up perfectly in the frame. The compression turned a broad, ridged massif into a knife-edged tower. From most other angles, the peak looked far more climbable — but this was the image that circulated.
Sella was no amateur. Born in Biella in 1859, he made the first winter ascent of the Matterhorn in 1882 and hauled heavy glass-plate cameras across the Alps, Alaska, the Ruwenzori and the Karakoram. His K2-area images from the Duke of the Abruzzi's 1909 expedition remain among the finest early records of the range, admired even by Ansel Adams.
The myth finally unravelled in the summer of 1956, when two expeditions arrived at the mountain from opposite sides. A British team — John Hartog, Joe Brown, Ian McNaught-Davis and Tom Patey — worked up the Northwest Ridge from the Muztagh Glacier, fixing ropes and battling through an icefall to a high camp at 6,439m. On July 6, Brown and McNaught-Davis topped out on the west summit; the next day Hartog and Patey crossed the connecting ridge to the true eastern summit, bivouacking on descent. Hartog lost toes to frostbite.
A French party led by Guido Magnone was simultaneously pushing the eastern arête. After a two-day storm, Magnone, Paragot, Contamine and Keller reached the main summit on July 12 — an independent second ascent six days after the British, on a route never fully repeated since. There was no rivalry: the French had deliberately chosen the east side to stay clear of the British line, and later helped evacuate the frostbitten Hartog.
The mountain stayed quiet afterwards. Notable repeats include a 1984 British team and Göran Kropp's 1990 ascent on the Northwest Ridge, a 2008 Slovenian attempt on the Northeast Face that ended in Pavle Kozjek's death, and a 17-day Russian first ascent of the Northeast Spur in 2012 — a route called "Think Twice" that earned the Piolets d'Or. No confirmed ascent of the true summit has followed.
For travellers, the story is a reminder that the Karakoram's landscapes carry their own histories. The approach to Muztagh Tower runs through the Baltoro corridor toward K2, a trek many consider the finest walk in Pakistan. The peak itself is strictly for elite mountaineers — but its story is best enjoyed from the glacier trail, where Sella's famous viewpoint still rewards anyone with a camera.
