dhv wrote:Hallo!
I have exactly the same question about a Mountain. As I register here, I saw this topic, so A am asking here, not to make another one.
I have this picture from old Russian book about mountains. The description there is "Qogori (K2), Second highest mountain in the World".
original:
Being an old (Soviet?) book the photo would be from the 1976 Polish climb of K2's NE ridge, which is why the angle is slightly different from the usual shots from the Abruzzi (SE) Ridge.
The sharp snowy 'mountain' with the climbers on it is just a peak along the NE ridge of K2. You can see the same, or nearby, terrain on the cover of the May 1979 National Geographic magazine which featured the 1978 American climb of the NE ridge. The Polish did not summit, though they climbed all the ridge. The Americans climbed the ridge then diverted left/south onto the top finish of the Abruzzi.
The peak in the background is:
- the north summit of
Marpophong Kangri, the main summit is out of picture to the right. But...
- the leading chronicler Jan Kielkowski, who has published informative books on many of the main 8000er massifs, has it as
Kharut North Peak, with Kharut's main summit just out of pic to the right.
Eberhard Jurgalski's data (8000ers.com) puts Kharut further south, and names the massif you see as Marpophong Kangri (aka KraBass Ri, in case it needs a 3rd name). EJ's data comes from the same data used for Google Earth, which is why the peak is shown as Marpophong Kangri on Google Earth.
But Kielkowski and his books are an authority on this stuff and he mentions no 'Marpophong Kangri' in his book. In the Himalaya and Karakoram there are often naming issues and confusion, but this one is a bit odd in that two recognised authorities have quite different results. Note that Jurgalski puts 'Kharut Kangri' further south, attached to the north side of Broad Peak. They can't both be right, but without checking with EJ I can't say if the discrepancy has since been resolved.
The British company Adventure Peaks took at least one expedition to try one of the Kharut Peaks, maybe 10 years ago, but did not summit the main summit.
Here is part of the Google Earth view that matches your old photo.