CORRESPONDENCE

The Ascent of Kabru

To the Editor,

The Himalayan Journal.

Dear Professor Mason,

In his interesting paper on Kabru (.H.J., viii. 107-17) Mr. C. R. Cooke seems to prove that the height 7,395 m. (24,262 feet) given on my map to the peak between Kabru and Talung Peak is wrong. According to him, this peak should be about 300 feet lower than Kabru itself, i.e. 23,700 feet.

I want to point out that I have never been in the neighbourhood of this peak and that its height was given to me by the Indian Survey. In his letter of the 25th October 1930, Colonel Phillimore writes to me as follows: 'We can give no height for Talung Peak, but the height of the point marked with a triangle south-west of it has a height of about 24,262 feet. This was roughly calculated by a Surveyor doing the Nepal Survey of 1925-26.'

I am a surveyor myself and I know that we cannot make blunders of this size (562 feet!) even in a rough calculation. So Mr. Cooke must be wrong. Point 24,262 is not the 'ice gendarme' behind the north peak of Kabru 'on the corner of its east face' as seen from Darjeeling. This gendarme might be 300 feet lower than the north peak of Kabru climbed by Mr. Cooke, but Point 24,262 is much further north. It is the only important summit between Kabru and the Talung Saddle and ought to bear the name Talung Peak. This name was given (I think by Dr. Jacot Guillarmod) to the first shoulder south-west of Talung Saddle. This shoulder (7,035) deserves no name at all. From Kabru it is probably concealed behind Point 24,262.

I should be very obliged to you for publishing this rectification in your next Himalayan Journal.

 

To the Honorary Editor,

The Himalayan Journal.

Dear Sir,

Referring Mr. Kurz to his map Das Massiv des Kangchendzonga, it will be found that on drawing a straight line from Kabru North (7,315 m.) to Talung Peak (7,035 m.) it passes almost exactly through the unnamed peak to which he assigns a height of 7,395 m. It should therefore be quite impossible to see Talung Peak from Kabru North, owing to the obstruction of this unnamed peak shown half-way along the ridge and 240 feet higher than the viewpoint.

I would now refer him to the photograph appearing opposite p. 116, Himalayan Journal, vol. viii, which shows the view northwards from the summit of Kabru North. Here Talung Peak is in full view in the middle distance, with its summit almost underneath the famous 'horse-shoe rock' on the south-west face of Kangchenjunga. The only object within the arc of the photograph, or even further west, between Kabru and Talung Peak, approaching 7,300 m. is the snow summit in the left foreground, directly in line with Talung Peak.

Because the top of Kabru North was found to lie further north along the ridge than would appear from the map, I assumed that this summit must be the one he intended for his peak 7,395 m. If this is not so, either the peak is non-existent, or its position as well as its height must be considerably in error. It is, however, a small detail which detracts little from the value of Mr. Kurz's most helpful map of Kangchenjunga.

Yours faithfully,
G. R. Cooke.

20 Loudon Street, Calcutta.

12th December 1936,

 

Editors Note

M. Marcel Kurz believes that the unnamed peak, with a height of 7,395 m. (24,262 feet), is the summit shown in Mr. Cooke's illustration opposite p. 116, Himalayan Journal, vol. viii, and that it should be assigned the name 'Talung Peak⁵. Mr. Cooke asserts that this summit is Talung Peak, whose height was shown as 7,035 m. (23,082 feet).

M. Kurz writes that the point shown as Talung Peak, 7,035 m., is only a shoulder, and not a true peak, and that it deserves no name. On the other hand, Mr. Cooke says that it is a peak, the only one of any significance between the Talung saddle and Kabru, and that there is no higher.

As will be seen from the note on page 173 of this Journal giving the approximate heights of various summits seen from Darjeeling, the height of the highest point between Kabru N. and the Talung Saddle appears to be 308 feet lower than the former, and that there is a lower elevation between the two ('New Peak'). Kabru N., however, works out at 24,176 feet, and the Talung Peak at 23,868 feet (7,275 m.), which appears to rise directly from the Talung Saddle, 21,930 feet (6,684 m.).

 

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