Nyenpo Yurtse
Published with The North Face, Sixth Tone, Pengpai, and more, 2017-2019
There’s no place on earth quite like Nyenpo Yurtse.
This mountain massif tears through the rolling sea of hills that blanket the Roof of the World - Tibet - and scrape the sky. They resemble the Italian Dolomiti but are twice, sometimes thrice, as high. But the magic of Nyenpo Yurtse isn’t only in the summits, it’s also in the myriad of holy lakes and rare flora and fauna. This is home to snow leopards and the world’s rarest species of poppy, Meconopsis barbiseta, which blooms in an explosion of indigo across only a few mountain slopes for just a few months a year. There are also the people, who have lived here for millennia, coexisting beside some of the most harsh and beautiful nature on the planet.
But, like elsewhere across the Roof of the World, the climate is warming two to three times faster than the global average. The change starts up high and trickles down below. The disappearance of glaciers will affect everything here, and everyone. To tell this story, and create a line of protection for the fragile environment, an association of Tibetan Buddhist monks has come together to educate and empower the region’s nomadic locals to study and protect the changing landscape. The Tibetan women keep watch on the migrations and mating cycles of black-necked crane that nest in the glacier-fed wetlands each summer and the men head up to the holy summits to document the retreat of the last glaciers here and pray for their future.
During my time in China, I visited this region several times to document the work of the Nyenpo Yurtse Conservation Association throughout their home range, particularly their study of the massif’s last glacier. As part of my greater Explore To Conserve project with The North Face, we supported the association’s glacier team with gear as they carried out their mission to protect their homeland.
