Mount Garmo (

Tajik Tajik, Tajikistan or Tajikistani may refer to. Someone or something related to Tajikistan: Tajik * Tajiks, an ethnic group in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan * Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan * Tajik alphabet, Alphabet u ...

: Қуллаи Гармо, ''Qullai Garmo'') is a

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

of the

Pamirs The Pamir Mountains are a range of mountains between Central Asia and South Asia. They are located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges. They are among ...

Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

, with a height reported to be between 6,595 metres and 6,602 metres.(Russian
Памир
at wiki.risk.ru, accessed 5 August 2008 There is a

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

on Mount Garmo, and the great

Fedchenko Glacier The Fedchenko Glacier () or the Vanch-Yakh Glacier () is a large glacier in the Yazgulem Range, Pamir Mountains, of north-central Gorno-Badakhshan province, Tajikistan. The glacier is long and narrow, currently extending for and covering over . ...

(the longest glacier in the world outside the

polar region The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles. These high latitu ...

s) flows to the east of it. The nearest settlement is at Poimazor, some fifteen kilometres to the south (38° 39' 10 N, 71° 58' 2 E), which is at an

altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...

of 2785 metres. There has been some uncertainty about the location of Garmo and also about the true height of the peak which now bears that name. While the present consensus is around 6,595 metres, as recently as 1973 the ''

American Alpine Journal The ''American Alpine Journal'' is an annual magazine published by the American Alpine Club. Its mission is "to document and communicate mountain exploration." The headquarters is in Golden, Colorado. Subtitled as a compilation of "The World's ...

'' gave the height as 21,703 feet (6,615 m).

History

Formerly in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, Garmo forms part of the

Academy of Sciences Range Tajik National Academy of Sciences Range (, until 31 July, 2023 Academy of Sciences Range) is a mountain range in the Western Pamirs of Tajikistan. It is stretched in a north-south direction and considered to be the core of the Pamir mountain sy ...

(; ) where it connects with the Darvoz Range. A joint German-Russian expedition to the region in 1928 made the

first ascent In mountaineering and climbing, a first ascent (abbreviated to FA in climbing guidebook, guide books), is the first successful documented climb to the top of a mountain or the top of a particular climbing route. Early 20th-century mountaineers a ...

Lenin Peak Lenin Peak or Ibn Sina (Avicenna) Peak (, ; ; , renamed () in July 2006
(Tajik); for Russian tex
Ismoil Somoni Peak Ismoil Somoni Peak (; ) is the highest mountain in Tajikistan, as well as the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union before Tajikistan's independence. The mountain is named after Ismail Samani, a ruler of the Samanid dynasty. It is located in ...

, which may have been mistakenly identified with Garmo although it lies some sixteen

kilometre The kilometre (SI symbol: km; or ), spelt kilometer in American English, American and Philippine English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for ). It is the ...

s to the north of the present Garmo. In July 1962, two British climbers,

Wilfrid Noyce Cuthbert Wilfrid Francis Noyce (31 December 1917 – 24 July 1962) (usually known as Wilfrid Noyce (often misspelt as 'Wilfred'), some sources give third forename as Frank) was an England, English Mountaineering, mountaineer and author. He was a ...

and the young Scottish climber Robin Smith, died in a fall after an ascent of the peak, while preparing for a Soviet-British assault on Ismoil Somoni, which was then known as ''Pik Kommunizma'' (Peak Communism). There were quarrels between the Russians and the British, and after the deaths of Noyce and Smith, Sir John Hunt, the expedition co-leader, returned to Britain. In 1964, the British press referred to Garmo as "21,800-foot Mount Garmo".

Name confusion

Since the 1920s and 1930s, the mountain has been confused with the higher peak now called Ismoil Somoni, which for some years was called ''Pik Stalin'' and is better known as ''Pik Kommunizma''. A

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

quiz which was online in 2008 asks the question "By what name was Mount Garmo in Tajikistan known when it was the highest point in the Soviet Union?" and gives the answer "Mount Communism". In ''The Ascent of Mount Stalin'' (1937), Michael Romm and Alec Brown state that "Darwas is renamed Pik Garmo, and Garmo is renamed Pik Stalin, the reasons given being far from convincing". And a paper published by The Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use called ''Tajikistan, the Lofty Fastness of the Pamirs'' (November 2001) claims: In 2008, a number of sources continued to identify Garmo with the highest mountain in the Pamirs, or else to give it a height above 7,000 metres.TAJIKISTAN COUNTRY SNAPSHOT AND INTERESTING FACTS
at travel-island.com: "...the sparsely populated Pamir Mountains, which include Mount Garmo (formerly Pik Kommunizma; 7495m/24,590ft), the highest point of the former Soviet Union."

Bibliography

* Slesser, Malcolm ''Red Peak: A Personal Account of the British Soviet Expedition 1962'' (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964) * Sicouri, Paola, Kopylov, Vladimir, & Pierce, Richard A., ''Forbidden Mountains: The Most Beautiful Mountains in Russia and Central Asia'' (Milan: Indutech, 1994; US: Menasha Ridge Press Inc., 1997). ) * Cruickshank, Jimmy, ''High Endeavours: The Life and Legend of Robin Smith'' (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005).

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

View from Gishkhun (Vanj) up the valley with Pik Garmo in evening light
at google.com
Location map for Pik Garmo, Tajikistan
at peakbagger.com
Garmo Peak
at planeteye.com Garmo Six-thousanders of the Pamir

History

Name confusion

Bibliography

See also

References

External links