The 22,943-Foot Himalayan Peak No One Has Ever Officially Stood On

Fly into Pokhara and the first thing you see rising over the lake isn't Annapurna — it's a slender, twin-fanged spike of rock and ice that looks close enough to touch. Machapuchare, the Fish's Tail, is 6,993 metres (22,943 feet) high, has been stared at by more trekkers than almost any other peak on Earth — and, as far as any government or climbing federation will confirm, no human being has ever legally stood on its true summit.

The closest anyone has come on record was in 1957. Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Roberts led a British expedition that included climbers Wilfrid Noyce and A. D. M. Cox, and King Mahendra personally granted them permission to attempt the mountain — on one condition: they were forbidden from setting foot on the actual summit. Noyce and Cox climbed the north ridge to within 150 feet of the top, then turned around and kept their word. It remains the highest confirmed point anyone has reached on Machapuchare in the seven decades since.

Within a few years, Nepal closed the mountain to climbing altogether. The reason wasn't danger, weather or terrain — it was reverence. Machapuchare is sacred to the Gurung communities who live in its shadow around Chomrong and Ghandruk, and to Hindus more broadly, who consider it the seat of Lord Shiva. Standing on the summit is considered a desecration of the god's home. Unlike most Himalayan restricted-peak rules, which loosen over time as regulations modernise, this one has held for over sixty years without a single exception.

That one unresolved claim is what keeps the mountain's mystique alive. In the early 1980s, New Zealand climber Bill Denz — a famously bold, permit-averse alpinist — is said to have soloed Machapuchare without authorisation. He was killed by an avalanche on Makalu later that same year, and left behind no photographs, no witnesses and no diary entry confirming the summit. Nepal's government has never recognised the ascent. Officially, the record still reads exactly as it did in 1957: nobody has stood there.

What this means for trekkers

It's a rare thing in 2026: a genuine, unresolved mystery sitting in plain sight of a city of half a million people, on a mountain photographed by more tourists than almost any other in the world. Everest has been climbed over 12,000 times. Machapuchare, arguably more photogenic and far more accessible, has been climbed zero times — because Nepal decided, and has never once reconsidered, that some summits aren't for standing on.

Source: Nepali Times.

Cover photo: Bijay Chaurasia via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).