Mount Genie Official Viewing Trails 格聂山正规开放观景线路

About Mount Genie Official Viewing Trails

A Ganzi Daily article of April 2018 gives the scenic area 4,676 square kilometres; the interim traverse measures issued that November put it at 4,069, and both figures are given here as their sources state them. Both describe it as a composite landscape area including snow mountains and glaciers, rivers and lakes, grassland and forest, wetland and hot springs, and many cultural remains. The area averages 3,800 metres in altitude, holds more than twenty peaks above 5,000 metres and one above 6,000, and has an absolute relief of 3,044 metres. Genie itself stands in the middle section of the Shaluli range at the southern end of Haizishan; the mountain faces south, its summit carries snow all year, and its south, east and west faces carry large modern glaciers, the south face with developed glacial landforms, the west face with high ice-cut rock walls and the east side the most concentrated glacial lakes, with moraine ridges and erratics densely spread. The group of peaks includes Genie, Xiangba, Kamailong and Xiaozha, and of the several dozen valleys of differing size and depth that radiate from the geographical origin of the snow-peak group, the eight most representative lie around the mountain.

A 2016 Ganzi Daily article on the same site places Genie in Reke township and counts it the thirteenth goddess among the twenty-four sacred mountains of Tibetan Buddhism in China and one of the eight sacred speech places of Cakrasamvara. It describes the area as one of the better preserved and more widely distributed Quaternary ice-cap areas known in western China, with modern mountain glaciers around the peaks and snow on the upper slopes all year, and a broad, gentle river valley below the peak thick with forest, scrub and marshy meadow. The main peak, it notes, can be seen from anywhere within Lenggu monastery. The two articles give the mountain different Tibetan names, Gangbo Gongga in 2018 and Gamaripa in 2016.

The catalogue's phrase about permitted routes points at a management regime that the sources record only for a fixed period. On 15 November 2018 the Litang and Batang county governments and the scenic area's construction and management preparatory group jointly issued interim measures for the administration of traverse activity, barring any unit or individual from unlawful traverse within the area. The reasons given were that the scenic area was at an early stage of development, without settled management arrangements or complete infrastructure, and that its wide extent, complex terrain, high average altitude, sparse population and large uninhabited tracts made timely rescue very difficult if a visitor came to grief far inside. Those measures were stated to run for two years from that date, so they evidence the position then rather than now. On the mountain itself the April 2018 article records attempts from Japan, Korea, Britain, Switzerland and the United States since the 1980s without success, and the deaths of the American climbers Charlie Fowler and Christine Boskoff on Genie in 2006.

What to look for

• The main peak at 6,204 metres, under snow all year, seen from anywhere within the grounds of Lenggu monastery.
• The peaks of the Genie group named in the prefecture's sources include Genie, Xiangba, Kamailong and Xiaozha.
• The east side of the mountain, where the glacial lakes are most concentrated and moraine ridges and erratics lie densely spread.
• The broad, gentle valley below the peak, thick with forest, scrub and marshy meadow.
• Tiejiangshan on Haizishan, grey-black and 4,770 metres high, a relic of long glacier cover in the Quaternary.

Location & getting there

Getting to Mount Genie Official Viewing Trails

Check weather, trail access and the last return service. A mountain or forest area is not one entrance, and a map’s central pin may be far from the trailhead.

• Search for 格聂山正规开放观景线路 with 甘孜藏族自治州 and 理塘县.