The three goals of alpinism are to come home, to come home as friends, and to come home as friends with a summit — in that order. By that standard, Arc’teryx athlete Jim Pope’s (@jimpopeonarope) recent trip to Pakistan to climb Trango Tower was a complete success. Climbing with three of his closest friends from Sheffield, England — Pat Hill, Sam Harvie, and Theo Elmer — Pope et al. reached the summit of Trango Tower via the route Eternal Flame on August 2, taking three days to reach the top. “For me, Trango Tower is one of, if not the most, striking cliffs in the world,” says Pope. “It’s just badass, and Eternal Flame is probably the nicest way to climb the tower. Though Pope aspired to achieve a free ascent of the 24-pitch Eternal Flame (7c+), he didn’t free climb the two crux pitches, in part due to wet rock. One of the crux pitches is situated below a snowy ledge, which runs with meltwater all day on the south-facing wall. Reaching this pitch in dry conditions requires precise timing and a dedicated strategy, which wasn’t the team’s priority. Pope, 27, is a gifted all-around climber with numerous notable achievements in bouldering, sport, trad, and big wall climbing. He has free climbed Magic Mushroom (8b+) on El Capitan in Yosemite, bouldered 8B+ and flashed 8B, ticked 8c+ sport routes, and achieved a number of E9 headpoints on his local Grit. The rest of the team works full-time jobs. Hill is a schoolteacher, Harvie is a paramedic, and Elmer is an engineer. They all met climbing in Sheffield, where Pope had moved for university and Hill first mentored him in trad climbing. The four friends have tried to schedule big climbing trips around everyone’s busy schedules. In 2024, they climbed walls in the Kara-su and Ak-su valleys in Kyrgyzstan. Earlier this year, they climbed desert towers in Algeria. “Eternal Flame had been the route Pat had most wanted to climb since he started,” says Pope. “So I guess the dream sparked from him and his enthusiasm for it. After a few years of building up, we finally felt like we were competent enough to try it, so we put it in the diary for summer ’26.” Eternal Flame runs 650 metres up the south face of Trango Tower (6