This Friday, October 19th from 6-7 pm in Dartmouth Hall 105,
come see Freddie Wilkinson '02,
a professional mountaineer and writer, talk about his recent work in Siachen
(as well as hopefully some lore from the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club's past):
A Line On the Map: The Siachen Saga
In 1968, a telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Delhi arrives on the desk of a cartographer in the Office of the Geographer, an obscure group inside the U.S. Department of State. Six months later, the Federal Government secretly shifts its policy
regarding the depiction of a fifty-five miles of boundary between India and Pakistan in an obscure corner of the Karakoram Mountains. The errant boundary depiction neatly cuts in half one of the world’s most stunning mountain landscapes – the Siachen Glacier,
the place of roses, and sets the two countries on a course towards conflict over the uninhabited wilderness.
In 1975, the Government of Pakistan
begins to allow foreign mountaineering expeditions into the Siachen. Soon after, an Indian mountaineer starts to lodge competing claims of first ascents of the same geographic mountains as had been climbed from Pakistan, claiming the glacier is Indian territory….
In April, 1984 the Indian Army launches Operation Meghdoot, seizing the
glacier by military force, and the Siachen is transformed into the highest battle ground in the world.
Featuring extensive research, from recently declassified Government documents to a first-hand account of the highest lethal combat in human history, and a visit to the front lines
with the Pakistan Army, this presentation is the culmination of five years of work by writer and climber Freddie Wilkinson ’02. Equal parts real life spy thriller,
a fascinating case study of a major foreign policy blunder, and mountain adventure saga, the story will be published in National Geographic Magazine in 2019 (photography by Cory Richard).
