page_title: Shipton–Tilman Nanda Devi expeditions
section_title: Badrinath–Kedarnath crossing
hierarchical_section_title: Shipton–Tilman Nanda Devi expeditions / 1934 expedition / Badrinath–Kedarnath crossing
context_page_description: The Shipton–Tilman Nanda Devi expeditions took place in the 1930s. Nanda Devi is a Himalayan mountain in what was then the Garhwal District in northern India, just west of Nepal, and at one time it was thought to be the highest mountain in the world.
  Nanda Devi is surrounded by a ring of mountains enclosing the Sanctuary which, despite decades of attempts, no one had been able to enter. In 1934 Eric Shipton, Bill Tilman and their three accomplished Sherpas succeeded in finding a climbing route into the Sanctuary via the Rishi Ganga gorge. Then in 1936 Tilman and Noel Odell, as part of an American–British team, climbed to the 25,643-foot summit making Nanda Devi the highest mountain ever to have been climbed at that time.
  It was only in 1950 that a higher summit was reached when Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal climbed Annapurna. Nanda Devi itself was climbed for the second time in 1964.
context_section_description: There was a legend of a high priest who used to hold services in the Badrinath and Kedernath temples both on the same day. Tradition told that, to avoid the hundred-mile journey using known tracks, he would take a shortcut over the mountains, a distance of less than three miles. Wanting to explore this crossing, the party set off up the Satopanth Glacier on 4 August, knowing it would delay their return to the Sanctuary. It took difficult route-finding and awkward ice climbing to reach the head of the glacier. Eventually they were able to see to the west of the divide to discover that they were at the head of the Kedarnath valley (as Tilman had predicted) and not the Gangotri Glacier (as Shipton had expected). Immediately they were faced by an ice precipice of hundreds of feet with ice pinnacles and crevasses. Shipton and Tilman felt they might have to turn back but the Sherpas were determined and eventually it was Ang Tharkay who found a route down, albeit a most difficult one.
  What they presumed would be a two-day trek to Kedarnath turned out to be a far more serious journey. There was a precipice of 2,200 feet (670 m), scrub and jungle that had to be cut through, and rivers that were almost impossible to cross. Eventually, and after over a week, they reached villages where they could get food but when they reached the pilgrims' road to Kedarnath they decided there was no time to go north on the trail to the temple and they turned south instead, taking the pilgrim route back to Joshimath.
caption: Sketch map of Badrinath – Gaukukh, and Badrinath – Kedernath routes