A four-strong Czech-Slovak climbing team is currently high on Bhagirathi 3, a 6,454-metre peak in India's Garhwal Himalaya, chasing a prize that has eluded everyone so far: a free climb of the Stairway to Heaven route on the mountain's Southwest Pillar.

The team — Martin Krasnansky, Tomas Bcek, Michal Mikusínec and Pavel Nesvadba, with Zolo Demjan along as trekker — left for India on August 20. For Krasnansky it is a return trip: he first tried the same objective in 2019. Free climbing at this altitude means ascending the rock using only hands and feet for progress, with gear purely for protection — a brutal ask on a big-wall pillar nearly halfway up the atmosphere.

The route has history. The Stairway to Heaven was first climbed in 2004 by Germans Walter Holzler and Jorg Pflugmacher, who needed six days and five bivouacs — famously hanging on portaledges — to get up the 1,300-metre wall. Difficulties reach around French 7b-7c (American 5.12), hard grades at sea level, let alone on a Himalayan face. The pillar itself was first scaled back in 1982 by Scottish climbers Bob Barton and Alan Fyffe.

Several teams have since tried to free the line without success. A Spanish squad made the summit in 2023, but only by climbing capsule style — hauling and jugging fixed lines rather than free climbing. More recently, in 2024, Swiss climbers Stefan Siegrist and Jonas Schild added a new route on the Southwest Ridge, just right of the pillar, showing the peak still has plenty to give.

For climbers, the Garhwal's Bhagirathi group — part of the Gangotri massif near the source of the Ganges — is one of India's finest big-wall arenas: granite spires, serious altitude and a short list of ascents compared with the better-known Nepal giants. If the Czech-Slovak team pulls it off, it would be a genuine first and another feather for a range increasingly on the elite climbing map.

Why should a regular traveller care? Even if you'll never clip a carabiner at 6,000 metres, the Gangotri region is one of the Himalaya's great trekking destinations. Trails to Gaumukh (the Gangotri glacier snout) and Tapovan sit right below the Bhagirathi walls, giving hikers a front-row view of the very faces these climbers are battling. Expeditions like this one are a good reminder that the area's season runs late summer into autumn, when the weather windows open and the granite dries out.