Kunlun Pass

Kunlun Pass

Kunlun Pass is located in the southwest of Qinghai Province, the middle section of Kunlun Mountain, 160 kilometers south of Golmud City. It is the only way for Qinghai and Gansu provinces to go to Tibet. It is also a major pass on the Qinghai Tibet highway. It is named after the valley pass, also known as "Kunlun Pass".

Kunlun Mountain is the symbol of the Chinese nation and the cradle of Chinese myths and legends. The ancients respected it as "the ancestor of mountains" and "the ancestor of dragon veins", so it has the good name of "the mother of national mountains". In Tibetan, it is called "Amanim zhanmusong", which means Zushan. The vast Kunlun Mountains are majestic, with four seasons of cold and winter, covered with silver and plain clothes, continuous mountains and towering clouds. Climbing the mountain pass, the mountains and valleys of Kunlun Mountain are like galloping horses in silver gray armor, rolling forward with the wind and clouds.

Basic information

Kunlun mountain stands in the south of Golmud City. According to ancient books, Kunlun Mountain is the place where jade dragons soar, known as the spine of Asia. Kunlun mountain pass is a desert landform in permafrost region. Its geological system is composed of ancient complex metamorphic rocks with strong erosion. There are hills, low mountains and mounds composed of Tertiary sediments. Wild plants such as Prunus mume, Ranunculus ternatus and so on grow in the hillside and valley. Climbing the mountain pass, the mountains and valleys of Kunlun Mountain are like galloping horses in silver gray armor, rolling forward with the wind and clouds.

brief introduction

Kunlun mountain pass belongs to permafrost desert landform, which is composed of ancient complex metamorphic rocks with strong erosion. There are low hills and ridges composed of Tertiary sediments. On the hillside and valley, there are wild plants in permafrost desert of plateau, such as diandimei, huzhaoer, Artemisia, fleas, rhinoceros, Pedicularis.

Kunlun mountain pass has a high terrain, cold and humid climate, thin air, unique ecological environment and spectacular natural scenery. Here, the mountains are rolling, the snow peaks stand abruptly, and the grassland is vast. What's particularly strange is that it is full of craggy ice mounds and unpredictable ice cones, as well as the plateau permafrost that does not melt all the year round. Some of them are several meters high, others are more than ten meters high, and there is an inexhaustible trickle under them. Once the ice is uncovered, groundwater often gushes out to form fountains. Some ice cones are 12 meters high, others are 78 meters high. This kind of ice cone keeps growing and bursting. When burst, some spray as high as 20 meters or 30 meters, and make a huge noise. Although the permafrost in Kunlun mountain pass does not melt all the year round, green grass grows on the meadow on the surface of the permafrost. Every midsummer season, the grass is in full bloom with a variety of brilliant wild flowers, it's really beautiful.

Not far from Kunlun mountain pass, yuxu peak and Yuxian peak, which are more than 6000 meters above sea level, stand erect and graceful. They are covered with silver and covered with clouds all the year round, forming the famous snow wonder of Kunlun in June. Yuxu peak is located in the east of Kunlun Pass. This is a snow capped iceberg with an altitude of more than 6500 meters. The top of the iceberg is towering, the mountain is covered with frozen snow, and the mountainside is surrounded by white clouds. It looks like a woman dressed in plain silver and standing tall on the mountains. Yuxu peak is said to be the place where yuxu goddess, the sister of the Jade Emperor, lives. It is said that the jade emperor built a Xuanyuan Palace on the top of Kunlun mountain when he saw that Kunlun Mountain was majestic, grand, magnificent and close to the heaven. Yu Xu, the younger sister of the Jade Emperor, was very unconvinced when she learned that there were too many places occupied by the Jade Emperor. She not only occupied the sky, but also regarded the good places on the earth as her own. The Jade Emperor had no choice but to give one of the peaks to yuxu. Yuxu built a beautiful palace for himself on this mountain, and often took his sisters to visit here. Therefore, this mountain is called yuxu peak.

Kunlun Pass

Kunlun mountain pass is a necessary place for Qinghai Tibet highway to pass through Kunlun Mountains. It is also a necessary place for car exploration line on the roof of the world. It is an important scenic spot for snow tourism in June. After many passers-by come here, they will stop here to have a look. In April 1956, when Vice Premier Chen Yi passed by Kunlun mountain on his way to Tibet, he was full of passion and poetry, and immediately wrote a song "Ode to Kunlun Mountain". The poem says: there are many peaks outside, but there are mountains outside. The general situation of the land is high and there is no danger. Eyes extremely snow line even sky, looking at the cattle and horses man Qun. There are few people in the desert, and water plants are visitors. What is the granular sand? Identify the exploration group. I travel 300 miles a day, and I never stop driving for seven days. Kunlun is not famous for its great courage. Drive the river east into the sea and control the five mountains.

