Molamenqing (Chinese: Phola Gangchen) is an eastern outlier of

Shishapangma Shishapangma, also called Gosainthān, is the 14th-highest mountain in the world, at above sea level. In 1964, it became the last of the 8,000-metre peaks to be climbed. This was due to its location entirely within Tibet and the restrictions ...

, the 14th-highest peak in the world. Both are in the Jugal Himal, a subrange of the

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...

. (This range is contiguous with, and often considered a part of, the

Langtang Langtang valley is a Himalayan valley in the mountains of north-central Nepal, known for its trekking routes and natural environment. Administrative The Langtang valley lies in the Rasuwa district of the Bagmati Province in Nepal. Situ ...

Himal.) Its elevation is also given as 7,661 m (25,134 ft); the elevation given here is from a Chinese survey. Molamenqing is little-known, partly since it does not have much independent stature. Its

topographic prominence In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

, i.e. its rise above the saddle connecting it with Shishapangma, is only 430 metres, which is relatively small for a Himalayan peak, although large enough for it to qualify in some reckonings as an independent peak. Molamenqing did enjoy a temporary fame in the early 1980s. At the time it was one of the highest unclimbed peaks in the world (using a prominence cutoff low enough to qualify it as a separate summit). A team from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

applied to the

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

authorities to climb the peak, and became one of the first Western teams to be allowed to climb in Tibet since before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The team succeeded in making the first, and so far the only, ascent of the mountain. They started from the east side of the peak, but their long route went via the north side of Shishapangma and approached the summit from the west. The Himalayan Index lists no other attempts on this peak.

References

Further reading