Rakaposhi

A 7,788-metre peak in the western Karakoram of Pakistan, 100 kilometres north of Gilgit. Rakaposhi has the greatest uninterrupted vertical relief of any mountain on Earth — from the Hunza River at 1,900 metres to the summit, the rise is 5,888 metres in a horizontal distance of just over eleven kilometres. The slope is so consistent that the entire mountain is visible from a single viewpoint. From the Karakoram Highway, the wall of Rakaposhi fills the southern sky.

The first ascent was made in 1958 by a British-Pakistani expedition. Mike Banks and Tom Patey reached the summit via the Southwest Ridge, the route now considered standard. The climb involved sustained ice climbing on a long summit ridge and required oxygen above 7,000 metres. The expedition lasted nine weeks. The next ascent of the mountain did not come until 1979.

Rakaposhi has been climbed by perhaps a few dozen teams in total. The peak is technical, the weather window short, and the approach long. Most attempts are turned back by storms on the upper mountain. The fatality rate by raw numbers is low — there have not been many attempts to fail from. The mountain is among the most photographed but least climbed peaks of its altitude in the world.

What Rakaposhi shows the climber is geometry. The mountain is one slope. The horizontal compression of nearly 6,000 metres of vertical relief into eleven horizontal kilometres produces an angle that — when seen at distance from the highway — is hard to accept visually. The mind does not believe the proportions. The mountain is the proof.