Valley of silence
The valley of silence is the highest valley or cirque on earth.
Another name of this valley is in English "Western Cwm" (spoken Kuhm), both after the Welsh word for " basin " or " Kar " and based on the glacier and the region called Khumbu .
The valley is located in Nepal , in an extremely inaccessible location southwest of the summit of Mount Everest , northwest of the summit of Lhotse and northeast of the seven-thousander Nuptse . To the north, the valley is bounded by the notorious west ridge of Everest, its southern flank forms the chain of west and east ridge of the Nuptse, which lead to the west ridge of the Lhotse, and at the end of the valley rises the icy flank of the Lhotse, which leads to the highest pass the earth leads the 8000 meter high south saddle over into the eastern valley of the Kangshung Glacier in Tibet .
The valley itself is an irritating place. Surrounded by the high mountain ranges, there is often no wind in the valley (hence the name: Valley of Silence) and during the day it is often unusually hot due to the reflection of the sunlight on the many ice and snow surfaces; At night or after sunset, temperatures can drop well below zero. The only access to the valley is an extremely dangerous icefall of over 600 meters in altitude from the Khumbu Glacier, which is forming in this valley .
The valley itself begins at an altitude of about 6000 meters, above the icefall; In this region, the "Advanced Base Camp" or Advanced Base Camp, abbreviated to ABC, is usually set up. At the end of the valley or a few hundred meters before it, in front of the flank of the Lhotse, another camp is set up.
The Khumbu glacier rises in its glaciated basin . Below the Valley of Silence, on the lateral moraine of the glacier, is the Everest base camp at an altitude of approx. 5400 meters, from which the valley is sought: via one of the most dangerous routes on earth, namely through an icefall rising 600 meters uphill the glacier moves about 5 centimeters every hour. The path is lined by seracs , gigantic broken ice needles that can have the volume of a high-rise building with heights of up to 35 meters and can topple over at almost any time. There are crevasses between the Séracs, some of which can be over 150 meters deep. The icefall is by far the most dangerous part of the way up on the most common route of Everest climbers, the South Saddle Route.
Behind the icefall in the actual valley it is relatively safe, but you are walking on a moving glacier that has enormous crevasses, especially at 6100 m and 6500 m altitude. The valley itself is only slightly inclined and has a length of 4600 to 4700 m up to the eastern end of the valley at an altitude of 6700 to 6800 m, which corresponds to an average gradient of 9.5 °.
The first person to look into the valley of silence is said to have been the famous English mountaineer George Mallory . During his explorations of the Everest region on July 19, 1921 from the Tibetan side, he climbed the Lho-La Pass northwest of the Khumbu Valley from the Rongpu Glacier . From the top of the pass at 6000 meters he looked diagonally from above in an east-southeast direction into the valley of silence. He reported that due to the huge icefall, no one could get into this valley. New Zealander LV Bryant took the first photo of the icefall and the valley in 1935 from the same spot. Raymond Lambert and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the Valley of Silence in 1952 as part of a Swiss Everest expedition. A year later, in 1953, the English expedition led by John Hunt with the first climbers, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary , also reached the summit of Mt. Everest through this valley.
Valley of Silence is also the title of a film, but it has nothing to do with the real valley on Mount Everest.
location
Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap
- Icefall end: 27 ° 59 ′ 28 ″ N , 86 ° 52 ′ 20 ″ E at 6000 m
- Middle of the valley: 27 ° 58 ′ 51 ″ N , 86 ° 53 ′ 53 ″ E at 6400 m
- End of the valley: 27 ° 58 ′ 7 ″ N , 86 ° 54 ′ 41 ″ E at 6780 m
Coordinates: 27 ° 58 ′ 51 ″ N , 86 ° 53 ′ 53 ″ E