Translated from www.People.com

We enter the county of Pulan on the noon of 18^th. Though Namunani is just in this county, it took us three days to figure out a route uphill. During these three days’ expedition, scientific research staff has tried three different tracks before they decided on one. Early in the morning of 19^th, the group set off from the north slope of Namunani, considering it less precipitous and wider at a spot below 5000m for setting up our tents there. But it turned out to be very unstable after rains, with unpredictable factors lying ahead.

So the next day, we choose a much dangerous route starting from the west slope, hoping that the so-called difficult route would be actually easy. At a place where a valley narrows down, Prof. Tian Lide and Wu Guangjian volunteered to go up to explore the route first. Eight hours later, they returned. And their exploration turned out to be promising.

Early in the morning on the third day, team leader, Prof. Yao Tandong led several people up the mountain from the route they previously tried, determining to find out a road uphill. At twelve o’clock at night, they came back, and we were to go uphill following their route the next day.

Namunani is a world of glaciers. There are six ridges in Namunani, on the sides of each are a large amount of glaciers, among which, hanging glaciers predominate with 63.8% of the total. Valley Glaciers and Slope Glaciers take up about 19% of the total, with either kind accounting for 8.6%. Map shows that there are 178 glaciers on the snow-capped Namunani Mountain, ranging 399 Km² in size. The main glacier, with an estimated thickness of more than 200m and a height of 6085m, is believed to situate in the valley on the northeast of the peak.

So far, no large scale scientific experiment has been carried out on Namunani yet. While today, the joint investigation group consisting of Chinese and American scientists is about to change this historical record!