It is the highest natural arch in the world. Or is it? Even now, the remote arch, tucked away in the mountains northwest of Kashgar, is debated. As the widest arch, the longest and the most number of arches are claimed by the US in Arches National Park, could we just let this one arch have its glory?
Although the inhabitants of nearby villages knew about the arch, in fact it is visible from the plains less than 20 miles away, no one seems to have actually been there. It must be a clear day, and those are few and far between, to see Tushuk Tash (Hole Mountain in Uyhgur), but it mysteriously disappears as one draws closer. Eric Shipton, famous mountaineer and British consul assigned to Kashgar, had seen the arch in 1942 as he was leaving his assignment for the first time. It wasn’t until his second turn as consul, starting in 1946, that he determined to find the arch. It took four attempts (his wife counts five, one being the breakdown of their vehicle and subsequent abort of the mission) before he actually got close to it. From then on, it has become known in the English-speaking world as Shipton’s Arch.
In 2018, shortly before the ill-fated camel encounter (See blog Camel), I booked a taxi from Kashgar, sharing the expense with a French couple staying at the same hotel. We started off at a decent hour and soon found ourselves on an almost deserted road heading west and north out of Kashgar. I soon realized that it was a new highway and that I would never be given a visa to visit the neighboring country at the border crossing. Such is the way of Central Asian countries. In about an hour we came to an enormous and mostly empty parking lot and an echoing and equally empty tourist reception area. The toilets were particularly disgusting. We bought tickets and asked how to get to the ‘Gate of Heaven’ as the Chinese had dubbed it. (Could we have a more creative name?) A helpful young man explained with a wave of his hand, “Just follow the trail.” “But where is the trail?” Another wave of the hand indicated a dry river bed sporting jeep tire tracks wending their way up river. A few Chinese tourists were beginning to walk on the trail. We followed.
Shipton knew approximately where the arch was, as he had seen it, but as one gets closer, the arch mysteriously disappears within the folds of the mountains. These mountains rise very steeply and are composed of conglomerate. Conglomerate is a sedimentary rock made up of rounded pieces of rock surrounded by a finer-grained matrix of sand, silt, or clay and is easily eroded by wind and water. It also crumbles easily, and is not the kind of rock favored by rock climbers. I would call it scary. Few plants and almost no trees grow here as the climate is incredibly dry. Shipton first attempted to approach the arch by starting from the nearest point due south. He was foiled in this attempt and retreated back to Kashgar. His second attempt was no more successful. For his third attempt, Shipton thought that local knowledge may be more successful. He went to the small village called Min-yol, not far from a town called Artush. He was surrounded by locals who all knew what he was talking about, but no one had ever been there. One man, Usman Akhun, presented himself as a guide. Shipton was impressed with his energy, assurance and ‘splendid physique.’ They, Shipton, his wife, numerous consular staff and Usman Akhun, set off.
Shipton set a pace that was hard to keep up with, and his wife and one of the less fit of the consular staff, dropped back. All day, Shipton and his companions scrambled up cliffs, reconnoitered from the flat tops of the terraces and made no headway. Once more, he gave up.
His next serious attempt was to try to find a way from the north. Khirgiz nomads who traversed the area had no idea what he was talking about as the arch cannot be seen from this direction. But this time, Shipton lucked out. They selected a ravine that seemed to be as near as they could guess to the arch and set off. The climbing, or rather walking, was considerably easier, only a few short blockages, easily ascended, blocked the way. The ravine continued to narrow and then suddenly ’emerging from one of these clefts, we were confronted with a sight that made us gasp with surprise and excitement. The gorge widened into a valley which ended a quarter of a mile away in a grassy slope leading to a U-shaped col. Above and beyond the col, stood a curtain of rock, pierced by a graceful arch.’
The current trail that I followed, eventually quite easily as there was nowhere else to go, was the one that Shipton took. In my diary, I wrote, ‘Then we’re in a riverbed, stairs through some really narrow spaces, steeper, more stairs, steeper. The hillsides have goats, birds, bees, flies, crows and are pockmarked. Higher, steep streambed, then we can see the arch. A long wooden staircase brings us to the viewing platform.’ Shipton writes, ‘Through the arch, we could see nothing but the clouds of a stormy sky. This sudden end to our search was almost an anticlimax.’ He had no way of measuring the hole, but estimated that it was at least 1000 feet high and 150 feet across.
This was the last the Western world knew of the arch for over fifty years. Chinese Turkestan was rocked with political uncertainty and foreigners were seldom given permission to explore the area. But in 1999, a team from National Geographic set out to rediscover the arch and hopefully measure it. In December 2000, an article appeared in the magazine, giving an account of the latest expedition. Strangely, the team attempted a southern route, only to be disappointed. They went back to the village where Shipton had met Usman Akhun and encountered a nephew of his. The man had become a legend, but did not fare well during the Cultural Revolution and subsequent years, as he had been branded for his help to Shipton. The team finally realized that Shipton had left them very clear instructions. They went up the river, from the north side, and easily found the arch. The next goal was to measure it. Before the advent of sophisticated tools to measure something as weird as the elliptical arch, they eyeballed it. They climbed to the top and lowered a climber down, instructing him to measure the vast hole. He ran out of rope, more was lowered down to him. The wind picked up, as it does so frequently in this part of the world, and he began to swing, back and forth, like a pendulum. The team did as well as they could, but the measurements of the great Arch are still contested. Wikipedia declines to name Shipton’s Arch the highest arch in the world and ends with the note that it is about 1500 feet high and 180 feet wide. Because of its shape, it is extraordinarily difficult to be precise, but it is estimated that the Empire State Building would fit within the arch.
I made it to the viewing platform, where I lingered for about 45 minutes. The Chinese women, who passed me so easily on the way up, sang and danced with joy. My companions also made it and we sat on the wooden bench and marveled at the huge arch. I felt exhausted and out of shape, embarrassed that all the rest of my companions had so much energy. Later, I discovered that the arch is located at an altitude of 2,973 meters (9,754 ft). No wonder I huffed and puffed.
Although many other travelers have duplicated the trip I made, the arch has not lost grandeur. And though calling it Shipton’s Arch smacks of colonialism and Western arrogance, I am not sure that the Chinese term, Gate of Heaven, is any more evocative. Let’s let the Uyghur name, Tushuk Tash (Hole Mountain) have its day.
References:
Schmidt, Jeremy (Dec 2000), Journey to Shipton’s Lost Arch, National Geographic Magazine
Shipton, Diana, (1987), The Antique Land, Oxford University Press
Shipton, Eric, (1950), The Mountains of Tartary, Diadem Books
Wikipedia, Shipton’s Arch, last edited 18 December 2024