Tupopdan (Passu Cones)
Tupopdan
Interesting facts
- Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void, was part of the 1987 first-ascent expedition, the year he returned to climbing after his Siula Grande accident.
- Andy Cave, who reached the summit, had been a coal miner at Grimethorpe colliery in South Yorkshire until the year before.
- On the summit push Cave and John Stevenson bivouacked on a rock buttress at about 5,500 metres and topped out at 10:15 in the morning.
- Deep snow forced the team to give up its first approach from a snow cave on a col at 5,180 metres and try again from a neighbouring valley.
- The first-ascent report recorded the mountain as Tlipobdan and put its summit at 6,125 metres, slightly higher than the figure used today.
- Tupopdan belongs to the South Ghujerab Mountains, a Karakoram subrange crowned by Karun Koh at about 7,164 metres.
- Two unnamed glaciers descend from the mountain's shaded north side.
- The spires can be seen from Attabad Lake, which formed in January 2010 when a huge landslide dammed the Hunza River.
Why it is worth it
Tupopdan, better known to travellers as the Passu Cones or Passu Cathedral, is a row of sharp limestone spires that rises above the Hunza valley in northern Pakistan like a set of organ pipes or a Gothic façade. For anyone driving the Karakoram Highway it is the defining sight of Upper Hunza: the jagged skyline, often dusted with snow, seems almost too regular to be natural. It is said to be the most photographed peak of the region, and it is easy to see why.
The scale is extraordinary. The summit reaches 6,106 metres, and within about 7 kilometres the mountain climbs some 3,600 metres above the Hunza River; its north face alone rises around 1,700 metres in a horizontal distance of just 1.5 kilometres. The name is variously explained as "sun-drenched mountain" or, in the Wakhi language, "hot rock" — a reference to how quickly snow slides off its sunny southern slopes in winter. Despite its prominence, the peak was not climbed until 6 July 1987, when Andy Cave and John Stevenson reached the top by the northeast ridge.
Tupopdan belongs to a remarkable corner of the Karakoram. Below it lies Passu, a village of Wakhi-speaking Ismaili families whose ancestors came from the Wakhan between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Nearby are the Passu Glacier and the Batura Glacier, at 56 kilometres one of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions, and the 7,478-metre Passu Sar rises close by. Few places offer such a density of great mountain scenery from a road.
Getting there
The spires rise north of Passu, in the Gojal area of Upper Hunza, Gilgit-Baltistan, beside the Karakoram Highway; Passu lies about 147 km up the valley from Gilgit. The nearest larger town is Karimabad, about 35 km away in a straight line, and the nearest airport is Gilgit Airport (GIL), about 89 km away, with scheduled flights from Islamabad. From Gilgit the journey continues north by road along the Karakoram Highway.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Tupopdan, also known as Passu Cathedral or Passu Cones, is a mountain in northern Pakistan.
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