The attempts.
Kawagebo — 6,740 metres, the main peak of the Meili range — is not the highest unclimbed mountain on earth, but it may be the most definitively unclimbed. Through the 1980s and 1990s, as the world's 8,000-metre peaks were exhausted and the second tier fell in turn, the great ice wall above the Lancang gorge resisted a series of expeditions: Japanese, American, Chinese-Japanese joint teams, all turned back by weather, avalanche terrain and a valley that made no secret of its views.
1991.
In the winter of 1990–91, a Sino-Japanese expedition on the mountain was overwhelmed by an avalanche — seventeen climbers lost, the largest mountaineering disaster of its decade. The bodies and much of the camp were never recovered; the glacier released fragments in the years after, and the mountain kept the rest. For the climbing world it was tragedy. For the valley it was confirmation of what the prayer flags had been saying all along: the mountain is a deity, Kawagebo, protector of the region, and the pilgrims who walk its kora had never asked whether it could be climbed.
The ban.
In 2000–2001, after further attempts and continued local opposition, mountaineering on the Meili massif was formally prohibited — one of the first times a government banned climbing not for danger but for cultural reasons, and a decision the climbing community has by and large honoured without much relitigating. The result is what it is: a 6,740-metre ice wall that appears in no summit register, and a valley whose pilgrimage continues unbroken.
The pilgrimage.
Walk any section of the kora and the meaning is not abstract. The mountain is addressed, not conquered; the paths go around it, clockwise, and the villagers' calendars are set to the circuits. Journeys here are walking journeys, and we describe them exactly that way — guests of a pilgrimage, at the base of the mountain that said no, which is perhaps the only summit report the valley ever wanted.
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Meili mountain light
Yubeng morning mist
Altitude travel in China