A brief list of books on travel and exploration (in English and in Dutch):

Minya Konka or Gongga Shan (7556 m). Telephoto taken from Zimei la at approx. 4500 metres altitude, Kham, Tibet. The story of the first ascent of this difficult mountain is told in Men Against the Clouds by Burdsall and Emmons. Click to download the full resolution photo which was taken by me in October 2014

The Baltoro glacier in the Karakoram mountains of Baltistan, Pakistan is one of the biggest non-polar glaciers in the world. It is more than 60 km long and drains an area of 1500 km2. It gains altitude very gently and is for the biggest part completely covered by debris, deposited there from the high mountain walls that surround it. The main glacier extends over a distance of 62 km from Conway Saddle beyond Concordia at 6200 m to the glacier snout close to Paiju at 3400 m. The thickness of the ice flow reaches a maximum of about 900 metres. This river of ice moves with a speed of approximately 100 metres a year. The Baltoro glacier is one of the very few glaciers in the world that don’t retreat. The total length of the glacier is almost the same now as it was one hundred years ago. Proof of this are the panorama’s that Italian explorer Vittorio Sella shot of the glacier in 1909. Scientist believe that besides some micro-climate influences, this non-typical behaviour is in big part thanks to the debris cover which acts as a insulation sheet, preventing the ice to melt. The peak in the distance is Paiju peak (6610 m). More on this: Annals of Glaciology, Volume 43, 2006 (click the photo). W.M. Conway’s Climbing and Exploration in the Karakoram Himalayas is a fascinating account on an early (late 19th century) expedition to this area. You can read the full (Google scanned) first edition from 1894 here. This photo was taken by me in July 2017

Infographs
on human impact

Low impact
High impact

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