Jordan Cannon, Matt Segal, and Jesse Huey Make the Second Ascent of Cowboy Direct on Trango Tower

The Cowboy Direct route up Pakistan’s Trango Tower has finally seen a second ascent, thanks to a determined team of American climbers including PhysiVāntage athlete Jordan Cannon. 

Cowboy Direct (5.13a) is the original route up the iconic spire that has captured the attention of the world’s most ambitious big wall climbers. Established in 1995 by Todd Skinner, Mike Lilygren, Jeff Bechtel and Bobby Model, the route had yet to be repeated until this year—but not for lack of trying. Parties have been throwing themselves at the tower ever since, only to be thwarted by any of the countless hiccups that occur in the extreme alpine: weather, injury, illness, hunger, thirst, frostbite, existential crisis…just to name a few. 

Matt Segal, Jesse Huey, and Jordan Cannon faced their own fair share of struggles along the way. Success depended on their ability to show up for themselves and the route regardless. These three ascensionists displayed remarkable resolve in the face of more than a few challenges that would have sent most others in their position heading back to base camp early. But the team tagged the 20,469-foot-high summit despite it all (with smiles still on their faces, no less).

Cannon didn’t expect to find himself on this sort of expedition. In fact, he didn’t sign onto this very expedition until April, barely two months before their start date at the end of June. “The story starts with Matt Segal,” Cannon explains. “He dreamed about doing this route with his mentor Micah Dash, who saw potential in the Trango Tower similar to El Capitan, but at higher altitude and even more adventurous. Micah died a few years ago on an expedition, but Matt held onto that dream they had together.”

Cowboy Direct (5.13a) climbs 3,000 feet of granite to reach the 20,469'  Trango ("Nameless") Tower summit. Click here to view the route topo >>

Segal first asked his closest adventure partner, Jesse Huey, to join him on the tower. “Matt and Jesse have had this partnership for a while now where they support each other in their goals,” says Cannon. “Jesse had been helping Matt learn more about ice climbing for this trip specifically, and they were preparing for it together.”

As the ideal season for sending approached, Cannon’s name came up as a potential third to round out the group. “I wasn’t that psyched at first,” Cannon laughs. “I almost said no. It was so last minute, there was a lot I’d have to do to prepare and catch up to them, and I’d have to give up other goals for the summer. But I soon realized that these opportunities don’t come up that often to go to amazing places with such a capable team. I had to say yes.”

The team fed off of the hype from last year’s ascent of Eternal Flame, Cowboy Direct’s neighboring route up the Trango Tower, by Babsi Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher—also the first time that climb had been repeated. But Segal, Huey, and Cannon wouldn’t get the similar experience that they’d hoped for. “Babsi and Jacobo caught a once-in-a-lifetime weather window,” remarks Cannon. “They had perfect conditions for a week straight, which we weren’t fortunate enough to have. But I am ultimately grateful for the challenge we did have.” 

The trio spent six total weeks on the expedition. The trip to base camp by way of Islamabad and a small town in the foothills called Skardu took one week. The hike from the last town in the canyon to base camp alone took three days. They spent the next two weeks prepping for action: bringing their gear up to the base of the climb, fixing lines to the next camp a third of the way up the wall, hauling up their gear, getting a feel for the actual climbing, and reading their route—which was much less obvious than they’d expected. They tacked on some more time at the base to wait out a few storms, but soon found the clock ticking on their trip. 

PhysiVāntage Organic Greens and Sendure-X was a staple of Jordan's nutrition daily performance nutrition program.

“The forecast wasn’t looking good, but we didn’t have a choice. We had to go for it or risk running out of time to try at all. We caught a couple days of good weather when we pushed through the first ten pitches to Sun Terrace Camp, where Cowboy Direct and Eternal Flame split off from each other after sharing the same start.”

On the third day, though, the impending storms caught up to them. They spent that whole day in their tents. From there on out, they struggled to make much progress at all throughout the next week as poor weather came and went. The team could only climb during brief windows of clear skies before storms rolled back in and soaked the route, forcing them to retreat back to camp to wait for the next window. “Looking back,” reflects Cannon, “if we hadn’t taken advantage of those small windows, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the route.”

A slightly longer window of good weather gave them the time to tackle the crux of the route and ascend to the next camp up the wall. The climbers continued with their strategy of seizing every possible opportunity to get higher on the route. They spent four nights at Hanging Camp until storms abated just in time. 

“On the last day that we could possibly have gone for the summit based on our timeline, we woke up to the clearest day we’d seen in weeks,” Cannon recounts. “We actually saw the sun rising over the mountains that morning.” 

But in typical fashion, Trango Tower wouldn’t let them have it too easy. The team had to jug up 500 meters to their previous high point and climb one last 5.12 pitch (which happened to be quite wet) before five more pitches of fairly easy 5.10 ice climbing that turned out to not be so easy in practice as the route wandered across the face. But with the summit in sight, they persevered. 

