Karakoram

Name

Karakoram is a Turkic term meaning black gravel. The Central Asian traders originally applied the name to the Karakoram Pass. Early European travelers, including William Moorcroft and George Hayward, started using the term for the range of mountains west of the pass, although they also used the term Muztagh (meaning, "Ice Mountain") for the range now known as Karakoram. Later terminology was influenced by Thomas Montgomerie of the Survey of India, who gave the labels K1 to K6 (K for Karakoram) to six high mountains visible from his station at Mount Haramukh in the 1850s. These codes were extended up to more than thirty.

In traditional Indian geography, the mountains were known as Krishnagiri (black mountains), Kanhagiri, and Kanheri.

Exploration

Due to its altitude and ruggedness, the Karakoram is much less inhabited than parts of the Himalayas further east. European explorers first visited in the early 19th century, followed by British surveyors starting in 1856.

The Muztagh Pass was crossed in 1887 by the expedition of Colonel Francis Younghusband, and the valleys above the Hunza River were explored by General Sir George K. Cockerill in 1892. Explorations in the 1910s and 1920s established most of the geography of the region.

The name Karakoram was used in the early 20th century, for example by Kenneth Mason, for the range now known as the Baltoro Muztagh. The term is now used to refer to the entire range from the Batura Muztagh above Hunza in the west to the Saser Muztagh in the bend of the Shyok River in the east.

Floral surveys were carried out in the Shyok River catchment and from Panamik to Turtuk village by Chandra Prakash Kala during 1999 and 2000.

Geology and glaciers

The Karakoram is in one of the world's most geologically active areas, at the plate boundary between the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate. A significant part, somewhere between 28 and 50 percent, of the Karakoram Range is glaciated, covering an area of more than 15,000 sqkm, compared to between 8 and 12 percent of the Himalaya and 2.2 percent of the Alps. Mountain glaciers may serve as an indicator of climate change, advancing and receding with long-term changes in temperature and precipitation. The Karakoram glaciers are slightly retreating, unlike the Himalayas, where glaciers are losing mass at a significantly higher rate, many Karakoram glaciers are covered in a layer of rubble which insulates the ice from the warmth of the sun. Where there is no such insulation, the rate of retreat is high.

• Siachen Glacier
• Baltoro Glacier
• Hispar Glacier
• Batura Glacier
• Biafo Glacier
• Chogo Lungma Glacier
• Yinsugaiti Glacier

Ice Age

In the last ice age, a connected series of glaciers stretched from western Tibet to Nanga Parbat, and from the Tarim Basin to the Gilgit District. To the south, the Indus glacier was the main valley glacier, which flowed 120 km down from the Nanga Parbat massif to 870 m elevation. In the north, the Karakoram glaciers joined those from the Kunlun Mountains and flowed down to 2000 m in the Tarim Basin.

While the current valley glaciers in the Karakoram reach a maximum length of 76 km, several of the ice-age valley glacier branches and main valley glaciers, had lengths up to 700 km. During the Ice Age, the glacier snowline was about 1300 m lower than today.

Highest peaks

The majority of the highest peaks are in the Gilgit–Baltistan region administered by Pakistan. Baltistan has more than 100 mountain peaks exceeding 6100 m height from sea level. Following is a list for the highest peaks of the Karakoram. Included are some of the mountains named with a K code, the most well-known of which is the K2.

Subranges

The naming and division of the various subranges of the Karakoram is not universally agreed upon. However, the following is a list of the most important subranges, following Jerzy Wala. The ranges are listed roughly west to east.

• Batura Muztagh
• Rakaposhi-Haramosh Mountains
• Spantik-Sosbun Mountains
• Hispar Muztagh
• South Ghujerab Mountains
• Panmah Muztagh
• Wesm Mountains
• Masherbrum Mountains
• Baltoro Muztagh
• Saltoro Mountains
• Siachen Muztagh
• Rimo Muztagh
• Saser Muztagh

Passes

Passes from west to east are:

• Dandala Pass is the most important and earlier pass. It starts from Ghursay saitang city to Yarqand in China. It is the main trade route between Khaplu, Ladakh, Kharmang to Yarqand, China.
• Kilik Pass
• Mintaka Pass
• Khunjerab Pass is the highest paved international border crossing at 4693 m. It serves the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway, the "8th world wonder".
• Shimshal Pass
• Mustagh Pass
• Karakoram Pass
• Sasser Pass
• Naltar Pass

The Khunjerab Pass is the only motorable pass across the range. The Shimshal Pass (which does not cross an international border) is the only other pass still in regular use.

Cultural references

The Karakoram mountain range has been referred to in a number of novels and movies. Rudyard Kipling refers to the Karakoram mountain range in his novel Kim, which was first published in 1900. Marcel Ichac made a film titled Karakoram, chronicling a French expedition to the range in 1936. The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival of 1937. Greg Mortenson details the Karakoram, and specifically K2 and the Balti, extensively in his book Three Cups of Tea, about his quest to build schools for children in the region. K2 Kahani (The K2 Story) by Mustansar Hussain Tarar describes his experiences at K2 base camp.

