The Yalong River Gorge, south of 7000-metre Gonggashan, Sichuan, China. The explorer Joseph Rock wrote in the National Geographic in 1929, “Where Muti Konka rears its eternally snow-capped crown 19,000 feet into the sky, the Yalung flows 12,000 feet below...", adding “For centuries it may remain a closed land, save to such privileged few as care to crawl like ants through its canyons of tropical heat and up its glaciers and passes in blinding snowstorms, carrying their food with them..."