Segal, Huey, and Cannon enjoyed a powerful, if short-lived, celebration at the top of Cowboy Direct that day. They spent the short amount of time that they could spare sharing the victory with those who couldn’t be there with them, spreading the final remains of their friend Hayden Kennedy’s ashes at the summit and hammering in a pin from Micah Dash’s rack on the way down. 

In light of the long descent still ahead, they pressed pause on the celebration until they made it back on solid ground. They repelled in the snow of the storm that they’d just barely beaten to the summit. By the time they made it back to Hanging Camp, they’d run out of food. Hunger made the next day’s agenda, repelling the rest of the way to Sun Terrace where they’d clean their ropes before continuing onto Advanced Base Camp about halfway down the approach, that much harder. 

“We got stormed on most of that afternoon headed back to Advanced Base Camp,” Cannon describes, “so we got there soaked, cold, and utterly exhausted.” Given the nature of their trip thus far, the team expected no less. But seeing their crew, who’d been waiting on them there the whole time that they’d been on the wall, refreshed their spirits in a way they didn’t know they needed. That (and plenty of calories) gave them the energy to make the three-day trek back to town in just two, eager for their first rest day in nearly three weeks. 

The expedition left Segal, Huey, and Cannon in rough shape. “We all lost about 20 pounds each, and we’d lost feeling in our toes after they got numb from nerve damage. I just started feeling mine again a few days ago,” exclaims Cannon. “Our hands took a while to heal too, since there isn’t much oxygen up there. Cuts would stick around the entire time and didn’t begin to seal up until we got back into town.”

Cannon recalls a few key moments when he truly wondered if he was in over his head. The first happened early on, as they were hiking to the base of the climb through hazardous rockfall.  

“It was a risk we knew we’d have to take, but it felt different in the moment. The rockfall came very close to us, and I had my first breakdown moment once we were safely behind it.”

Higher up, Cannon remembers a tenuous snow ledge traversing 300 meters across that they had to cross from Sun Terrace Camp to the base of Cowboy Direct. 

“Every time we wanted to go climb on the route until we’d made it to the higher camp, we had to do this heinous traverse. On the way up, we made a track because we’d been crossing it every day. But on our way back down, that track had been completely obscured by snow. We had to posthole back through it and break trail while carrying huge haul bags to get back to camp, when we were already so tired and hungry that we could barely move. I took the lead across it and kicked steps. We sank down to our waists with every step and tried not to fall down the mountain. That took everything I had left in me, that I didn’t know I had until I had to do it.” 

Team Photo! Jesse Huey, Matt Segal, and Jordan Cannon

But the camaraderie that the three forged over the course of the expedition made each of those harrowing moments, and so many others in between, worth the effort. That, and the actual summit celebration.

“The biggest value of our partnership was our ability to pick up the slack when someone was struggling. There were moments when I had to lead pitches that I wasn’t expecting to, because of the conditions or the state of my partners. I had a few moments when I was able to pull out a good effort and contribute to the team by onsighting some hard pitches in bad conditions to keep us moving. Then of course the summit moment, which didn’t feel real until we were actually there. We were looking up at it for days, but it never felt that attainable. We were putting in so much work just to slowly make our way up this wall. We weren’t able to think about submitting all that much because we had so much to do leading up to it. By the time it was actually within reach, we could finally entertain the idea. I was surprised by how much of that hit me in the moment when we finally realized we did it.” 

Fueling up at high camp with PhysiVāntage Greens and Flow.

Cannon emphasizes that they couldn’t have had that moment without their guides Ghafoor and Neibar, who took care of so much planning that they wouldn’t have had the time to do alongside all the logistics of the climb. Their cooks Ali and Shakir not only kept them fed but went the extra mile in helping them carry gear up to Advanced Base Camp and tying up other loose ends. “They were all instrumental in supporting us and helping us. Not only that, but they also kept us as healthy as possible. There were three other expeditions to Trango this year, and everyone on them got too sick to continue. Our crew took a lot of pride in keeping everything clean and keeping us from the same fate.” 

Cannon’s biggest takeaway from the trip is just that: the power of camaraderie. Together with Segal, Huey, and their support system, Cannon achieved something that so many teams over the past three decades have attempted to no avail. The strength of that cohesion set them apart and allowed them to make history on Trango Tower. 

Jordan's Favorite PhysiVāntage!

Cannon and his climbing partners used most every PhysiVāntage Nutrition product in the lineup before, during, and in their "recovery" after their expedition. Specifically, the Weapons-Grade Whey, Supercharged Collagen, Organic Greens, and FLOW were essential to help keep their bodies nourished during the final summit push on Cowboy Direct. 

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