The first map known of Kānchenjunga was made by Rinzin Namgyal, one of the pandit (“learned”) explorers of the mid-19th century, who made a circuital sketch. In 1848 and 1849 Sir Joseph Hooker, a botanist, was the first European to visit and describe the region, and, in 1899, the explorer-mountaineer Douglas Freshfield traveled around the mountain. In 1905 the suggested Yalung valley route was attempted by an Anglo-Swiss party, a venture during which four members perished in an avalanche.

Mountaineers later explored other faces of the massif. A Bavarian expedition led by Paul Bauer in 1929 and 1931 vainly attempted it from the Zemu side, and Gunter O. Dyhrenfurth, in 1930, attempted it from the Kānchenjunga Glacier. The greatest height reached during these explorations was 25,263 feet (7,700 m) in 1931. Fatal accidents on two of these expeditions gave the mountain a reputation for unusual danger and difficulty. No more efforts were made to climb it until 1954, when, partly because the Sikkimese objected, attention was again turned to the Yalung face, which is in Nepal. Gilmour Lewis' visits to the Yalung in 1951, 1953, and 1954 led to a 1955 British expedition led by Charles Evans, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club (London), which stopped within a few yards of the actual summit in deference to the religious beliefs and wishes of the Sikkimese.

The name Kānchenjunga is derived from four words of Tibetan origin, usually rendered Kang-chen-dzo-nga, or Yang-chhen-dzö-nga, and interpreted in Sikkim as the “Five Treasuries of the Great Snow.”