KANCHENJUNGA

Kanchenjunga I in the Himalayas, Nepal also spelled Kangchenjunga, or Kinchinjunga, Nepali Kumbhkaran Lungur world's third highest mountain (28,169 feet ), in the Himalayas on the Nepalese border with Sikkim, India, 46 miles (74 km) north-northwest of Darjeeling. The Kanchenjunga massif is in the form of a gigantic cross, the arms of which lie north, south, east, and west. The individual summits connect to neighbouring peaks by four main ridges, from which four glaciers flowthe Zemu (northeast), Talung (southeast), Yalung (southwest), and Kanchenjunga (northwest). The mountain holds an important place in the mythology and religious ritual of the local inhabitants, and its slopes were no doubt familiar to herdsmen and traders for centuries before a rough survey of it was made. The first map known of Kanchenjunga was made by Rinzin Namgyal, one of the pandit (learned) explorers of the mid-19th century, who made a circuital sketch. In 1848 and 1849 Sir Joseph Hooker, a botanist, was the first European to visit and describe the region, and, in 1899, the explorer-mountaineer Douglas Freshfield traveled around the mountain. In 1905 the suggested Yalung valley route was attempted by an Anglo-Swiss party, a venture during which four members perished in an avalanche. Mountaineers later explored other faces of the massif. A Bavarian expedition led by Paul Bauer in 1929 and 1931 vainly attempted it from the Zemu side, and Gunter O. Dyhrenfurth, in 1930, attempted it from the Kanchenjunga Glacier. The greatest height reached during these explorations was 25,263 feet (7,700 m) in 1931. Fatal accidents on two of these expeditions gave the mountain a reputation for unusual danger and difficulty. No more efforts were made to climb it until 1954, when, partly because the Sikkimese objected, attention was again turned to the Yalung face, which is in Nepal. Gilmour Lewis' visits to the Yalung in 1951, 1953, and 1954 led to a 1955 British expedition led by Charles Evans, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club (London), which stopped within a few yards of the actual summit in deference to the religious beliefs and wishes of the Sikkimese. The name Kanchenjunga is derived from four words of Tibetan origin, usually rendered Kang-chen-dzo-nga, or Yang-chhen-dz-nga, and interpreted in Sikkim as the Five Treasuries of the Great Snow.