Ismoil Somoni Peak
— — the roof of a small country.
Not only on a wall.
“The highest summit in Tajikistan and in the former Soviet Union, 7,495 metres up in the Pamirs where the Academy of Sciences Range meets the Pamir Firn Plateau. It carried two earlier names — Stalin, then Communism — before Tajikistan renamed it in 1998 for Ismoil Somoni, founder of the Samanid dynasty. The standard line from the Moskvina base camp on the Walter Glacier is a serious expedition, six weeks on the ice. From the valleys around Jirgatal the summit reads as a single white wall above the haze.
Ismoil Somoni Peak, 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.
Ismoil Somoni Peak rises to 7,495 metres in the Academy of Sciences Range of the northwestern Pamirs, the highest summit in Tajikistan and, until 1991, the highest point of the Soviet Union. It stands on the Pamir Firn Plateau, an enormous ice field that also feeds Korzhenevskaya and Pik Pobedy, and drains north into the Fedchenko Glacier, at 77 kilometres one of the longest non-polar glaciers in the world. The mountain sits inside Tajik National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013 covering 2.6 million hectares of the central Pamirs.
At 7,495 metres the summit sits firmly in the death zone. Atmospheric pressure on top is roughly 40 percent of sea-level, oxygen partial pressure around 84 millibars, and unacclimatised lungs cannot stay there. Climbing parties stage through camps at 5,300, 6,100, and 6,900 metres on the standard Borodkin Spur, with rest days at Moskvina base camp on the Walter Glacier. The season is short — late June through mid-August — and the upper ridge holds wind for most of it. Yevgeniy Abalakov made the first ascent on 3 September 1933, solo from his last camp.
The peak has been renamed twice in a century. In 1932 a Soviet expedition recorded it as the highest point of the USSR and named it Stalin Peak. In 1962 the Politburo quietly changed the name to Pik Kommunizma, Communism Peak, after Stalin's reputation collapsed. In 1998, seven years after independence, the Tajik government renamed it Qullai Ismoili Somoni for Ismoil Somoni, the ninth-century founder of the Samanid dynasty whose face also appears on the somoni currency. Older Russian alpine literature still uses the Communism name; new maps and permit paperwork use Somoni.