Location: Pakistan/China, Asia
First Ascent: Andrew Kauffman and Pete Schoening (United States), July 3, 1958
Fast Facts:
- Gasherbrum is Balti for “Beautiful Mountain;” rgasha beautiful brum mountain. It’s also called Hidden Peak. It was first named K5 by T.G. Montgomerie on an 1856 survey.
- Located in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, one of the world’s most remote regions, and almost 1,000 miles west of the Himalayas.
- Gasherbrum I is one of 6 Gasherbrum peaks in the Karakoram Range.
- First ascent was in 1958 by Americans Pete Schoening and Andy Kauffman, part of an eight-man expedition. They used mirrors on the summit to signal their success to team members below.
- Gasherbrum I was the first 8,000-meter peak climbed alpine style when Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler ascended it bottom to top with no set camps, porters, siege tactics, or supplemental oxygen in 1975.
- In 1982 French climber Marie-José Valençot is the first woman to summit. Sylvain Saudan, her Swiss husband, becomes the first to ski from an 8,000-meter summit to base camp.
- In 1984, Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander made the first traverse of two 8,000-meter peaks by climbing Gasherbrum II, descending to a pass, and then climbing Gasherbrum I in eight days.
- It’s the least climbed 8,000-meter peak and has the lowest fatality rate, since most climbers tackling it are experienced.
- “He peeled off backwards into space and was away. I have known people, trained sport climbers, who in such a situation would not have come to rest until they hit the deck. But Reinhold was able to fling himself around in mid-air so that he was facing downwards, and then regain his footing several meters lower on steep, glazed rock slabs.” Hans Kammerlander on an almost disastrous fall by Reinhold Messner on their 1984 traverse of Gasherbrum I and II.
