Chomo Kara Northeast summit (6140m)

Bruno - Apr 2, 2009 2:56 am - Hasn't voted

Hola Christian !

Good question, and the answer is YES, Chomo Kara is really unclimbed !

In my submissions I have two ways to qualify an “unclimbed” mountain:

1) Probably unclimbed
I use this terminology when I have strong presumption that the Peak is unclimbed, but no real proof. These are peaks with prominence lower than 500m (if the peak is higher than 6750m), or prominence lower than 950m (if the peak is between 5800 and 6750m), as they do not appear in any list. But I don’t just qualify a peak as unclimbed by simple “gut feelings”: I usually make a research about the area, and I will only qualify a peak as “probably unclimbed” after I found no information on it. I will only make the assumption of “probably unclimbed” for mountains in regions I know personally well, and have made extensive research.

2) Unclimbed
I only qualify a peak as unclimbed if I find some reference from an authoritative source. For mountains in High Asia, to my knowledge the best source of information is the list “High Asia Systematics” compiled by Eberhard Jurgalski and colleagues, which can be downloaded at www.8000ers.com. If you want to download the list, click this link. The list is maybe not user friendly, but it is an incredibly rich source of information. A total of 898 mountains are listed, with all possible details such as name, altitude, location, prominence, range, parent mountain, key saddle, etc. etc. The last columns on the right give the status climbed (y) or unclimbed (n), with the date of the first ascent and nationality. This table is updated every few months, so data are very reliable. By the way, you can find a similar list in www.viewfinderpanorama.org, which is using the same source.

Speaking now about Chomo Kara, its unclimbed status is “confirmed” by the “High Asia Systematics” (page 9). On some lists, it is also known as Xiemaguo or Shiemagon. You’ll find more about it on the Lhagoi Kangri East page

Cheers,
Bruno

PS. If you look at the “Image Data” window, you’ll also notice that I normally insert the exact latitude – longitude where the peak can be found. This should also help anybody to locate easily each mountain.