Gang Chua and Leo Pargial. On May 30 a party left the Indian Military Academy to climb Gang Chua and both summits of Leo Pargial. The party was led by me, assisted by Major V.K. Dwivedi, Major F.J. Bahadur and Captain G.L. Sachdev. There were ten Gentlemen Cadets. We reached Pooh on June 7 after acclimatizing at Kalpa for four days. We crossed the River Sutlej and with mules and porters moved over hitherto unexplored terrain to Base Camp on June 10. Reconnaissance was followed by establishing two camps. After an initial failure on June 14, the second assault party comprising Major Bahadur, Gentleman Cadet M.A. Naik and Naik Omar Chand stepped onto the virgin summit of Gang Chua (20,630 feet) at 8:30 on June 16. On June 22 we were again on the move. Despite snows, Camp I was established by June 25. Another day was spent on reconnaissance and a more suitable and shorter route was found. June 27 dawned clear when four members, Major Bahdur, Gentleman Cadet D.B. Thapa, Naik Shiv Singh and Lance Naik Chatru Ram were on the move. By eleven A.M. they had joined the conventional west ridge route by which the snow peak had twice been climbed*. At 12:48 they stepped onto the snow summit (22,212 feet) and an hour later were on the higher rocky north peak (22,280 feet), about 200 yards away.

Lieutenant Colonel Jagjit Singh, Himalayan Club

*When Marco Pallis and Charles Warren climbed Leo Pargial on August 10, 1933, the weather turned bad before they reached the summit. They reported in the Himalayan Journal, 1934 that “some rocks appeared out of the mist.” This makes the Editor surmise that they reached the 68-foot-higher northern summit, but both Gurdial Singh, who made an ascent of the slightly lower snow peak in 1967, and his brother Jagjit Singh are convinced that the rock summit had remained unclimbed until 1974. The peak called “Leo Pargial South Peak” in the picture opposite p. 123 in the Himalayan Journal, 1934 apparently should not be called by that name. In the latest Survey of India map on a scale of 1:50,000 it appears simply as P 6816 (22,353 feet). This is the highest peak in the region and lies more than a mile south of Leo Pargial.