Patundas Hunza Trek (Passu Glacier Crossing)

Trek Overview

The Patundas Hunza Trek delivers one of the Karakoram's most concentrated high-altitude panoramas in just three days of walking, with no restricted-zone permit required. From a ridge camp between the Passu and Batura Glaciers, trekkers look out across more than a dozen peaks above 7,000 meters in one unbroken sweep — Rakaposhi, Batura, Shispare (7,611m), and the wider Batura Muztagh among them — reached via a single glacier crossing from Upper Hunza's Gojal Valley. The trek begins just above Borith Lake (2,900m), a glacial pool that mirrors the surrounding peaks on a still morning. From the trailhead, the route climbs a trail of loose black slate alongside the Passu Glacier before crossing it directly — the trek's one technical stretch, done on crampons or ice grips, weaving between crevasses, meltwater pools, and boulders with the occasional crack of shifting ice. Camp is made at roughly 3,500m on the far side, at the base of the ridge leading up to Patundas. The second day is the trek's centerpiece: a steep climb up from the glacier-side camp, with views opening wider with every hundred meters of elevation, until Shispare's 7,611-meter summit comes into full view. A rest stop near 4,200m gives a first look down onto the Batura Glacier — at 57 kilometers, one of the longest valley glaciers on Earth outside the polar regions — before a final push over loose scree to the highest point on the ridge, at roughly 4,570m. It's a cold, thin-air scramble for the last stretch, but the payoff is a 360-degree, late-afternoon panorama that trekkers consistently describe as the highlight of their trip. The return to Borith Lake retraces the same route, crossing the glacier a second time before dropping back to the trailhead. This is a genuinely accessible high-altitude objective: no day exceeds a handful of hours, and the only real technical demand is a single, guided glacier crossing rather than sustained glacier travel. Sleeping altitude tops out at roughly 3,500m, with the push to 4,570m done and returned from within a single day — making this one of the more approachable serious mountain panoramas in the Karakoram, without the sustained multi-day altitude exposure of routes like K2 Base Camp. Beyond the trek itself, 14 Adventure builds this 13-day itinerary around the wider Gojal and central Hunza region — Duikar's sunrise views over the Passu Cones, Attabad Lake, and Karimabad's Baltit and Altit Forts — giving trekkers a full week in Upper Hunza rather than a rushed in-and-out for the glacier crossing alone.