Meili Snow Mountains
Interesting facts
- From the Mekong at under 2,000 metres to the 6,740-metre summit of Kawagarbo, the ground climbs nearly five kilometres within about 10 kilometres of horizontal distance.
- That compressed slope stacks a whole sequence of life zones, from subtropical scrub in the arid canyon floors through oak and conifer forest and alpine meadow to permanent snow.
- The name Meili comes from the Tibetan Menri, mountains of medicinal herbs; a 1950s army mapping error stretched the name of a lower range to cover the whole massif.
- Kawagarbo stands about 2,232 metres above the lowest point separating it from any higher summit, which places it among the world's ultra-prominent peaks.
- The pilgrim circuit around Kawagarbo is roughly 240 kilometres long, and about 20,000 pilgrims from across the Tibetan world were reported to visit each year.
- The first known attempt on Kawagarbo came in 1987, when a Japanese club turned back near 5,100 metres after continuous avalanches on the Mingyong side.
- American teams led by Nicholas Clinch tried other major peaks of the range in 1988, 1989, 1992 and 1993 and failed every time.
- Of the seventeen climbers lost in 1991, all but one were eventually recovered; only the remains of the team's doctor have never been found.
- The Mingyong Glacier is itself held sacred, with two temples along its lower edge, and a local monk once wondered whether its retreat was the mountain god's displeasure.
- The monsoon brings about two-thirds of the area's precipitation, and its wet snow makes slopes especially unstable, a major factor in the range's climbing failures.
Why it is worth it
The Meili Snow Mountains form a single chain of ice-covered summits on the border between north-west Yunnan and Tibet, and seen across the deep gorge of the Mekong they look like a wall of white raised over a dark valley. The highest point, Kawagarbo, reaches 6,740 metres and is the summit of Yunnan; around it stand a row of other peaks above 6,000 metres, among them Miancimu, Zhandui Wuxue and Nairi Dingka. Their number is traditionally given as thirteen, and the range is known in Chinese as the Prince Snow Mountain as well as Meili.
For Tibetan Buddhists Kawagarbo is one of the holiest mountains of all, the home of a warrior god who bears the same name, and tradition holds that he would leave if anyone stood on the summit. The mountain is approached not upwards but around: pilgrims walk an arduous circuit of many days around the massif. That reverence shapes its modern history. A joint Chinese-Japanese expedition attempted the peak at the turn of 1990 and 1991, and on the night of 3 to 4 January an avalanche buried their high camp, killing all seventeen climbers, eleven Japanese and six Chinese. Remains surfaced on the glaciers below for years afterwards. In 2001 the local government forbade climbing on Kawagarbo, and none of the major summits of the range has ever been reached.
What a visitor sees depends on patience and season. The classic view is from the terraces of Feilaisi, above the Mekong gorge near the county town of Deqin, where rows of white chortens and prayer flags frame the whole range; from October to May the chances of a clear sky are best, and on the rare dawns when the summits catch the first sun they turn gold above a valley still in shadow. The Mingyong Glacier pours down the east face towards the Mekong and ends unusually low, close to subtropical forest, though it has retreated markedly in recent decades. The village of Yubeng lies in a high valley directly beneath the peaks. The range is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Getting there
The usual base is Deqin (Shengping town); the Feilaisi viewpoint lies about 10 km south-west of it. The nearest larger town is Shangri-La, roughly 120 km away in a straight line and considerably further by the winding mountain road. Diqing Shangri-La Airport (DIG) is the nearest airport, at a similar distance; from Shangri-La, National Highway 214 continues north to Deqin. Yubeng and the Mingyong Glacier are reached from the Mekong valley below the range.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Meili Snow Mountains, Mainri or Minling Snow Mountains is a mountain range in the Chinese province of Yunnan. It lies close to the northwestern boundary of the province and is bounded by the Nujiang river on the west and the Lancang River on the east. The Meili are subrange of the larger Nu Mountains, themselves a constituent range of the Hengduan group.
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