Chris Bonington and the first ascent of Kongur Tagh

In 2007, I visited Xinjiang, a desert region in the far west of China that doesn’t feature highly on many people’s tourist bucket list.

Wedged between the foothills of three huge mountain ranges – the Karakoram to the south, Pamirs to the north-west, and the Kunlun to the west – the giant snow dome of Muztag Ata (7,546m) rises far above the surrounding landscape of dusty brown peaks. I first learned about it from the writing of Eric Shipton, the great mountain explorer who served as Consul Gener...