Lying at 80.2E and 42.2 N, the 6995 meter Khantengri is listed as the second highest among the peaks in the section of the Tianshan Mountains in China, among which the highest stands 20 kilometers to the south of it.

Located on the main ridge line of South Tianshan, Khan Tengri possess five major ridges: the west ridge, the northwest ridge, the north ridge, the northeast ridge and the southeast ridge, among which the west the southeast ridges combine to from the boundary between China and Kazakhstan with the south side in China.

The magnificently high and steep Khan Tengri is capped by snow all year round and frequented by ice and snow avalanches. The open and wide south wall, in particular, abounds in faults, precipices and gullies. The snow slope, like a jade wall, towers below the firmament, making people stop advancing in terror at the sight of it.

With its complicated geological features, Khan Tengri is part of the nucleus of fold and fractures anticlinorium, thus producing a terrain of steep-stand lie of mountains, dangerously precipitous peaks and crisscrossing gullies. Therefore, even up to this day when mountaineering activities have greatly developed, no mountaineers have so far visited the south slope in China.

In 1937, the former Soviet Mountaineering team successfully ascended the summit from the North Slope.