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Up to the late 1930s Khan Tengri was thought to be the highest peak in Tien Shan. The ice mass that constitutes Pobeda Peak, which is almost always hidden behind thick clouds, had escaped the notice of mountaineers and explorers such as Semionov, Cesare Borghese and Gottfried Merzbacher. Even in those rare days when it was visible, Pobeda seemed to be smaller that Khan Tengri because it is more northerly, hence farther from the valleys that afford access to this region, as can be seen in the panoramic photographs that Merzbacher took at the beginning of this century. The northern side of Pobeda Peak
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Ice towers on Dikiy pass, Pobeda Peak The true geographic "discovery"
of the peak was made only 1943. The first successful climb dates
from 1956, when an expedition headed by V. Abalakov reached the
summit after a 30-day climb. Abalakov called it Peak Pobeda, or
Victory Peak, as a tribute to the Red Army's triumph in the war
against the Nazism. Many mountaineers had attempted to climb the
forbidding peak before Abalakov and the outcome was often tragic,
as in the case of the 1955 Kazakh expedition: eleven of the twelve
members of the team died in their tent at 6,900 meters during a
violent snowstorm. In 1958, I. Erokhin's expedition made the first
climb via the Chon-Teren glacier. The complete crossing of the massifs
from east to west was made in 1970 by A. Riabukhin's expedition.
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And yet the local inhabitants' accounts and stories speak
of two high, splendid and terrifying mountains - Khan Tengri and
Khantau. Semionov had no precise indications concerning the location
of the two mountains, so he identified Khan Tengri with the fantastic
ice pyramid he saw during his second expedition. But the natives
most probably identified Khan Tengri, the "Lord of the Spirits",
as the roof of the Celestial Mountains, while the mountain we now
call Khan Tengri was called Khantau in Kyrgyz - "Blood Mountain",
because the pyramid becomes red at dusk.