Karakorum mystery: What happened to K1?
Oct 6, 2004 20: 34 EST
Published Oct 3, 2004
If you visit this website regularly, you know everything about K2: Where it is, what it looks like, and the main routes to climb. What you might not know however, is that the local name for the famous ‘Savage’ mountain is Chogori. So what's the deal with the K?
It's all T.G.Montgomery's fault. Lazy - or accurate - enough he surveyed the Karakorum mountains in 1856 in a precise order. K for Karakorum, and then he looked around for the tall ones and named them as he spotted them - K1, K2, K3… Forget about Chogori!
The lost mountain
But then, if K2 is the tallest peak in the Karakorum range (second tallest on Earth)…where is K1? Wasn’t it supposed to be higher? How come nobody speaks about it? Does it exist at all?
Well, the answer is yes. K1 exists and it's a beautiful mountain too. But it's not as high as Chogori and, has also kept its local name: Masherbrum.
Montgomery named the mountains before he measured them. And the first imposing peak he spotted raising over the Hushe valley was precisely Masherbrum. That's how it got the first ‘place’ on the Karakorum list. Behind Masherbrum, far in the distance, was Chogori, which came second.
Masherbrum is 25,660 feet (7.821m) high. Its ever steep slopes pose an interesting and technically demanding climb on rock and ice, especially its sheer north face. The Normal route climbs the SW side, through an icefall, before traversing to reach the dome ridge, in order to avoid avalanche-exposed slopes. It was first climbed by George Bell and Willi Unsoeld in 1960. Much later than K2, by the way. Its silhouette has become famous, chosen as background peak for those who take the summit picture from the top of K2…
So what about K3?
To the British surveyor, K3 was a peak which rose on the other side of the proud K1. Tough enough for K3, it lost not only its local, original name Faichan Kangri but also its K name.
Due to its wide shape, climbers simply dubbed it Broad peak. But Broad Peak's revenge is that it's one of the 14 8000ers on Earth, and therefore much more visited than Masherbrum. The main (South) summit is 8047m high. Central Peak is 8016m and North Peak is 7550m.
Image of Masherbrum courtesy of Risk.ru
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