Meili Snow Mountain, belonging to the Himalayan Snow Mountain Group, is one of the highest snow-capped mountains in the mainland, and the highest peak, Kawagebo Peak, is 6,740 meters above sea level.
Compared with the world's peaks above 8,000 meters, Meili Snow Mountain does not seem to be so "unattainable", but it is the only snow-capped mountain that humans have not been able to climb so far.
At the beginning of January 1991, a mountaineering accident occurred in Meili Snow Mountain, 17 mountaineers suffered a sudden avalanche, all of them were killed, and no life was returned.
After the disaster, the rescue team searched for five months, but found nothing.
The 17 climbers disappeared as if out of thin air, leaving no trace......
It wasn't until seven years later, in July 1998, that the villagers of Mingyong Village went up the mountain to collect medicine, and on the Mingyong Glacier, the longest glacier at an altitude of about 4,000 meters below the Kawagebo Peak, they suddenly saw something brightly colored.
It turned out to be human remains, lying in brightly colored sleeping bags, some of them neatly dressed.
Seeing this, he immediately rushed back to the village to call someone, and the village chief rushed over, and was also stunned by the scene in front of him, and soon thought of the 17 outsiders who "disappeared" in the mountain disaster seven years ago.
It was December 1990, and the village was greeted by a strange team, fully equipped and noisily camping.
The local villagers were full of curiosity about these outsiders, and warmly entertained them with good wine and meat.
When they heard that the outsiders were going to climb the Meili Snow Mountain, the villagers' faces flashed with strangeness, but the ambitious climbers did not notice it at all.
What they didn't know was that the Meili Snow Mountain they were going to climb was their belief in the sacred mountain and sacred mountain that was regarded as "sacrosanct" by the local villagers.
From the 70s to the 90s of the 20th century, mountaineering and scientific expeditions against the Himalayan snow-capped mountains have entered the stage of "competing for the deer", among which the people who want to climb the Meili Snow Mountain are the most radical.
The highest peak of the Meili Snow Mountain, Kawagebo Peak, is called the "virgin peak" because it has not yet been conquered by humans.
This can't help but make mountaineering teams that are popular in Europe, the United States, and Japan who challenge the limits of human beings covet it and want to show their skills.
In 1989, the Mountain Society of Kyoto University in Japan took the lead in submitting an application to the Yunnan Provincial People's Government to climb the peak of Kawagebo, and it was finally approved.
In October, China and Japan formed a joint mountaineering team to conduct a test climb to Kawagebo Peak, climbing to an altitude of 5,200 meters.
At the end of the same year, the U.S. mountaineering team climbed the mountain from the Mingyong Glacier, but eventually only reached an altitude of 4,200 meters and returned the same way.
It was not until the end of December 1990 to the beginning of January 1991 that the Sino-Japanese joint mountaineering team set off again.
Different from the trial climb a year ago, this time, the mountaineering team has invested more manpower and financial resources, equipped with the necessary modern equipment and communication equipment for mountaineering, and sent elite soldiers, the team not only has climbed the 8000-meter peak of the mountaineering veterans, but also professional meteorologists, it can be said that it is truly "foolproof".
In a passionate and surging ceremony before departure, 17 brave mountaineers were full of the spirit of imminent victory, and everyone else present could not help but be infected.
At the end of December, 17 climbers have arrived at the foot of the snow-capped mountain.
The villagers disagreed with the bold words of outsiders to climb to the top of Meili Snow Mountain, and they also vigorously discouraged them, but to no avail.
Everyone knows the ending later, there are unforeseen circumstances, and 17 people finally went and never returned.
The sacred and inviolable sacred mountain, after all, still "repaid" the conquerors who were "disrespectful" to it with its majesty.
The village chief, who had seen the 17 climbers back then, recalled this, looked at the remains in front of him, and immediately contacted and reported to the relevant units.
Soon, the Japanese side also received the news and sent people, and China and Japan organized a search team to go to Mingyong Village to recover the remains and relics, and the families of the victims also went there.
After confirming the identity of the remains, relevant experts have found many relics of the victims of the mountaineering, including walkie-talkies, cameras, altitude tables, etc., and in addition, there is also a diary.
The family members who have been permanently hurt in their hearts for many years because of the death of their loved ones opened the diary in order to understand the truth of that year.
However, the records in the diary make everyone's scalp tingle, and what the 17 mountaineering victims wrote before they died is very strange.
The diary reads that the team's initial action was very smooth, and on December 29, 1990, the mountaineers were still ambitious, launching an assault from Camp 4 at an altitude of 5,900 meters to the main peak of Kawag Bozhu.
At this time, the sky was clear, the snow-capped mountains were crystal clear, and the top of the mountain seemed to be within reach, and the mountaineers saw this, and gave up the plan to build another camp No. 5, and decided to form a commando team of 5 team members to take the lead in assaulting the summit.
Soon in the afternoon, the assault team had reached an altitude of 6,470 meters, only 270 meters from the summit, as if a new record in the history of human mountaineering was about to be born.
But at this moment, the weather changed suddenly, almost one second the sky was blue, the next second was a strong wind, heavy snow covered the sky, and the eyes were full of darkness.
The five commandos were unable to make out their direction and could not cross the 6,470-meter height, so they could only temporarily set up improvised tents and wait for the wind and snow to pass.
