Muztagh Tower is a mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

 in the Baltoro Muztagh

Baltoro Muztagh

The Baltoro Muztagh is a subrange of the Karakoram mountain range, in Baltistan region of the Gilgit-Baltistan province in northern Pakistan; and in Xinjiang, China. The crest of the range forms part of the Pakistan-China border....

, part of the Karakoram

Karakoram

The Karakoram, or Karakorum , is a large mountain range spanning the borders between Pakistan, India and China, located in the regions of Gilgit-Baltistan , Ladakh , and Xinjiang region,...

 range on the border of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 and the Xinjiang Uygur region of China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. It stands between the basins of the Baltoro

Baltoro Glacier

The Baltoro Glacier, at 62 kilometers long, is one of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions. It is located in Baltistan, in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, and runs through part of the Karakoram mountain range. The Baltoro Muztagh lies to the north and east of the glacier, while...

 and Sarpo Laggo

Sarpo Laggo Glacier

The Sarpo Laggo Glacier is a glacier in the autonomous region Xinjiang of China, in the Karakoram mountain range of the Himalayas. It lies north of the Baltoro Muztagh range. It could be reached from the Baltoro glacier on the Pakistani side of the Karakorams via the Old Muztagh Pass northeast of...

 glacier

Glacier

A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

s.

Early prominence

The Mustagh Tower was made famous by a spectacular but somewhat misleading photograph taken by Vittorio Sella

Vittorio Sella

Vittorio Sella was an Italian photographer and mountaineer, who took photographs of mountains which are regarded as some of the finest ever made....

 during the 1909 Italian expedition to K2

K2

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...

. Taken from the upper Baltoro, due southeast of the mountain, the twin summits were perfectly aligned and the mountain was seen as a slender tooth, and looked impregnable. In 1941, the photograph was featured in a popular book on mountaineering with the caption "The Last Citadel".

First and second ascents

Nearly fifty years after Sella's photo was taken, in 1956, his photograph inspired two expeditions to race for the first ascent. Both teams found their routes less steep than Sella's view had suggested. The British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 expedition, consisting of John Hartog, Joe Brown

Joe Brown (climber)

Joseph Brown, CBE is an English climber, born the seventh and last child of a family in the Manchester suburb of Ardwick. He became famous for climbing during the 1950s, and was a member of the Valkyrie climbing club and founding member of the Rock and Ice climbing club. An early climbing partner...

, Tom Patey

Tom Patey

Tom Patey was a Scottish climber, mountaineer and writer. Although he was a leading Scottish climber of his day, particularly excelling on winter routes, he his probably best known for his humorous songs and prose about climbing, many of which were published posthumously in the collection One...

 and Ian McNaught-Davis

Ian McNaught-Davis

Ian McNaught-Davis is most recognised nowadays for presenting the BBC TV series The Computer Programme, Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live in the 1980s. However, he is also a well-known mountaineer and alpinist...

, came from the Chagaran Glacier on the west side of the peak and reached the summit via the Northwest Ridge first on July 6, five days before the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 team (:fr:Guido Magnone, :fr:Robert Paragot, André Contamine, Paul Keller) climbed the mountain from the east. The doctor François Florence waited for the two parties at the camp IV during 42 hours without a radio, when they went, reached the summit and came back to this camp.

Notable ascents and attempts

• 1984 Northwest Ridge 2nd of route, 3rd of peak by Mal Duff, Tony Brindle, Jon Tinker and Sandy Allan (all UK).

• 1990 The fourth ascent was made by Göran Kropp
  Göran Kropp
  Göran Kropp was a Swedish adventurer and mountaineer, born in Eskilstuna in south Sweden. He is most famous for his May 23, 1996 solo ascent of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support, travelling only by bicycle from Sweden.-Early life:In 1972, at the age of 6, Kropp's father took...
  
   and Rafael Jensen.

A lower summit, 7180 m (23,556.4 ft) was first climbed in 1984 by the northeast ridge.

• 2008 On 24 August 2008, the Northeast Face was climbed by two Slovenia
  Slovenia
  Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
  
  n alpinists, Pavle Kozjek
  Pavle Kozjek
  Pavle Kozjek was a Slovenian mountaineering pioneer and a photographer.Kozjek was born in Setnica near Polhov Gradec, SR Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was a member of the Ljubljana-Matica Mountaineering Club. In 1997, he was the first Slovene climber to ascend Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen...
  
  and Dejan Miškovič. They bivouacked on the crest after 17 hours of climbing. They decided not to go to the summit because of strong wind. Just after they started descending, Kozjek fell to his death.