Maya Gurung on Gyalzen Peak: a first ascent in the Jugal Himal

On 9 April 2019, at eleven in the morning, three climbers stood on the summit of Gyalzen Peak. Maya Gurung, Milan Lama and Sharmila Thapa had been going for about twenty-three hours.

Gyalzen is 6,151 m, one of eleven peaks in the Jugal range in Sindhupalchowk district. It is not a famous mountain. Most people who trek in Nepal will never hear the name, and that is exactly why the climb is interesting.

They were not just climbing it, they were writing it down

The team established the route and made a map of it for climbers who come after them.

That is the part worth sitting with. A peak with no established line is not just physically harder, it is administratively invisible. There is nothing to book, nothing to plan against, no way for an operator to price it or for a climber to judge whether they are ready. Somebody has to go first and then write it down, or the mountain stays closed by default.

A permit for Gyalzen costs Rs 4,000 for Nepali climbers and USD 250 for foreign ones. Modest numbers, for a peak that most people cannot yet find information about.

Twenty-three hours up, half that down

A single push of twenty-three hours is a long day by any standard. The descent took roughly half the time, which is normal and also where most of the risk sits, because you are doing the technical ground tired.

Maya Gurung had been on Everest eleven years earlier, in 2008, with the first inclusive Nepali women’s expedition, and was part of the Seven Summits Women Team that went on to become the first all-female team in the world to complete the Seven Summits. She was the first woman from the Gurung community in her locality to reach the top of Everest.

None of which makes a 6,151 m first ascent in Sindhupalchowk automatic. Different mountain, different problem.

Her line about it, quoted by Khabarhub: “Every mountain has its own beauty and challenges.”

Why Sindhupalchowk matters here

Sindhupalchowk lost more people in the 2015 earthquake than any other district in Nepal. It is also where Maya Gurung is from.

Opening a climbable, mapped peak in a district like that is not a symbolic gesture. Trekking and climbing money reaches places that very little else reaches, and a route with a name and a map on it is the thing that brings people. The Jugal range has eleven peaks. Most of them are still waiting.

Original report: Khabarhub.