Shkhara

Where is Shkhara?

Shkhara is part of the Greater Caucasus, Svaneti.

You will find it in: Georgia.

Summit: 43.001° N, 43.112° E

The story behind it

Shkhara sits at the eastern end of a long wall of rock and ice, and its north face drops away in one huge sweep of glacier, rock band and hanging snow. The mountain is made of hard crystalline rock, ground and polished by ice for a very long time, and meltwater from its glaciers feeds the Enguri, one of the big rivers of Georgia. Below the south side lies Ushguli, a group of Svan villages with dozens of old stone towers, where families have kept cattle and made hay on steep meadows for centuries. Weather changes fast here: a clear morning can turn into snowfall by afternoon, and storms can hold climbers in their tents for days. Reaching the summit is serious mountaineering with rope, crampons and ice axe, while most visitors simply walk to the glacier tongue and back.

Find it on the globe

Shkhara 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.