Manasluमनास्लु

Manaslu is the eighth-highest mountain in the world, rising to 8,163 metres (26,781 ft) above sea level. It is the highest peak of the Mansiri Himal (sometimes called the Gurkha Massif), a sub-range of the Nepalese Himalaya, and lies in the Gorkha District of Gandaki Province in west-central Nepal. Its summit stands at approximately 28°33′N 84°34′E, and the mountain carries a topographic prominence of about 3,092 metres (10,144 ft), making it one of the more prominent of the world's fourteen eight-thousanders. From its high snows the land falls away into the deep valley of the Budhi (Buri) Gandaki river to the east and the Marsyangdi to the west, so that the peak forms the towering centrepiece of a remote, steeply cut mountain region.

The name Manaslu is usually traced to the Sanskrit word 'manasa', meaning intellect, mind or soul, and the peak is popularly rendered in English as the 'Mountain of the Spirit'. Among local Tibetan-speaking communities the massif and the surrounding country are also known as Kutang. The villages on its flanks, especially Samagaun (Sama) in the upper Nubri valley, are inhabited by people of Tibetan Buddhist culture, and the approach passes through a landscape of monasteries, mani walls and high pasture in a region that requires special trekking permits.

Because of its position and height, Manaslu dominates a sweeping section of the central Himalaya and is visible from many points along the Manaslu Circuit, a long trekking route that loops around the massif. The combination of glaciated faces, sharp ridgelines and a heavily corniced summit area gives the mountain its distinctive profile and has shaped both its mountaineering history and the long-running debate over exactly where its true high point lies.

Manaslu has a strongly Japanese mountaineering heritage, often summarised by the saying that just as the British regarded Everest as 'their' mountain, the Japanese came to regard Manaslu as theirs. A Japanese reconnaissance party visited the area in 1952, and in 1953 a Japanese team attempted the peak from the east, reaching a high point on the north-east face before turning back.

Relations with the local people then complicated the next attempts. When a Japanese team returned in 1954, the villagers of Samagaun blamed the earlier expeditions for angering the mountain's deities, holding them responsible for an avalanche that had damaged the Pung-Gyen monastery and caused deaths in the community. The villagers refused to allow the climb to proceed, and the expedition diverted elsewhere. Even after donations toward rebuilding the monastery, subsequent expeditions worked in an atmosphere of considerable local mistrust.

The first ascent was finally achieved on 9 May 1956, when Toshio Imanishi of Japan and the Sherpa Gyalzen Norbu reached the summit as part of a Japanese expedition led by Yūkō Maki (Aritsune Maki). Their success confirmed the north-east face as the line of access. The first winter ascent followed much later, on 12 January 1984, by the Polish climbers Maciej Berbeka and Ryszard Gajewski, a landmark in the development of Himalayan winter mountaineering.

The standard or 'normal' route on Manaslu climbs the north-east face, the same broad line pioneered by the early Japanese expeditions. Climbers begin from a base camp above Samagaun at roughly 4,800 metres and work upward through a series of high camps across glaciated terrain, ice slopes and an upper plateau before the final summit pyramid. Other, far harder lines exist on the mountain's steeper aspects, but the north-east face accounts for the great majority of ascents.

In recent decades Manaslu has become one of the most popular of the eight-thousanders for commercially guided expeditions. It is frequently described as one of the more achievable 8,000-metre peaks and is widely used as a 'stepping stone' toward Everest, allowing climbers to experience the death zone above 8,000 metres on relatively less technical ground. The post-monsoon autumn months, roughly September to November, are the favoured season, when more settled weather and good visibility produce comparatively high summit-success rates.

Despite this reputation, Manaslu is a genuinely dangerous mountain, ranked among the deadlier eight-thousanders, with dozens of fatalities recorded over the decades. Avalanche is the principal hazard. On 23 September 2012 an avalanche swept the route around Camp 3 and killed eleven climbers, one of the worst single disasters on the mountain. In September 2022 a further avalanche killed the Nepali guide Anup Rai and injured many others, and during the same period the American ski-mountaineer Hilaree Nelson died after falling a great distance while attempting a ski descent from near the summit. These events underline that even a 'beginner-friendly' eight-thousander carries the full lethal exposure of extreme high altitude.

Manaslu features in several notable mountaineering records, including early milestones in women's eight-thousand-metre climbing by Japanese teams in the 1970s. The mountain has also seen rapid speed efforts and ski descents, including a much-publicised fast ascent and partial ski descent by the Polish ski-mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel in 2014. Its accessibility has made it a frequent stage for record attempts on the broader project of climbing all fourteen eight-thousanders.

In recent years Manaslu has become central to a wider re-examination of what counts as reaching the top of an eight-thousander. For decades most expeditions turned around at a prominent fore-summit marked with prayer flags, short of a slightly higher point along a heavily corniced ridge. The German chronicler Eberhard Jurgalski and his team at 8000ers.com argued that, on several peaks including Manaslu, the genuine high point had not been correctly reached by many who claimed success.

The issue came to a head in 2021, when a team led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa reached the true summit and member Jackson Groves captured drone imagery showing the customary turnaround point standing several metres lower than the actual peak along the ridge. Following this evidence, the Himalayan Database announced that from 2022 it would credit a Manaslu summit only to climbers who reached that highest point. The reclassification had significant consequences for mountaineering record-keeping: it sharply reduced the number of people who could be said to have stood on the genuine summit of all fourteen eight-thousanders, and it prompted bodies such as Guinness World Records to revisit long-standing claims.