Makalu
— — a four-sided pyramid the weather sharpens.
Not only on a wall.
“The fifth-highest mountain on earth, 8,485 metres, set about nineteen kilometres southeast of Everest along the Nepal-Tibet border. Makalu reads as an almost perfect four-sided pyramid, four ridges meeting at a single point, the wind keeping the faces scoured to rock and ice. The approach is long: nine or ten days on foot up the Barun valley from the Arun river, through rhododendron forest and yak pasture, to a base camp under the southeast face. Few people stand at the foot of it in any given season. The mountain holds its own light. from the studio
Makalu, 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.
Makalu rises to 8,485 metres on the Nepal-Tibet border, the fifth-highest mountain in the world and one of fourteen peaks above 8,000 metres. It stands about 19 kilometres southeast of Everest in the Mahalangur Himalaya. The mountain's distinctive shape — a four-sided pyramid with four sharp ridges — makes it recognisable at distance from other Khumbu giants. The first ascent was made on 15 May 1955 by the French expedition led by Jean Franco, with Lionel Terray and Jean Couzy reaching the summit. The peak sits at the heart of Makalu Barun National Park, gazetted in 1992 and covering 1,500 square kilometres.
Above 8,000 metres the atmospheric pressure is roughly a third of sea-level, and Makalu's summit pyramid puts climbers in what mountaineers call the death zone for the final 500 metres. Weather windows are narrow: the spring season runs from late April through May, with a shorter and colder autumn window in October. Jet-stream winds routinely scour the upper faces at over 100 knots outside those windows, leaving rock and blue ice where snow would otherwise sit. Hypoxia, frostbite and pulmonary edema are the standing risks; supplemental oxygen is used by most expeditions above Camp 3.
The standard trek to Makalu Base Camp begins at Tumlingtar airstrip in eastern Nepal and follows the Arun and Barun valleys for roughly nine to eleven days, climbing through subtropical forest, rhododendron belts, and finally the Barun glacier moraine to a base camp at about 4,870 metres. Permits are required from Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation; the park enforces a per-person entry fee and porters are arranged through licensed trekking agencies in Kathmandu. Climbing permits for the peak itself are issued separately and run several thousand dollars per climber per season.