Laigu Glacier Visitor Area 来古冰川开放游览区

About Laigu Glacier Visitor Area

The Changdu tourism development bureau's scenic-spot entry describes 来古冰川 as a collective name for a group of glaciers — 美西, 雅隆, 若骄, 东嘎, 雄加 and 牛马 — and calls 雅隆 the most spectacular of them. It gives 雅隆 a length of twelve kilometres, running from the 6,606-metre main peak of 岗日嘎布山 down to 贡措 at 4,000 metres. A Xinhua photo report of December 2024 places the group in 然乌镇 in Baxoi County, says the name covers several glaciers whose appearance it calls distinctive and magnificent, and classifies them as maritime glaciers. A 西藏日报 feature of November 2024 calls the group one of the world's three great maritime glacier groups and says it preserves complete glacial remains while still developing active glaciers, and the bureau's entry calls it the largest and widest glacier known in Tibet and one of the world's three great glaciers, with six maritime glaciers visible from 来古村.

The meltwater is the source of the 帕隆藏布 and flows into 然乌湖, whose shore the bureau describes as dense primary forest with many original Tibetan villages along it; the name, it says, comes from 来古村 beside the glacier, and the village's Tibetan name carries the sense of a hidden, Shangri-la-like settlement. The entry works through what is visible from the village: the whole twelve-kilometre body of 雅隆 down to the great ice tongue reaching into 贡措; spring, when the ice tongue retreats and masses break off to float on the green surface of 岗日嘎布 lake; and the ice's blue colour, which the entry attributes to high internal gas pressure. About a kilometre west of the village it places 多松措湖, a little over one square kilometre and long and narrow in plan, with an island that itself holds a pond — the entry's 湖中岛、岛中湖, an island in a lake and a lake in an island — and it records rhododendrons flowering on the surrounding hills in the fifth lunar month.

The 西藏日报 feature describes how the group was reached before the road was built. It quotes 尼玛次仁, given as director of the 然乌湖景区 management committee, recalling that until 2016 the road from 然乌镇 to 来古村 was mud and the village had no electricity, and that the few visitors who came could only walk up the mountain or be led on horseback by villagers. The same account records that the route is now the 559 national highway, that hotels and guesthouses opened and villagers' income diversified, that at most seventeen villagers have worked at the 来古冰川景区 visitor centre, and that a village-Party-branch-led cooperative, with horse teams serving 来古, 东嘎 and 多松错, directly raised the incomes of 107 households. It also records that villagers patrol and clear rubbish and that unapproved building is prohibited inside the ecological protection zone, and that in 2024 the county procuratorate, the 然乌湖景区 management committee, the county culture-and-tourism bureau and other bodies established a procuratorial public-interest litigation protection area at the 来古冰川 scenic area.

Four limits belong to this record. The catalogue's 开放游览区 label is not a name any cited source uses; the sources speak of 来古冰川景区 and of the glacier group itself. 来古冰川 does not appear in the Tibet culture-and-tourism department's register of the region's A-level tourist areas dated 23 October 2025, whose nearest Changdu entry is 然乌湖旅游景区 at 3A. The Changdu city government's 图说昌都 page of 28 February 2026 carries the same text as the tourism bureau's entry of 15 May 2020, so the descriptive passages above rest on one account on two hosts rather than on two independent ones. And no cited source gives the group's total area, its number of separate ice lakes, or an elevation for 来古村 or the visitor centre — the 4,000 metres the bureau gives is the height of 贡措.

What to look for

• 雅隆 Glacier, which the Changdu tourism bureau traces over twelve kilometres from the 6,606-metre main peak of 岗日嘎布山 down to 贡措 at 4,000 metres
• The ice tongue the bureau describes reaching into 贡措, and the broken ice it says floats on the green surface of 岗日嘎布 lake in spring
• The blue colour of the ice, which the bureau attributes to high internal gas pressure
• 多松措湖, about a kilometre west of 来古村, a little over one square kilometre and long and narrow, with the island and pond the bureau calls 湖中岛、岛中湖
• 然乌湖, which the bureau says the meltwater flows into, with dense primary forest and Tibetan villages along its shore

Location & getting there

Getting to Laigu Glacier Visitor Area

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 来古冰川开放游览区 with 昌都市 and 八宿县.