But the weather is not beautiful, the wind and snow show no signs of stopping, "the weather is getting worse and worse, the wind is blowing harder and stronger, and we can't hold on anymore."
The commandos gritted their teeth and persevered until about 10 o'clock in the evening, taking advantage of the moonlight, and groped their way back to Camp 4 at an altitude of 5,900 meters.
At the same time, the psychological defenses of the five commandos were nearly broken, and there is a strange record in the diary: "There are figures outside the tent, as if there are still the cry of a baby and the laughter of a woman......"
Under such circumstances, the mountaineering team decided to rest.
The next day, all 17 climbers retreated to Camp 3 at 5,100 meters from Haibo, a limited but flat snowfield.
Before the dilemma, 17 climbers lingered at Camp 3 for several days, waiting to plan their next summit day.
During this period, the snowstorm continued, and on the evening of January 3, the eve of the next climbing day set by the mountaineers, the mountaineers wrote again in distorted words:
"One of the female team members had a high fever and was confused, but she was saying something in her mouth: they are coming, let's hurry home while there is still time...... Darkness shrouded, they came, we were wrong, it was too late to go down......"
On the other side, there are also mountaineers who use the walkie-talkie to introduce the situation to the base camp at the bottom of the mountain.
"The snow is very heavy, more than 1 meter thick, and the sight is not good......"
"We need to clear the snow every two to three hours, and if this continues, the snow can be more than 2 metres. ”
Until the end, it was a phrase "end the communication, goodbye".
And no one would have thought that this call would become the last voice of Camp 3.
At 10:30 p.m. that night, after the last call, a huge avalanche broke out in the Kawagebo Snow Mountain, and Camp 3, which was 5,100 meters above sea level, was swept away in an instant.
On the morning of January 4, the base camp turned on the radio and contacted the mountaineering team.
In the past, every morning, the walkie-talkie would ring non-stop, but this morning, there was no sound in the walkie-talkie, no matter how the base camp under the mountain rotated, shouting at the 17 walkie-talkies, there was no answer on the other side.
Overnight, all 17 climbers lost contact.
At 10 o'clock in the morning, the base camp immediately reported the loss of contact and sent a distress telegram.
Soon, Beijing, Lhasa, and Kyoto, Japan, all came to "help".
On January 6, the news of the crash of the mountaineering team came out, and the bad news was reported for many days, and everyone still hoped that the mountaineers would still survive, even if there was one survivor among the 17 people.
But it backfired, and after that, the search and rescue pair worked for 5 months, but found nothing, and finally had no choice but to announce that it was stopped.
It is worth mentioning that on the day of the evacuation of the base camp at the foot of the mountain, another avalanche occurred, and a 1,200-square-meter fir forest in the distance was razed to the ground.
Seeing this scene, the local villagers bluntly said: "The mountain is still angry, this is a warning from the mountain." ”
But the families of the victims can't accept this, how can a good person go to the mountain and disappear?
On the other hand, despite the fiasco, Japanese mountaineers were still unwilling, and in the last year of the expiration of the first ascent reserved by Yunnan for Japan's Kyoto University, the Japanese side, together with experienced mountaineers from China and Nepal, launched another attack on the Meili Snow Mountain.
But when they went up to Camp 3 at 5,100 meters in Haibo, where 17 climbers were killed, and rushed up to the top from here, they encountered an extreme snowstorm again.
The fiasco of that year shrouded everyone, no one dared to act rashly, everyone advanced and retreated several times, because when they saw the sky clear when they retreated, and when they wanted to turn back and go up the mountain, the mountain was thunderstormed again.
In the end, the mountaineering team gave up, and they knelt down in front of the monument to the 17 warriors, full of grief, praying for the dead.
Since then, the Kyoto University mountaineering team in Japan has announced that it has abandoned Meili Snow Mountain.
The 17 mountaineers were killed, and none of them survived, but they have always been in people's hearts.
The story is passed down from word of mouth to the local villagers, and is presented in the form of the local villagers' belief in the sacred mountain.
People lament that the root cause of the team's frustration is a lack of reverence for nature and an underestimation of its power, which "manifests itself not only in the form of sudden avalanches, but also in the form of local beliefs in the sacred mountain", which in the eyes of the local villagers is the punishment of the sacred mountain.
In 1998, the remains of the victims were discovered, and the contents of the diary, and the coincidence of the villagers' words, are chilling, as if to prove the local villagers' opinions.
But with the exception of local villagers, the vast majority of people prefer to interpret the contents of the diary as a high-altitude nervous disease that caused them to suffer from the auditory and visual hallucinations recorded in the diary.
Finally, regarding the search for the remains of the victims, following the discovery of the remains of 11 victims in 1998 and the 16th in 2003, the 17th remains have not been found since then, and the Japanese Naori Kobayashi, who has been searching for the remains, finally considered giving up the search in 2021, the 30th anniversary of the death of 17 members of the mountaineer.
During this time, he quit his job at the company to become a nature-themed photographer and explorer, visiting the homes of local villagers several times.
It was only then that he realized that the locals rejected and even hated the act of climbing the Meili Snow Mountain.
And he himself reached a reconciliation with Kamiyama in the process of walking into the snowfield forest that he and his teammates once despised and despised again and again.
To borrow a quote from one report, he was "constantly healed by the mountain because of the damage he had suffered because of the mountain", and slowly, he gradually changed from an arrogant foreign climber to a guardian of the mountain.