Himalayan Peaks of Nepal

Mt. Everest Range

In1950, a French expedition summit-ted the first mountain over 8000m in height. It was Annapurna I, and although countless attempts had been made on Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world, no expedition had succeeded until then. These mountains are known as the eight-thousanders and all fourteen of them lie in Asia. Of the fourteen, Nepal has a big share of eight. They are Mt. Everest (8,848m), Kanchenjunga (8,586m), Lhotse (8516m), Makalu (8,463m), Cho Oyu (8201m), Dhaulagiri (8167m), Manaslu (8,163m), and Annapurna I (8,091m). These lofty peaks are part of the Himalaya (The Abode of the Snows, Him= snow, alaya= dwelling place.) and form a natural boundary wall between Nepal and Tibet/China in the north and between India and Nepal in the east. The highest peak outside Asia is the Aconcagua (6,959m) of the Andes in Peru, South America and the highest mountain in Europe, Mt. Elbrus is significantly smaller, rising no higher than 5,643m. It is believed the Himalaya was formed around 50 million years ago and that, in geological time is considered recent, which is why this gigantic chain of mountains is called the youngest in the world. These mountains are still rising. It is also known that the region occupied by the Himalayan range today, was once a shallow Tethys sea. Countless fossils of mollusks are found even today proving the point. Gigantic forces moved the Indo-Australian Plate against the Eurasian continental Plate causing the land to fold upwards creating a massive chain of mountains over millions of years. The Himalaya stretches 2,400 km across east to west. Four of the other eight-thousanders are in Pakistan while one lies in China. Eight-thousanders are the ultimate challenge for any mountaineer. They have fascinated the avid climber who is always on the lookout for fresh challenges. A towering figure among all the climbers is the Tyrolean champion mountaineer, Reinhold Messner. He took mountain climbing to new heights when along with Peter Habelar he climbed Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen. This feat had previously been deemed too dangerous. While Habelar disappeared from the limelight, Messner went on to accomplish a solo climb of Everest andthen astounded the world by climbing all eight-thousanders. Inspired by the great man, others followed in his footsteps and there are mountaineers still in the quest of achieving this great feat. The zone above 8000m is called the Death Zone as many have perished in the thin cold air that taxes the body to its limits. Doubts were raised before the conquest of Everest whether man could survive at such dizzying heights. But the British had been attempting to climb the world’s highest peak from the early 1920s via Tibet. Many perished in the attempt. Nepal had firmly shut its doors to outsiders, hence all expeditions took the longer and more demanding route via Tibet, but none were successful. However, in the early 1950s, Nepal opened its doors to the outside world and there was a mad rush to climb from the south. A few expeditions were permitted each year and it was only in May 1953 that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Everest becoming the first humans to do so. The French who conquered the first eight-thousander seemed to have set the ball rolling for the rest of the world to try and be the first to climb a virgin eight-thousander. The mountaineers were surprisingly successful during the 1950s and this decade subsequently became know as the Golden Decade of Climbing. All but two of the fourteen eight-thousanders were climbed during the 1950s.