The Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan

Soaring mountains, which early man found frightening as the home of unknown terrors, are considered beautiful and poetic by modern man. Their fascination is so great that thousands have risked and lost their lives for the exhilaration of spending a brief moment on their summits. Yet even with our modern transportation, few of us are privileged to experience first-hand the all but indescribable size and grandeur of the world’s highest mountain ranges. Millions of tourists each year are awed by Europe’s Alps; thousands more travel the well-worn trekking routes of the Himalaya. But only a handful are fortunate enough to enter the mighty Karakoram, the nearly inaccessible home of five of the world’s fourteen 8000-meter mountains.