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Nanga Parbat has always been associated with
tragedies and tribulations until it was climbed in
1953. A lot of mountaineers have perished on Nanga
Parbat since 1895. Even in recent years it has
claimed a heavy toll of human lives including
mountaineers, porters, Special Forces personnel
trained by the military and more, all in search of
adventure and thrill. It’s victims have included
those in pursuit of new and absolutely un-climbed
routes leading to it’s summit.
It was in 1841 that a huge rock slide from Nanga
Parbat dammed the Indus river. This created a huge
lake, 55 km long, like the present Tarbela dam down
stream. The flood of water that was released when
the dam broke caused a rise of 80 ft. in the river's
3rd level at Attock and swept away an entire Sikh
army. It was also in the middle of the nineteenth
century that similar catastrophes were later caused
by the damming of Hunza and Shyok rivers.
The Nanga Parbat peak was first known to the
Europeans in the nineteenth century. The
Schlagintweit brothers, who hailed from Munich
(Germany) came in 1854 to Himalayas and drew a
panoramic view, which is the first known picture of
Nanga Parbat. In 1857 one of them was murdered in
Kashgar. The curse of Nanga Parbat had begun.
The Murder Mountain
Nanga Parbat is much favored by most climbers, but
it were the Germans, who gave it the name, Murder
Mountain. The explorer, Albert Frederick Mummery,
was the first to venture on this mountain. Daunting
and wild, bearing the onslaught of gnawing wind and
torrential rain during the monsoons, Nanga Parbat is
full of the dangers of the unknown. The Sherpas,
localities of the Himalayan region call Nanga Parbat,
“the maneater” or the 'Mountain of the Devil'. No
other peak has claimed lives with such sickening
regularity and the list of tragedies is
heart-wrenching. In the last century, roads have
been built in the Karakoram range, but little else
has changed in this region.
Nanga Parbat has a height of 8126 meters/26,660
ft. It has three vast faces. The Rakhiot (Ra Kot)
face is dominated by the north and south silver
crags and silver plateau; the Diamir face is rocky
in the beginning. It converts itself into ice fields
around Nanga Parbat peak. The Rupal face is the
highest mountaintop in the world.
Reinhold Messner, a living legend in the sport of
mountaineering from Italy, says that "Every one who
has ever stood at the foot of this face (4,500
meters) up above the 'Tap Alpe', studied it or flown
over it, could not help but have been amazed by its
sheer size; it has become known as the highest rock
and ice wall in the world!" |
