Gangga Range is located in Shalulishan Range in Hengduanshan in northwest of Sichuan Province on Tibetan Plateau. It is in the northern part of Shalulishan Range and southeast to the Chola Mountain Range. It is home to dozens of 5000+ meters unclimbed mountains. Kawalori was usually considered to be part of the range but from some source it was considered to be a separated range (?). Kawalori is the highest mountain in this range, being 5992 meters above sea level. Over half the mountains in Gangga Range are technical and mixed climb. It was officially first explored by Ed Hannam and several other explorers from 2014 after Tom Nakamura’s journal was published. According to Nakamura’s journal, there are Gangga 1, Gangga 2, Gangga 3 and several other mountains recorded in his map. Alex Tang from Sichuan Travel Guide has been working for the expedition teams since 2014 and has the rich information about this area. The first failed attempt was in 2014 to a mountain called Zizi Zhuo, meaning Knife Mountain. In 2015 the successful summits were made to Asura, a mountain in the southern range and Dechok Podrek in the north. In 2016 another successful summit was made to the big pillar Mt. Lilian in its north part. Our staff Alex was on all of these trips himself.
There seem to be many other exploration attempts in this area as well to the north and south valleys but information in terms of this is limited.
To get to Gangga Range one usually starts from Chengdu and drive to Ganzi for 2 days. Ganzi is the town right north to Gangga Range about 10km. Ganzi is also a county level town that has hotels and restaurants available. Some of the mountains can be accessed by cars! You can actually drive to the base of the valley and start to climb and go back to the town if it’s an easy mountain. Ganzi is used as the base camp of the climbings here in Gangga Range. The national highway 317 goes by the north of the range and there is also a Ganbai Road that goes through the range. To reach its western and southern valley, one needs to do a 1-2 days’ hike.
Climbing to mountains in Gangga Range was formally done in September and October. However, according to Alex Tang’s work since 2014, September has seen much rainy days while October is definitely a better season. May may also be a good season to climb these mountains.
Mt. Kawalori south face
Mt. Dechok Podrek
Mt. Lilian
Mt. Zizi Zhuo
Route: Chengdu - Mt.Siguniang - Chengdu
Route: Chengdu - Gongga - Chengdu
Route: Chengdu - Gongga - Chengdu
