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天门

上阿图什镇 ئۈستۈن ئاتۇش / ۉستۉن ارتىش, People's Republic of China

Shipton's Arch is a conglomerate natural arch in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is located in Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture west-northwest of Kashgar, near the village of Artux, at an altitude of 2,973 metres (9,754 ft). It is probably the world's tallest natural arch. Though

long familiar to locals, because the south side of the arch is visible at a distance from the plain below, a route to the arch was famously discovered in 1947 by English mountaineer Eric Shipton during his tenure as the British consul in Kashgar – and made known to the West in his book Mountains of Tartary. Shipton made unsuccessful attempts to reach the arch from the south, but was defeated each time by a maze of steep canyons and cliffs, before his party finally found a route to the arch from the north and photographed it. The arch once figured in the Guinness Book of Records for its exceptional height, but the editors of the book could not verify the location of the arch exactly, so the listing was dropped. It was only as recently as May 2000 that an expedition sponsored by National Geographic rediscovered a route to the arch for the outside world. Today, several companies operating out...

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