Mount Gongga (), also known as Minya Konka (Khams Tibetan pinyin: Mi'nyâg Gong'ga Riwo) and colloquially as "The King of Sichuan Mountains", is the highest mountain in Sichuan province, China. It has an elevation of above sea level. This makes it the third highest peak in the world outside of the Himalaya/Karakoram range, after Tirich Mir and Kongur Tagh, and the easternmost peak in the world. It is situated in the Daxue Shan mountain range, between Dadu River and Yalong River, and is part of the Hengduan mountainous region. From it comes the Hailuogou glacier. The peak has large vertical relief over the deep nearby gorges. Mountaineering history The first western explorers in this region heard reports of an extremely high mountain and sought it out. An early remote measurement of the mountain, then called Bokunka, was first performed by the expedition of Graf Béla Széchenyi between 1877 and 1880. That survey put the altitude of the peak at . Forty-five years later, the mountain, this time called Gang ka, was sketched by missionary J. H. Edgar from a distance. In 1929 the explorer Joseph Rock, in an attempt to measure the mountain's altitude, miscalculated its height as and cabled the National Geographic Society to announce Minya Konka as the highest mountain in the world. This measurement was immediately viewed with suspicion, and the Society's decision to check Rock's calculations before publication was well-founded. Following discussions with the Society, Rock reduced his claim to in his formal publication. In 1930 Swiss geographer Eduard Imhof led an expedition that measured the altitude of the mountain to be . A richly illustrated large-format book about the expedition was eventually published by Imhof, Die Großen Kalten Berge von Szetchuan (Orell Fussli Verlag, Zurich, 1974). The book includes many color paintings by Imhof, including images of the Tibetan monastery at the foot of the sacred mountain. The monastery was almost completely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, around 1972–74. A properly equipped American team composed of Terris Moore, Richard Burdsall, Arthur B. Emmons, and Jack T. Young returned to the mountain in 1932 and performed an accurate survey of the peak and its environs. Their summit altitude measurement agreed with Imhof's figure of . Moore and Burdsall succeeded in climbing to the summit by starting on the west side of the mountain and climbing the Northwest Ridge. This was a remarkable achievement at the time,