Mountaineer Musings

Dispelling a common myth related to K2

I was initially under the impression that this post would not be a good fit for this platform, but then reminded myself that even mountains are “scalable” and hence this post.

Recently, I made a visit to Turtuk, which is claimed to be the last village before Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, although not true, as the villages of Tyakshi and Thang are beyond it and come under the Indian domicile. It is definitely the case that these areas were acquired during the 1971 war and are portrayed as such for that reason.

Figure 1: Shyok river valley villages near PoK border (Source: Google Maps, Landsat/Copernicus Imagery)

Figure 1 shows villages beyond Turtuk along the same road. Although Google Maps does not make a claim on the boundaries, it is documented that the other villages are indeed under Indian territory.

More importantly, I would like to focus on another controversy related to this village that has been listed in multiple links online [1,2,3] — claiming that it is possible to see K2 from this location. I would like to politely counter that fact and it is something that has also been done in this article as well.

Figure 2: View of Karakoram from Turtuk (Source: Self)

Figure 2 shows a picture clicked from one of the viewpoints in Turtuk. Unfortunately, the EXIF data for this picture does not have location and I would have to refer to Google Maps for the approximate direction. The Shyok river is flowing right below, cutting across the width of this photograph and a view in the similar direction is offered from the Turtuk monastery as well. This corresponds to the following view on the map:

Figure 3: Distinguished Peaks from Turtuk. Pointed arrow indicates approximate view direction (Source: Google Maps, Landsat/Copernicus Imagery)

Figure 3 shows some of the prominent peaks that are in proximity from the location. These include:

• K12
• Saltoro Kangri
• Masherbrum
• Gasherbrum I
• K2

Note that Turtuk itself is at an altitude of around 2800m in the Nubra Valley. For further analysis, I have tried to reproduce a similar view on Google Earth of the same location.

Figure 4: Three-dimensional representation of viewpoint (Source: Google Earth, Maxar Technologies, CNES/Airbus, Landsat/Copernicus)

Note the resemblance of the peaks inset in Figure 4 to the photograph in Figure 2. A closer view of these in Google Earth ascertains their location relative to the distinguished peaks

Figure 5: Closer inspection of peaks in view of Fig. 4 (Source: Google Earth, Maxar Technologies, CNES/Airbus, Landsat/Copernicus)

The inset in Figure 5 highlights the peaks that are visible in the view from Turtuk. It can be seen that the peaks are quite lower in altitude (from the camera location in Fig. 5) compared to the distinguished peaks and would obscure their view from the village as well.

Thus, the best conclusion is that these are unnamed peaks in the nearby Saltoro/Karakoram ranges. The mentioned sources on viewing K2 from this village should be corrected and future tourists should not go with the false hope on a 2-hour drive from Diskit or Hunder just to get a view of the K2.