Nanga Parbat

The ninth-highest mountain on Earth, 8,126 metres in the Pakistani region of Gilgit-Baltistan, the western anchor of the Himalayan range. Nanga Parbat means "naked mountain" in Sanskrit and Urdu, a reference to the way the peak rises directly from the surrounding plains without intermediate foothills. The Rupal Face on the south side is the largest mountain wall on Earth — 4,600 vertical metres from base to summit.

The first ascent came in 1953 by the Austrian climber Hermann Buhl, soloing the final 1,300 metres of the climb after his teammates turned back. Buhl reached the summit at sunset, was forced to bivouac standing upright on a narrow ledge through the night without shelter or sleeping bag, and descended the following day. He was so depleted he aged visibly during the climb. Photos taken before and after show two different men. Buhl's solo summit of Nanga Parbat is one of the foundational performances of post-war alpinism.

The mountain earned its English name through accumulation. Between 1895 and 1953, more than thirty climbers died on Nanga Parbat — most in two catastrophic avalanche events on German expeditions in 1934 and 1937. The fatality rate has dropped substantially since the 1950s but remains over 20 percent. The first winter ascent was achieved only in 2016, after multiple expeditions had been turned back by extreme cold and high winds. In 2013, eleven climbers and one local guide were murdered at base camp by Taliban militants in one of the most violent incidents in modern climbing history.

What Nanga Parbat carries is a weight beyond its statistics. The mountain has shaped two centuries of European mountaineering literature, supplied the formative experiences of climbers from Mummery to Messner, and remained — through everything — a peak that grants its summits sparingly.