Pin Parvati Pass

Pin Parvati Pass, also written Pin Parbati Pass, is a glaciated pass on the ridge between the head of the Parvati Valley in Kullu District and the Pin valley of Spiti in Lahaul and Spiti District, Himachal Pradesh, India. The Parvati river rises below it, from the Mantalai glacier at 5,200 m. The Parvati Valley below the pass is a landrace cannabis growing area.

Published heights for the pass differ. The Tribune gave 5,319 m in 2013; Harish Kapadia, writing in The Himalayan Journal after crossing it in 1993, gave 5,400 m. Louis Dane, whose aneroid barometer stopped registering below the crest when he crossed in 1884, estimated the top at "17,500 or 18,000 feet" (about 5,330 to 5,490 m). In the diary of that crossing he suggested calling the route the Pin-Parbati Pass.^{: Spiti, App. II, 125–126}

Approach

Kapadia's party walked up the valley from Manikaran, at 1,697 m, reaching Pulga on the first day. From there it went by Khirganga (2,920 m), Tunda Bhuj (3,400 m), Pando Seo Thatch (3,780 m) and Bara Dwari Thatch (3,920 m) to Mantalai lake (4,150 m), crossing two large natural rock bridges over the Parvati. On the far side it came down into the Pin valley by Mud to Sagnam, which it reached on 28 July. An army team of 13 from the Fazilka Brigade and the Amogh Division set out in June 2013 to walk the same crossing from Manikaran to Sagnam, a route of 155 km planned for seven days. The Tribune reported that the trek "is considered to be one of the most challenging treks in the state".

Dane's crossing of 1884

The Kangra District gazetteer of 1897 found "no commonly used means of crossing the range which separates Spiti from Kúlu" along some 75 miles of ridge between the Bhaka or Rupi Pass and the Hamta Pass. In 1883 Louis Dane sent two men to explore a route from the Chandra side; they came out at Tos in Waziri Rupi and reported it easy apart from one glacier. Dane afterwards succeeded "in crossing direct from Spiti into Kúlu by a high pass between the Pin Valley and source of the Párbati" in Waziri Rupi. The gazetteer judged both routes "too difficult to be brought into common use".^{: Spiti, 110}

The gazetteer printed, as an appendix, extracts from the diary that Dane, a member of the civil service, submitted in August 1884. Its editor wrote that the route "was an entirely new one, and, so far as is known, has not been attempted by any traveller, European or Native, since Mr. Dane's time".^{: Spiti, App. II, 124} On 10 August 1884 Dane set out from the Pin valley intending "to cross the ridge separating the head waters of the Pín and Párbati". He recorded objections of every kind: that the pass could not be reached from the Pin side, that there was no wood or grass on the way and that robbers and "European travellers worse than robbers would invade the country" once it was open. The party camped at 15,225 feet "just under the main glacier".^{: Spiti, App. II, 125}

The next morning they climbed a grassy spur and some 600 or 700 feet of glacier and stood on the ridge at about 7.15 a.m.; five ponies, five yaks and about twelve goats came up with them. Dane wrote that they "crossed just below Snowy Peak No. 1, 20,515 feet". On the Parvati side he looked down on a basin "filled with an unbroken sea of ice fed by three large glaciers". The party went down onto the ice and past a shallow lake about a mile long, where the moraine of a glacier crossing its course had dammed the river, then spent four hours scrambling among ice hillocks and boulders. From the glacier Dane shouted to a shepherd whose flock was on the hillside above; the man fled. They camped at Charar Ruar Thach, at 13,250 feet. The next day they followed the river down past "flock after flock of Suket sheep" to Thakur Kua, at 11,900 feet, where the Parvati is joined by the Dhibbi Bakri.^{: Spiti, App. II, 125}

Dane argued that with a small outlay the pass could be made passable for horses, mules and yaks and that "a large trade will probably spring up"; officers inspecting Spiti would be spared the round by the Kunzam and Hamta passes or through Bashahr. He also counted it a gain to have broken what he called "the foolish superstition of the Kúlu people, who believed that the Párbati River was a goddess, and that no one could visit the source and live".^{: Spiti, App. II, 126}

Later crossings

Kapadia, whose party crossed on 25 July 1993, recorded crossings by F. Skemp from Spiti in 1906 and by H. Lee Shuttleworth from Kullu in 1921. He wrote that J. O. M. Roberts in 1939 "missed its location and crossed by another pass to Spiti" and that the pass was by then "crossed by many parties and by shepherds too".

See also

• Parvati Valley
• Rasol Pass
• Chanderkhani Pass