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Nanga Parbat (also known as Nangaparbat Peak or Diamir) is the ninth highest mountain on Earth and the 2nd highest in Pakistan. Nanga Parbat means "Naked Mountain" in Hindi, parbat deriving from parvata "mountain". (Sherpas, who are not native to the region but who sometimes accompany expeditions to the mountain, are said to call it “The Maneater” or "The Mountain of the Devil".) Nanga Parbat is one of the deadliest of the eight-thousanders. It is also an immense, dramatic peak, with great local relief.

Location

Nanga Parbat is the western anchor of the Himalayas, and is the westernmost eight-thousander. It lies just south of the Indus River, in the northern part of the Jammu and Kashmir province in India. Not far to the north is the western end of the Karakoram range.

Notable features

Nanga Parbat has tremendous vertical relief over local terrain in all directions. To the south, Nanga Parbat boasts what is often referred to as the highest mountain face in the world: the Rupal Face rises an incredible 4,600 m (15,000 feet) above its base. To the north, the complex, somewhat more gently sloped Rakhiot Flank rises 7,000 m (22,966 feet) from the Indus River valley to the summit in just 27km, one of the ten greatest elevation gains in so short a distance on Earth.

Layout of the mountain

The core of Nanga Parbat is a long ridge trending southwest-northeast. The southwestern portion of this main ridge is known as the Mazeno Ridge, and has a number of subsidiary peaks. In the other direction, the main ridge starts as the East Ridge before turning northeast at Rakhiot Peak (7070m). The south/southeast side of the mountain is dominated by the Rupal Face, noted above. The north/northwest side of the mountain, leading to the Indus, is more complex. It is split into the Diamir (west) face and the Rakhiot (north) face by a long ridge. There are a number of subsidiary summits, including the North Peak (7816m) some 3km north of the main summit.

Climbing history

Climbing attempts started very early on Nanga Parbat. In 1895 Albert F. Mummery led an expedition to the peak, and reached almost 7000m on the Diamir (West) Face, but Mummery and two Gurkha companions later died reconnoitering the Rakhiot Face.

Six German expeditions attempted the peak in the 1930's, but none succeeded, and dozens of climbers died in storms and avalanches. However, an altitude of about 7700m was reached on the East Ridge, attained via the Rakhiot Face.

Nanga Parbat was first climbed on July 3, 1953 by Austrian climber Hermann Buhl, a member of a German-Austrian team. By the time of this expedition, 31 people had already died trying to make the first ascent. The final push for the summit was dramatic: Buhl continued alone after his companions had turned back, and spent a night standing up on the descent. Buhl is the only mountaineer to have made the first ascent of an eight-thousander solo (at least at the summit) and without oxygen.

The second ascent of Nanga Parbat was via the Diamir Face, in 1962, by Germans Toni Kinshofer, S. Löw, and A. Mannhardt. This route is now the "standard route" on the mountain. The Kinshofer route does not ascend the middle of the Diamir Face, which is threatened by avalanches from massive hanging glaciers. Instead it climbs a buttress on the left side of the face.

In 1970 Reinhold and Günther Messner reached the summit via a direct route on the huge, difficult Rupal Face; this was the third ascent of the mountain. Their descent was epic: they were unable to descend their ascent route, and instead made the first traverse of the mountain, going down the Diamir Face. Unfortunately Günther was killed in an avalanche on the Diamir. (Messner's account of this incident was disputed, and cast a further shadow over this achievement. However, in 2005 Günther's remains were found on the Diamir Face, corroborating Reinhold's story.)

In 1978 Reinhold Messner returned to the Diamir Face and achieved the first completely solo ascent (i.e. always solo above Base Camp) of an 8000m peak.

Among other ascents of the peak, the 1985 ascent by Jerzy Kukuczka et al stands out. They climbed a bold line up the Southeast Pillar (or Polish Spur) on the right-hand side of the Rupal Face.

Recently some well-known climbers have been attempting very quick ascents of the Rupal Face. In particular, late summer of 2005 was a busy time on the face. In August, Pakistani military helicopters rescued renowned Slovenian mountaineer Tomaž Humar, who was stuck under a narrow ice ledge at 5900 metres for six days. It is believed to be one of the few successful rescues carried out at such high altitude. In September, Vince Anderson and noted alpinist Steve House did an extremely lightweight, fast ascent of a new, direct route on the face, earning high praise from the climbing community.

On the 17th or 18th of July 2006, José Antonio Delgado Sucre, an elite high altitude climber from Venezuela, died a few days after making the summit, where he was caught by bad weather for 6 straight days and was not able to make his way down. He was the only Venezuelan climber, and one of the few Latin Americans, to have summited five eight-thousanders.

References in popular culture

In the episode "Dead Reckoning" of the Justice League Unlimited television show, the DC Comics character Batman reveals that he studied with a martial arts master in a monastery on Nanga Parbat, and enlists the help of Deadman, who lives on Nanga Parbat, to avenge the martial arts master's murder.

In the first chapter of Mistress of Mistresses, by E.R. Eddison, the narrator compares his now deceased compatriot, Lessingham, to Nanga Parbat in a beautifully descriptive passage:

"I remember, years later, his describing to me the effect of the sudden view you get of Nanga Parbat from one of those Kashmir valleys; you have been riding for hours among quiet richly wooded scenery, winding up along the side of some kind of gorge, with nothing very big to look at, just lush, leafy, pussy-cat country of steep hillsides and waterfalls; then suddenly you come round a corner where the view opens up the valley, and you are almost struck senseless by the blinding splendour of that vast face of ice-hung precipices and soaring ridges, sixteen thousand feet from top to toe, filling a whole quarter of the heavens at a distance of, I suppose, only a dozen miles. And now, whenever I call to mind my first sight of Lessingham in that little daleside church so many years ago, I think of Nanga Parbat." (MoM, 1967, p.2-3)

Nanga Parbat is featured in the film adaptation of Heinrich Harrer's memoir Seven Years in Tibet. Harrer was a member of the 1938 German expedition to the peak. (However note that many of the mountain scenes for that film were actually filmed in the Andes.)

See also

• Himalaya
• Northern Areas, Pakistan
• List of Mountains in Pakistan
• Eight-thousander
• Highest Mountains of the World

Notes

1. ^ This region is disputed, and is claimed by India to be an integral part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir
2. http://www.nangaparbat2006.explorart.com/

Sources

• Alpenvereinskarte "Nanga Parbat", 1:50,000, Deutsche Himalaya Expedition 1934.
• Andy Fanshawe and Stephen Venables, Himalaya Alpine-Style, Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.
• Audrey Selkeld (editor), World Mountaineering, Bulfinch, 1998.
• American Alpine Journal
• Himalayan Index
• DEM files for the Himalaya (Corrected versions of SRTM data)
• Guardian International story on Gunther Messner
• Climbing magazine, April 2006.

External links

• Herman Buhl and Nanga Parbat
• Nanga Parbat on Peakware
• Nanga Parbat on summitpost.org
• BBC Story on Rescue of Tomaz Humar
• A mountain list ranked by local relief and steepness showing Nanga Parbat as the World #1
• Northern Pakistan - highly detailed placemarks of towns, villages, peaks, glaciers, rivers and minor tributaries in Google Earth
• Nanga Parbat Massif in northern Pakistan

• Mountains of Pakistan
• Eight-thousanders
• Himalaya