A summer pasture that became a climbers' base
Chhukung began as a kharka, a summer grazing place where Sherpa herders from lower villages brought yaks and nak in the monsoon months to feed on the high grass. Stone huts with flat roofs sheltered the herders; walls penned the animals. Nobody lived here in winter, and in a few cases that pattern still holds: some lodges close from December to February when snow and cold empty the valley.
Climbers changed Chhukung. In 1951, members of Eric Shipton's reconnaissance party saw a peak rising out of the Imja glacier and named it Island Peak, because it looked like an island in a sea of ice. In 1953 members of the British Everest expedition climbed it as training. It was renamed Imja Tse in 1983, but almost everyone still calls it Island Peak, and it became one of the most climbed trekking peaks in Nepal, with Chhukung as its last village.
Today Chhukung watches another change. Imja Tsho, the glacial lake below Island Peak, has grown fast since the 1960s as the Imja glacier melted. In 2016 the Nepal Army and partners cut an outlet channel and lowered the lake by about 3.4 m to reduce the risk of a flood that would sweep down past Dingboche. The lake is now visible from Chhukung Ri and from the trail to Island Peak base camp.
