Three Kyrgyz Seven-Thousanders: Peaks of Victory, Lenin, and Khan Tengri
Three Kyrgyz Seven-Thousanders.
1. Peak Victory - 7439 m. – the highest peak of Kyrgyzstan, the second highest mountain of the former USSR. From the side of China, Peak Victory is called Tomur. It is the northernmost seven-thousander on Earth, the highest point of the Tien Shan. The mountain is located on the border of Kyrgyzstan and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, 16 km southwest of Khan-Tengri Peak, east of Issyk-Kul Lake.
The first ascent was made on August 30, 1956, by a joint team from Moscow's "Spartak" and the Kazakh Committee for Physical Culture and Sports under the overall leadership of Vitaly Abalakov.
2. Peak Lenin (7134 meters) – the third largest of the "seven-thousanders" of the former USSR. On July 4, 2006, by a decree of the government of Tajikistan, Peak Lenin was renamed to Abu Ali ibn Sina Peak, in honor of the medieval Persian scholar, philosopher, and physician known in the West as Avicenna. In Kyrgyzstan, the mountain is still referred to as Peak Lenin. The summit is located in the Pamir mountain system, on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The first ascent was made by German climbers Karl Wien, Evgeny Alvein, and Erwin Schneider in 1928.
3. Peak Khan-Tengri - 6995 m (this peak is only five meters short of seven thousand, but given that its climbing difficulty is on par with a seven-thousander, it was decided to grant it this honorary status).
Peak Khan-Tengri (7010 meters) – one of the seven-thousanders of the former USSR. The summit is located in the Tien Shan mountain system. The height of the mountain with the glacier is 7010 meters, and without considering the ice thickness – 6995 meters. Thus, if the glacier is taken into account, then Khan-Tengri becomes the northernmost seven-thousander. In terms of climbing difficulty, it is on par with a seven-thousander, hence the decision to grant it this honorary status.
By the way, the name of the mountain translates from Turkic as "Lord of the Sky".
The first ascent of the summit was made by Mikhail Pogrebetsky, Boris Tyurin, and Franz Zauberer in 1931. In 1964, the peak was first conquered by a woman – Lydia Romanova.
In 2002, the government of Kyrgyzstan issued a 100 som banknote featuring an image of Peak Khan-Tengri on the reverse side. Until now, images of only two mountains have appeared on banknotes: the volcano Damavand, the highest point in Iran, appeared on the Iranian banknote of 10,000 rials, and Mount Ararat appeared on the Turkish banknote of 100 lira and on several Armenian banknotes.
In terms of location, Khan-Tengri (7010 m) and its western ridge (5900 m) to the neighboring Peak Chapayeva (6371 m) are very similar to the location of the Himalayan giants Everest (8848 m) and its South Col (7900 m) to the neighboring Peak Lhotse (8516 m). But everything is 2 kilometers lower, which allows for the imitation of the classic Himalayan route.
