Shipton's Arch
Interesting facts
- Local people call the arch Tushuk Tash, "pierced rock", and knew it long before outsiders did: its south face can be seen from the plain below.
- Seen from the usual northern approach, the arch rises only about 60 metres above a rubble pile; the huge figures come from measuring to the canyon floor on the south.
- Its span is only about 55 metres, a slender opening compared with a height many times greater.
- The arch is made of conglomerate, a rock of pebbles and stones cemented together, and stands at an altitude of about 2,970 metres.
- The National Geographic team of 2000 also failed from the south at first, and finally reached the arch from the north with a local shepherd boy as guide.
- In 2008 the Gobi March, a seven-day, 250-kilometre stage footrace, routed its runners over the top of the arch.
Why it is worth it
British mountaineer Eric Shipton found this arch in 1947 while serving as consul in Kashgar, after months of being turned back by a maze of near-identical canyons whenever he tried approaching from the south. He eventually broke through from the north, photographed it, and wrote it up in his book Mountains of Tartary — enough for Guinness World Records to list it as the tallest natural arch on the planet.
Then it disappeared. When Guinness staff later tried to re-verify the height, they couldn't locate the arch at all, and it dropped out of the record book as if it had never existed. It took a National Geographic-sponsored expedition in 2000 — fifty-three years after Shipton's original trip — to relocate it and confirm the thing was real all along; the surrounding gorges are disorienting enough that even a well-documented landmark can effectively go missing for half a century.
Exact height estimates still vary by source, ranging from roughly 365 to 460 metres, which says as much about how difficult the site is to survey as about the arch itself. Even at the low end, the opening is taller than most of the world's skyscrapers, framed by a keyhole-narrow slot in the rock rather than sitting out in the open the way famous arches usually do.
Good to know
Shipton's original approach through the canyon maze is not how anyone reaches the arch today — the current route follows a narrow gorge and a steep, purpose-built staircase installed in recent years.
Getting there
45 km from Kashgar. Kashgar Laining International Airport (KHG) is about 45 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Shipton's Arch is a conglomerate natural arch in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is located in Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture west-northwest of Kashgar, near the village of Artux, at an altitude of 2,973 metres (9,754 ft).
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