Kawagarbo - Geography

Geography

Kawagarbo is the high point in a range of high peaks that are generally referred to by Tibetans also as Kawagarpo. A mapping error by the Chinese army during the 1950s transcribed the name for a lower range of mountains to the north on a much larger area that also included Kawagarbo. The name of this lower range in Tibetan is Menri (Wylie system; Sman-ri in the Wade–Giles system; name means Mountains of Medicinal Herbs), but is most widely known by its Chinese transliteration, Meili Xue Shan (梅里雪山 or Meili Snow Mountain). This is the name most widely applied to the range by Chinese and Western sources. The Meili range is a small massif of the much more extensive Hengduan Shan, the major north-south trending complex of mountains lying along the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in eastern Tibet, northwestern Yunnan, western Sichuan, and far northern Myanmar. The Meili Xue Shan forms part of the divide between the Salween (Nujiang) and Mekong (Lancangjiang) rivers.

The Meili Xue Shan has over 20 peaks with permanent snow cover, including six peaks over 6,000 m (19,700 ft). Topographic extremes are immense, with vertical relief ranging from less than 2,000 m along the Mekong River on the east to 6,740 m on the summit of Kawagarpo within 10 km horizontal distance. Even greater topographic relief is found on the west or Salween River side of the range. Coincident with this extreme topographic gradient is a similarly steep environmental gradient. Compressed within this short distance are subtropical scrub ecosystems along the arid canyon bottoms, rising through dry oak forests, humid mixed deciduous-coniferous forests, cold temperate coniferous forests, alpine meadows and scree above treeline, to permanent snow on the high peaks. The Mingyong Glacier, descending from the summit of Kawagarbo, terminates at a low elevation just before the subtropical life zone. The range is highly affected by the monsoon, leading to especially unstable snow conditions, which have affected climbing attempts (see below).