The marker stele of Kunlun Pass is divided into five parts: Main stele, subsidiary stele, accompanying stele, sculpture and chassis. The material is white marble. The main monument is 4.767 meters high, which is one thousandth of the altitude of Kunlun mountain pass. The base of the monument is 9.6 square meters of granite block stone, symbolizing that it stands on 9.6 million square kilometers of solid land in China. On the south side of the Kunlun mountain pass monument are the Kunlun mountain pass Monument and the Jiesang sonandajie monument, commemorating the outstanding Tibetan son who died to protect the wild animals in Kekexili.

The distance from Golmud to Kunlun Pass is only 150 kilometers. Driving to Xidatan, there are 20 valley glaciers, iceberg glaciers and suspended glaciers standing on the main vein of East Kunlun. The height of snow line is between 5200-5300 meters, low in the West and high in the East. Yuzhufeng, the main peak of East Kunlun, is 6178 meters above sea level, just on the South edge of the beach. On the north and south sides of Xidatan, Jingxian Valley and Kunlun mountain pass, a variety of periglacial landforms and frozen soil phenomena are developed: the exposed rocks of high mountains are gradually disintegrated by cold weathering, forming stone sea and stone river; along Xidatan, the northern boundary of Qinghai Tibet Plateau Permafrost is formed at an altitude of 4350 meters above sea level; on the west side of Jingxian Valley, a large-scale stone sea is developed at an altitude of 4800 ~ 4950 meters Glaciers.

Geomorphological features

Stone glacier

It is a unique periglacial type in the middle and low latitude alpine region, and also a sign of the existence of glaciers for many years. On the surface, it looks like stones with edges and corners. The shape is very similar to the glacier tongue, so it is called Shige glacier.

Stone glaciers are found in many parts of the world, such as Alaska and Nevada Mountains in the United States, Yukon mountains in Canada and Kunlun Mountains in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau in China. There are 18 stone glaciers on both sides of Jingxian Valley in Kunlun mountain pass, most of which are 300-400 meters long. The end of stone glaciers is 4650-4700 meters above sea level, and the average natural slope is 15-20 degrees.

Some glaciers are formed by a large amount of moraines left behind after the ancient glaciers degenerated, while others are formed by a large amount of debris supplied by the dump and debris pile on the ancient ice bucket and its lower slope. The stone glaciers in Kunlun mountain pass are quite special. They are all composed of ancient proluvial gravel layer and moraine boulders that originally covered the top of the mountain. The maximum gravel diameter is 4.5 meters, and 2-3 meters of gravel are common. This kind of stone glacier is also significantly different from the ancient stone river. From the plane view, most of the stone glaciers are tongue shaped, on which there may be a naturally formed ladder shaped vertical section, and the end uplift is steamed bread shaped. For example, at the junction of the two stone glaciers on the east side of Jingxian Valley, there are three different step scarps, the highest of which is 8 meters, giving people an obvious creeping feeling. The boulders and boulders on the glacier are concentrated in strips and regularly distributed on both sides of the downstream of the glacier, especially on the low-lying side. It is observed that the peristalsis of the stone glacier is formed by local accumulation. Even in Alaska, North America, there are few stony glaciers that creep more than one meter a year. The frost heaving intensity and water condition of Kunlun mountain pass are not as good as those of North America, and the activity of stone glacier is relatively weak. The northern slope of the pass has less sunshine, low temperature, frequent freezing and thawing, and the water condition is slightly better than that of the southern slope, so many stone glaciers are formed, while the southern slope has no stone glaciers.

Frost heaving mound

Ice mound is formed by soil expansion caused by soil moisture or groundwater freezing in winter, also known as frost heave mound. At the south entrance of Jingxian Valley, there is a huge iceberg beside the 62 class. This large iceberg is an open perennial iceberg composed of two connected individuals. It is 140 meters long, 45 meters wide and more than 20 meters high. Because it endangers the transportation of the Qinghai Tibet highway, it once caused the central part to collapse by blasting. In summer, ice water flows out, and in winter, crystal clear ice cones are formed in the collapse. After climbing two gentle slopes, you can reach the Kunlun Pass, which is 4771 meters above sea level. Compared with the mountains on both sides of the pass, it is only tens of meters lower, but it is a landmark national benchmark. Thus, the inner flow area of Qaidam Basin in the north and the upper Yangtze River Basin in the south are separated by the watershed extending to both sides. The north slope of Kunlun mountain pass is eroded by the flowing water to form bad land. Through it, countless gaps are like a labyrinth of hutongs, but it is a natural classroom for studying geomorphology.

taoist culture

"Born in the sky, mang Kunlun, read all the spring in the world. Three million yuan of jade dragons fly up, which makes Zhou Tianhan very cold. " This is a quatrains handed down from generation to generation in the famous poem Kunlun by Mao Zedong. For thousands of years, mangmangmang Kunlun has woven countless beautiful and moving legends. The Kunlun Mountain is the cradle of Chinese myths and legends, because many famous works, such as Chang'e to the moon, journey to the west, and the legend of the White Snake, have been handed down from generation to generation in China. Kunlun Mountain has a prominent position as the "ancestor of mountains" in the cultural history of the Chinese nation

Chinese PinYin : Kun Lun Shan Kou