References

Citations

Sources

• Curzon, George Nathaniel. 1896. The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus. Royal Geographical Society, London. Reprint: Elibron Classics Series, Adamant Media Corporation. 2005. (pbk); (hbk).
• Kipling, Rudyard 2002. Kim (novel); ed. by Zohreh T. Sullivan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. —This is the most extensive critical modern edition with footnotes, essays, maps, etc.
• Mortenson, Greg and Relin, David Oliver. 2008. Three Cups of Tea. Penguin Books Ltd. (pbk); Viking Books (hbk); Tantor Media (MP3 CD).
• Kreutzmann, Hermann, Karakoram in Transition: Culture, Development, and Ecology in the Hunza Valley, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. .

References

1. {{cite Dictionary.com. Karakoram
2. Tajikistan's Fedchenko Glacier is {{cvt. 77. km. mi long. Baltoro and Batura Glaciers in the Karakoram are {{cvt. 57. km. mi long, as is Bruggen or Pio XI Glacier in southern Chile. Measurements are from recent imagery, generally supplemented with Russian 1:200,000 scale topographic mapping as well as Jerzy Wala,''Orographical Sketch Map: Karakoram: Sheets 1 & 2'', [[:de:Schweizerische Stiftung für Alpine Forschung. Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research]], [[Zurich]], 1990.
3. Bessarabov, Georgy Dmitriyevich. (7 February 2014). "Karakoram Range".
4. "Hindu Kush Himalayan Region". [[International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development]].
5. {{harvnb. Shukurov, The Natural Environment of Central and South Asia. 2005
6. Voiland, Adam. (2013). "The Eight-Thousanders".
7. "Mountains".
8. Mason, Kenneth. (1928). "Exploration of the Shaksgam Valley and Aghil ranges, 1926". Asian Educational Services.
9. (1930). "Nomenclature in the Karakoram: Discussion". Blackwell Publishing.
10. Kohli, M.S.. (2002). "Mountains of India: Tourism, Adventure and Pilgrimage". Indus Publishing.
11. [[Patrick French. French, Patrick]]. (1994). ''Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer'', pp. 53, 56-60. HarperCollins''Publishers'', London. Reprint (1995): Flamingo. London. {{ISBN. 0-00-637601-0.
12. Kala, Chandra Prakash. (2005). "Indigenous Uses, Population Density, and Conservation of Threatened Medicinal Plants in Protected Areas of the Indian Himalayas". Conservation Biology.
13. Kala, Chandra Prakash. (2005). "Health traditions of Buddhist community and role of amchis in trans-Himalayan region of India". Current Science.
14. (2011). "Geological evolution of the Karakoram ranges". Italian Journal of Geosciences.
15. (2019). "Early twenty-first century glacier mass losses in the Indus Basin constrained by density assumptions". Journal of Hydrology.
16. Gansser. (1975). "Geology of the Himalayas". Interscience Publishers.
17. Gallessich, Gail. (2011). "Debris on certain Himalayan glaciers may prevent melting". sciencedaily.com.
18. (2016). "Changes in the ablation zones of glaciers in the western Himalaya and the Karakoram between 1972 and 2015". Remote Sensing of Environment.
19. (2019). "No significant mass loss in the glaciers of Astore Basin (North-Western Himalaya), between 1999 and 2016". Journal of Glaciology.
20. (2020). "Thin debris layers do not enhance melting of the Karakoram glaciers". Science of the Total Environment.
21. Veettil, B.K.. (2012). "A Remote sensing approach for monitoring debris-covered glaciers in the high altitude Karakoram Himalayas". International Journal of Geomatics and Geosciences.
22. Kuhle, M.. (1988). "The Pleistocene Glaciation of Tibet and the Onset of Ice Ages- An Autocycle Hypothesis.Tibet and High Asia. Results of the Sino-German Joint Expeditions (I)". GeoJournal.
23. Kuhle, M.. (2006). "Karakoram in Transition". Oxford University Press.
24. Kuhle, M.. (2011). "Quaternary Glaciation – Extent and Chronology, A Closer Look". Elsevier BV.
25. Kuhle, M.. (2001). "Tibet and High Asia (VI): Glaciogeomorphology and Prehistoric Glaciation in the Karakoram and Himalaya". GeoJournal.
26. Kuhle, M.. (1994). "Present and Pleistocene Glaciation on the North-Western Margin of Tibet between the Karakoram Main Ridge and the Tarim Basin Supporting the Evidence of a Pleistocene Inland Glaciation in Tibet. Tibet and High Asia. Results of the Sino-German and Russian-German Joint Expeditions (III)". GeoJournal.
27. "Hispar area expeditions".
28. Jerzy Wala, ''Orographical Sketch Map of the Karakoram'', Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, Zurich, 1990.
29. Shea, Samantha. (8 September 2023). "The Road that's the Eighth World Wonder". BBC.
30. Tarar, Mustansar Hussain. (1994). "K2 kahani". Sang-e-Meel (published in Urdu).