The 40Ar/39Ar thermochronology of the Late Cretaceous Hunza plutonic complex reveals an episodic cooling and denudation history for this regional-scale pluton. The 40Ar/39Ar analyses of biotites from a vertical relief section of >3200 m reveal a pulse of rapid cooling at ~20 Ma. In the interval of 110--27 Ma, age-elevation distributions suggest denudation rates of the order of 0.02¿0.003 mm/yr. At ~20 Ma, denudation rates increased significantly to 2.7¿0.7 mm/yr, then returned to much slower rates until 12 Ma. A second pulse of rapid cooling beginning at 12 Ma is revealed by inverse numerical modeling of multidiffusion domain alkali feldspars from a vertical section of 1700 m. Decreasing in elevation, these samples record the onset of rapid cooling at 12, 9, and 7 Ma, respectively. All of the alkali feldspars record a period of nearly isothermal conditions prior to the onset of rapid cooling when rates increased to 30 ¿C/m.y. Assuming a geothermal gradient of 30 ¿C/km, these cooling rates translate into denudation rates of 1.0 mm/yr. Apatite fission track analysis indicates denudation rates of 0.7¿0.1 mm/yr over the interval of 6.6 Ma to 2.4 Ma in agreement with the alkali feldspar data. These data suggest denudation of 2.9¿0.4 km since the Plio-Pleistocene. Together, the alkali feldspar and apatite data indicate that a minimum of 10 km of overburden has been removed since the mid-late Miocene. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996