Jengish Chokusu
— — the northernmost mountain that asks for everything.
Not only on a wall.
“The high point of the Tian Shan, on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang. At 7,439 metres it is the most northerly seven-thousand-metre peak on earth, set in a range of weather harsh enough that the summit goes years without a successful ascent. The studio paints the wall the way it shows from the South Inylchek Glacier, in the hour the light leaves it.
Jengish Chokusu, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Jengish Chokusu, called Pik Pobedy on Russian-language maps and Tomur Feng in Chinese, rises to 7,439 metres on the border between Kyrgyzstan's Issyk-Kul Region and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. It is the high point of the Tian Shan range and the most northerly mountain on earth above 7,000 metres. The summit ridge runs east-west for roughly twenty kilometres above the South Inylchek Glacier. The peak was first climbed in 1956 by a Soviet expedition led by Vitaly Abalakov.
The northerly latitude — about 42 degrees north — means thinner air at altitude than on Himalayan peaks of similar height, and weather windows are short and violent. Storms blow in off the steppe with little warning and temperatures on the summit ridge fall well below minus forty degrees Celsius in any month. The mountain has a death rate among the highest of any major peak. Entire parties have been lost on the upper ridge in single storms, most notoriously in 1955, when twelve climbers died on the year before the first ascent.
The mountain is approached from the Kyrgyz side through the town of Karakol on Lake Issyk-Kul, then by helicopter to the South Inylchek base camp on the glacier of the same name. The base camp operates from late June through mid-August, the only window with workable conditions on the upper mountain. The peak sits inside the Khan Tengri protected area on the Kyrgyz side and the Tomur Nature Reserve on the Chinese side. Climbing permits are required from both governments depending on the route.