'Gasherbrum' is a remote group of
peaks located at the northeastern end of the
Baltoro Glacier in the
Karakoram range of the
Himalaya. The
massif contains three of the world's
8,000 metre peaks (if one includes Broad Peak). Gasherbrum is often claimed to mean "Shining Wall", presumably a reference to the highly visible face of Gasherbrum IV; but in fact it comes from "rgasha" (beautiful) + "brum" (mountain) in Balti, hence it actually means "beautiful mountain."
{| border=0 cellspacing=5 style="margin-left: 2em"
! align=left|Peak ||metres|| feet || Latitude (N) || Longitude (E) ||
Prominence (m)
|-
|
Gasherbrum I ||8,080 || 26,509 || 35°43′27″ ||76°41′48″ || 2,155
|-
|
Broad Peak ||8,047 || 26,400 || 35°48′35″ ||76°34′06″ || 1,701
|-
|
Gasherbrum II ||8,035 || 26,360 || 35°45′27″ ||76°39′15″ || 1,523
|-
|
Gasherbrum III ||7,952 || 26,089 || 35°45′34″ ||76°38′31″ || 355
|-
|
Gasherbrum IV ||7,925 || 26,001 || 35°45′39″ ||76°37′00″ || 725
|-
|
Gasherbrum V ||7,147 || 23,448 || 35°43′45″ ||76°36′48″ || 654
|-
|
Gasherbrum VI ||6,979 || 22,897 || 35°42′30″ ||76°37′54″ || 520
|-}
In
1856, Thomas George Montgomerie, a British Royal Engineers lieutenant and a member of the Great Trigonometric Survey of
India, sighted a group of high peaks in the Karakoram from more than 200 km away. He named five of these peaks K1, K2, K3, K4 and K5 where the K denotes Karakoram. Today, K1 is known as
Masherbrum, K3 as Broad Peak, K4 as Gasherbrum II and K5 as Gasherbrum I. Only
K2, the second highest mountain in the world, has kept Montgomerie's name.
See also
★
Concordia, Pakistan
★
Eight-thousander
★
List of highest mountains
★
List of mountains in Pakistan
Sources
★ H. Adams Carter, "Balti Place Names in the Karakoram", ''American Alpine Journal'' 49 (1975), p. 53.
★ Mount Qogori (K2) {scale 1:100,000}; edited and mapped by Mi Desheng (Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Geocryology), the Xi´an Cartographic Publishing House.
★
Dreams of Tibet: the pundits