Gasherbrum I

Where is Gasherbrum I?

Gasherbrum I is part of the Baltoro Karakoram.

You will find it in: Pakistan, China.

Summit: 35.724° N, 76.696° E

The story behind it

The British explorer Martin Conway gave it that name in 1892. Walking up the long Baltoro glacier towards the mountain, he found that the other Gasherbrum peaks stand in the way almost the whole time, and the big one only appears right at the end. A few decades earlier the surveyors of India had given it something far duller: K5, the fifth peak of the Karakoram, in the same list that left K2 with its number. Gasherbrum itself is a Balti word, and it means beautiful mountain — not shining wall, as you sometimes read; that nickname belongs to the face of Gasherbrum IV nearby. An American team reached the summit first, on 5 July 1958. Then, in 1975, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed it in three days in what climbers call alpine style: no chain of camps, no porters ferrying loads, no bottled oxygen — just two people carrying what they needed. It was the first time an eight-thousander had been climbed that way, and it changed how people climb high mountains.

Find it on the globe

Gasherbrum I is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.