I don't undertake these things to please my fellow skiers or my fellow climbers or my fellow rowers. I do them to please myself and, I like to think, to give something back to the man in the street, the guy who sits at a desk and maybe isn't doing what he wants with his life. If anything, I'd just like to think I remind people that it's possible to do what you want. If adventuring is about anything, that's what it's about.
- Ned Gillette
Muztag Ata was too much mountain for super explorer Sven Hedin, who made an unsuccessful bash of it in 1891. Rising over 7500 meters, ‘The Father of Icy Mountains' kept mountaineers Eric Shipton and Bill Tillman off its peak in 1947, although they made it to within a heart-breaking seventy meters. It took a Chinese-Russian government-sponsored expedition to first reach the summit, in 1956. In 1980, adventurer Ned Gillette decided he wasn't just going to climb to the top of Muztag Ata; he was going to ski back down.
Today it's relatively easy to travel to Kashgar and arrange a ski-expedition on Muztag Ata, but not with Gillette. He was murdered ten years ago, at the base of Pakistan's 6800 meter Laila Peak, in a botched robbery attempt. His many exploits survive him, including this 1981 National Geographic account of his record-breaking feat.
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