Kanchenjunga

/kahn'cheuhn joong"geuh/, n.

a mountain in S Asia, between NE India and Nepal, in the E Himalayas: third highest in the world. 28,146 ft. (8579 m).

Also, Kanchanjanga /kahn'cheuhn jahng"geuh/.

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Peak in the Himalayas.

The world's third highest mountain, it reaches 28,169 ft (8,586 m). It is located on the border between Nepal and Sikkim state, India, northwest of Darjiling. Rinzin Namgyal, a 19th-century explorer, made the first map of the peak. In 1955 a British expedition led by Charles Evans made the first successful climb.

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▪ mountain, Asia

also spelled  Kāngchenjunga , or  Kinchinjunga , Nepali  Kumbhkaran Lungur 

 

world's third highest mountain (28,169 feet [8,586 m]), in the Himalayas on the Nepalese border with Sikkim, India, 46 miles (74 km) north-northwest of Darjeeling. The Kānchenjunga massif is in the form of a gigantic cross, the arms of which lie north, south, east, and west. The individual summits connect to neighbouring peaks by four main ridges, from which four glaciers flow—the Zemu (northeast), Talung (southeast), Yalung (southwest), and Kānchenjunga (northwest). The mountain holds an important place in the mythology and religious ritual of the local inhabitants, and its slopes were no doubt familiar to herdsmen and traders for centuries before a rough survey of it was made.

      The first map known of Kānchenjunga was made by Rinzin Namgyal, one of the pandit (“learned”) explorers of the mid-19th century, who made a circuital sketch. In 1848 and 1849 Sir Joseph Hooker, a botanist, was the first European to visit and describe the region, and, in 1899, the explorer-mountaineer Douglas Freshfield traveled around the mountain. In 1905 the suggested Yalung valley route was attempted by an Anglo-Swiss party, a venture during which four members perished in an avalanche.

      Mountaineers later explored other faces of the massif. A Bavarian expedition led by Paul Bauer in 1929 and 1931 vainly attempted it from the Zemu side, and Gunter O. Dyhrenfurth, in 1930, attempted it from the Kānchenjunga Glacier. The greatest height reached during these explorations was 25,263 feet (7,700 m) in 1931. Fatal accidents on two of these expeditions gave the mountain a reputation for unusual danger and difficulty. No more efforts were made to climb it until 1954, when, partly because the Sikkimese objected, attention was again turned to the Yalung face, which is in Nepal. Gilmour Lewis' visits to the Yalung in 1951, 1953, and 1954 led to a 1955 British expedition led by Charles Evans, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club (London), which stopped within a few yards of the actual summit in deference to the religious beliefs and wishes of the Sikkimese.

      The name Kānchenjunga is derived from four words of Tibetan origin, usually rendered Kang-chen-dzo-nga, or Yang-chhen-dzö-nga, and interpreted in Sikkim as the “Five Treasuries of the Great Snow.”

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