Saturday, June 6, 2009

Mount Gongga

37977808.gg23 Mt. Gongga (also known as Minya Konka) in China is where 3 American climbers are missing including one native Minnesotan. According to this tour organizer:

Rising to a height of 7,556 meters (24,784 feet), Mt. Gongga towers above all the other mountains of Sichuan Province, thus earning it the moniker, "King of Sichuan Mountains."

Here’s the Wikipedia link. Four Americans climbed it in 1932 which was a high altitude record for American climbers until 1958. In the photo above, you can see two cable cars used to “transport tourists across the glacier below the mountain to a cable car station at 5000 meter altitude.”

(I thought a 16,000 foot cable car might be the highest in the world, so I Googled it and came up with this link to a cable car in Venezuela that is even higher. Although this web site says it’s in Bolivia. Hmmm, maybe there’s a theme-based trip in all of this “Travel to The 10 Highest Cable Cars in the World.” I’ve already been to one of them; just 9 to go.)

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