Korzhenevskaya

Korzhenevskaya is Tajikistan's third highest peak, towering at a height of 23,310 feet. The mountain is located in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, and its parent range is the Academy of Sciences Range, which is part of the larger Pamir mountain range. Korzhenevskaya is one of the five snow leopard peaks in the old Soviet Union that a climber had to summit in order to win the Snow Leopard award, the highest honor bestowed upon a Soviet mountaineer. The summit is named after Evgenia Korzhenevskaya, the widow of Russian geographer Nikolai Korzhenevskiy (1879-1958), who found it in 1910. A.Ugarov and his team of men made the first climb of the peak in 1953.

Korzhenevskaya has been climbed from nearly every angle, including a first winter ascent in 1986; the majority of these ascents were made by Russians. It is only "easy" if all secured ropes are in place, which is done by guides - but this takes time. There are also some rope-free passages between 5800m and 6100m, where you may encounter pure ice or loose snow on the ice, and some places between 4700m and 6000m are vulnerable to rockfall, with some rocks being quite large. Acclimatized climbers typically require five days to get from the Moskvina base camp to the summit and return.

Height: 23,310 feet

Location: Pamir, Tajikistan