The Sacred Nepal Peak No One Is Allowed to Climb — Even Though a Team Got Within 150 Feet

In 1957, two British climbers stood roughly 150 feet below the top of a Himalayan peak — closer to a summit most people will never see up close in their lives — and then turned around and climbed back down. They had permission to go no further. Nearly seventy years later, nobody has legally gone higher. Machapuchare, the 6,993-metre "Fishtail" peak that towers over Pokhara, is one of the only major mountains on Earth that has never been officially summited — and Nepal intends to keep it that way.

How close anyone has come

The story starts with a British expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Roberts — the same Roberts often credited with inventing commercial trekking in Nepal. Climbers Wilfrid Noyce and A. D. M. Cox worked their way up the north ridge and reached an altitude of about 6,947 metres, a stone's throw from the true top. King Mahendra had granted the expedition permission to climb the mountain on one condition: they were not to set foot on the actual summit. They kept their word, turned around, and descended. Nepal's government has not issued a permit for the peak since.

There is one footnote. New Zealand climber Bill Denz is reported to have reached the top alone and without a permit in the early 1980s. The claim has never been confirmed, and it cannot be now: Denz was killed in an avalanche on Makalu on 3 October 1983. There is still no confirmed, permitted ascent.

Smaller than its neighbours, and still untouched

What makes the ban notable is that Machapuchare isn't even one of Nepal's giants. It sits thousands of metres below its 8,000 m neighbours — yet those peaks have been climbed hundreds of times each, while Machapuchare has zero confirmed legal ascents:

Why the mountain stays closed

The reason isn't technical difficulty — it's the mountain's meaning. For the Gurung communities of Chomrong and the wider Annapurna region, Machapuchare is believed to be the home of Shiva, and its double summit (the source of its "fish tail" name) is treated as inviolable. Nepal has never published a reason for refusing every climbing permit since 1957, but the mountain’s sacred status is the explanation almost everyone in the region gives — and nearly seventy years of applications have not moved the decision.

Where to see it without a permit

Nepal has quietly kept a handful of peaks off-limits for reasons like this — a reminder that not every summit in the Himalaya is for sale. Machapuchare remains the most visible example: a 6,993-metre mountain, watched by thousands of trekkers every season, that no living person has a legal claim to having stood on top of.

Source: Wikipedia — Machapuchare

Cover photo: Abdul Kayum via Pexels (Pexels License). Section photos: Ashok J Kshetri via Pexels (Pexels licence); Mark de Jong via Pexels (Pexels licence); Nrik kiran via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).