Machhapuchhre
— — a mountain no one has stood on top of.
Not only on a wall.
“A 6,993-metre fishtail peak at the southern edge of the Annapurna massif in central Nepal. The summit is forbidden to climbers and has never been reached. From Pokhara on a clear morning the peak appears suddenly above the lake, the twin ridge catching the first light long before the lower hills.
Machhapuchhre, 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.
Machhapuchhre — Nepali for fishtail, after its twin-summit ridge — rises to 6,993 metres at the southern flank of the Annapurna Himal in central Nepal's Gandaki Province. It overlooks the city of Pokhara on Phewa Lake, about 25 kilometres to the south. The peak is considered sacred to Shiva and remains closed to climbing by order of the Nepali government. The only formal attempt, a 1957 British expedition led by Wilfrid Noyce, stopped about 50 metres below the summit at the climbers' own decision.
The mountain sits at the southern edge of the Annapurna Sanctuary, a high cirque ringed by peaks over 7,000 metres. From Pokhara at about 820 metres, the vertical relief to the summit is over six kilometres in a horizontal distance of twenty-five — one of the steepest rises on earth between an inhabited town and a peak. Mornings before nine are the cleanest window; afternoon cloud builds up the valley from the south and usually closes the view by noon.
The first light reaches the twin summits about twenty minutes before it touches the foothills above Pokhara. On clear winter mornings — November through February — the alpenglow comes through in two stages: a deep apricot on the ice at first contact, then a colder rose on the south face as the sun climbs. The viewpoints at Sarangkot, above the lake at 1,592 metres, fill before sunrise. Locals say the cleanest air of the year follows the week after Tihar.