Discover

'Namcha Barwa' (officially: 'Namjagbarwa'; Tibetan in Wylie transliteration: ''gnam lcags 'bar ba''; Chinese: 南迦巴瓦峰, Pinyin: ''Nánjiābāwǎ Fēng'') is a mountain in the Tibetan Himalaya. It forms the eastern anchor of the Himalayan chain, and is the easternmost mountain in the world over 7600m.

Contents

Location

Notable Features

Climbing History

Footnotes

Sources

References

Location

Namcha Barwa is located in the Nyingchi Prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. It sits inside the "Great Bend" of the Tsangpo River, the main river of southeastern Tibet. This is a very obscure region, rarely visited by outsiders. Its sister peak Gyala Peri (also over 7000m) lies across the Tsangpo to the north.

Notable Features

In addition to its role as the eastern anchor of the Himalayas, Namcha Barwa is notable for its great local relief. It towers over the Tsangpo gorge, which curves from the west, through the north, and then to the east side of the mountain. For example, the drop from the summit to the river on the east side is 6800m in about 30km.
Also, between 1976 and its first ascent in 1992, Namcha Barwa was the highest unclimbed independent mountain in the world.

Climbing History

Namcha Barwa was first accurately located in 1912 by British surveyors. The area saw little activity by outsiders between 1913 and the 1980s. In the 1980s, several Chinese teams made serious efforts on the peak, and scouted multiple routes, but did not succeed in reaching the summit.
In 1990 a joint Japanese-Chinese expedition reconnoitered the peak, and another joint expedition made an attempt in 1991, which reached 7460m but resulted in the death of one member in an avalanche. The following year, a third Japanese-Chinese expedition succeeded in reaching the summit. They established Base Camp on September 14, and reached the summit on October 30, after placing six camps. Their route followed the South Ridge, over the intermediate Naipun Peak. Eleven members of the expedition reached the summit, all but the expedition co-leader,
Tsuneo Shigehiro.^[1]
The Himalayan Index lists no other ascents of this peak.

Footnotes

1. Japan China Joint Expedition

Sources

★ ''High Asia: An Illustrated History of the 7000 Metre Peaks'' by Jill Neate, ISBN 0-89886-238-8

★ ''American Alpine Journal'' 1993, pp. 279-280.

★ Himalayan Index

References

★ Chinese expedition in the 1980s

★ Japan China joint expedition 1992, first recorded summit