The Entire 20th Century on One Mountain

This is Nanda Devi. One of the most inaccessible mountains in the world, it is surrounded by a curtain wall of impassable ridges. Situated near the India-China border, it was the highest point in the British Empire. In 1934 Tilman and Shipton ("any worthwhile expedition can be planned on the back of an envelope") found a way through the walls as arduous and dangerous as any climb. Two years later Tilman climbed it, along with Noel Odell, the last man to see Mallory and Irvine alive on Everest - it was the tallest peak ever climbed until the French got up Annapurna in 1950.



Some interesting things about this sacred mountain:

• In the 1960s, before there were spy satellites, the CIA sent a secret expedition with a nuclear-powered listening device. It was quite radioactive - the porters liked carrying it because it was warm. Today they're dying from radiation illnesses. Anyway, the expedition ran into trouble on the mountain and abandoned the device, and despite several attempts it has not yet been recovered.
• In 1976 philosopher/mountaineer Willi Unsoeld took his daughter Nanda up the mountain on an expedition now legendary for its bickering and infighting. She died there.
• The last ascent was in 1993 by an Indian Army team that also cleaned up several tons of garbage. There is a pretty good book about all this, and a 2000 trek to the sanctuary, by Hugh Thomson.
  

Today, thanks to its protected status and possible radioactivity, Nanda Devi is once again inviolate.