Nanga Parbat

Nanga Parbat, known locally in Shina as Diamer, rises immediately southeast of the northernmost bend of the Indus River in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan, reaching an elevation of about 8,126 meters, the ninth-highest mountain on Earth and the westernmost of the great Himalayan peaks. It is a non-volcanic massif thrust upward at the western end of the Himalaya-Karakoram collision zone, and its history of failed and fatal attempts, 31 deaths before its first successful ascent, earned it the nickname the Killer Mountain. On July 3, 1953, Austrian climber Hermann Buhl reached its summit completely alone, without bottled oxygen, after his partner Otto Kempter turned back, in the only instance in mountaineering history of an eight-thousand-meter peak's first ascent by a lone climber; his 41-hour round trip left him without his ice axe and missing a crampon on the way down. This entity documents Nanga Parbat specifically as a geological formation, a distinct facet from its treatment as a place and landform on the Geography Atlas; this entry covers the mountain's tectonic origin as the Himalaya's western anchor and its uniquely solitary first ascent.