Annapurna I

Annapurna I, at 8,091 metres, is the world's tenth-highest mountain and the first 8,000-metre peak ever climbed. Written either as Annapurna I or Annapurna 1, it is the same giant: the crown of the great massif that walls the northern skyline of Pokhara and gives its name to Nepal's most popular trekking region.

Overview

Annapurna I is one of Nepal's eight eight-thousanders and the centrepiece of the Annapurna Conservation Area, the country's largest protected region. The name comes from Sanskrit and is usually rendered as goddess of the harvests or the one full of grain, a nod to the rivers and terraced fields the mountain feeds. It faces Dhaulagiri across the vast trench of the Kali Gandaki gorge, and its place among the mountains of Nepal is defined by two superlatives that sit uneasily together: it was the first of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks to be summited, and it has historically been the most lethal of them to climb.

Annapurna I or Annapurna 1? One peak, many Annapurnas

The Roman numeral matters because Annapurna is a massif, not a single mountain. The chain runs for roughly fifty-five kilometres and carries several distinct summits: Annapurna I at its western end, then Annapurna II, III and IV stepping away to the east, each a separate mountain in its own right. Annapurna South and Gangapurna rise on the rim of the range's inner basin, and the fluted pyramid of Machhapuchhre, the sacred Fishtail peak that has never officially been climbed, stands guard at the entrance to the Annapurna Sanctuary. Annapurna 1, with an Arabic numeral, is simply the informal spelling of the highest summit. When mountaineers talk about climbing Annapurna they almost always mean Annapurna I; when trekkers talk about the Annapurnas they usually mean the region as a whole.

Height and location

At 8,091 metres (26,545 feet), Annapurna I ranks tenth among the world's mountains. It stands at roughly 28.60° N, 83.82° E in north-central Nepal, about forty kilometres north of Pokhara and entirely within Nepali territory, with no border running over its summit. To the west, the Kali Gandaki river has cut one of the deepest gorges on Earth between Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, two 8,000-metre peaks facing each other across a single valley. The whole massif lies inside the Annapurna Conservation Area, whose villages, rhododendron forests and high trails make this the most-walked corner of the Nepal Himalaya.

The 1950 first ascent

On 3 June 1950, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal of a French expedition stood on the summit — the first time in history that any 8,000-metre peak had been climbed, three years before Everest in 1953. The achievement was all the more remarkable because the team arrived with inaccurate maps, spent weeks simply finding a way to the mountain, and pushed the route up the north face in a single season. The descent became one of mountaineering's most harrowing stories: caught by storm and snow-blindness, both summiters suffered terrible frostbite, and Herzog lost most of his fingers and toes. His account of the climb, the book Annapurna, became one of the best-selling mountaineering books ever written and fixed the peak in the world's imagination.

The deadliest of the 8,000ers

Annapurna I's reputation is sombre as well as storied. Historically it has had the highest fatality rate of the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks, and for decades it recorded far fewer ascents than mountains of similar height. The core problem is avalanche danger: the mountain carries huge, unstable loads of snow and ice, and the south face — a three-kilometre wall first climbed by Chris Bonington's British expedition in 1970 — is raked by falling seracs, while even the normal north-side route passes beneath threatening ice cliffs. Modern forecasting and fixed-rope expeditions have improved the odds in recent seasons, but among climbers, and in the wider story of mountaineering in Nepal, Annapurna is still spoken of with particular respect.

How trekkers experience Annapurna

You do not need a rope to stand under Annapurna I. The Annapurna Base Camp trek climbs into the Annapurna Sanctuary, a natural amphitheatre at 4,130 metres ringed by peaks and floored by the Annapurna Glacier, where the south face rises directly overhead. The Annapurna Circuit rounds the entire massif over the 5,416-metre Thorong La, trading close-up drama for two weeks of constantly shifting views; the two routes are compared in detail in our Circuit vs Base Camp guide. For a shorter option, the Ghorepani Poon Hill trek delivers the classic dawn panorama of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, and even from the lakeside in Pokhara or the Sarangkot viewpoint, the massif fills the horizon. The full menu of routes is covered in our Annapurna region treks guide.

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